Dear Pioneer Newspaper Staff,

I am emailing you to express my complete disappointment in the person who wrote the article about student-athletes and drug testing and to the rest of the staff who permitted the article to be printed. [Feb. 16, 2012 issue; “CSUEB Should Take the Lead in Increasing Athletic Drug Testing”] How can a school have any team spirit, when its own newspaper bashes its own athletes?
It is one thing to make a general statement that California univesity student-athletes should be drug-tested more often, but to go after your own school’s athletes and basically say we waste money on them when most of them do drugs is ridiculuous. What are you trying to do? Turn the school against its own sports teams or recruited athletes? That is what you are doing.
The athletics program has improved the atmosphere at CSUEB so much in the past 2-3 years. Before then, the school was looked at as a lame commuter school and there has not been much activity within the school.
The athletics program has brought in hundreds of athletes from Southern California and other places and the school is slowly starting to become a “real college” instead of just a place for locals to take classes. Maybe your staff should talk about that, how much the school has improved and how much the athletics program has contributed to the school’s success recently.
Volleyball is nationally ranked, softball beat top 10 nationally ranked UC San Diego last year and is improving its record this year. Does anyone recognize those hard working teams? Or the fact that each team has a fundraising day to support some cause like Breast Cancer Awareness Day or Support the Troops? Instead of bashing on our own, why don’t we support them?
 
Thank you for your time.
 
Sincerely,
Danielle Foster
(former softball player and student at CSUEB)