To The Editor:

The front page of your February 19 issue serendipitously summarized one of the issues presently confronting the University.

The left column titled “Bills, Bills, Bills” addressed the some of the financial aspects of the administration of the University and increasing expenses – while at the bottom of the same page is a photograph of a frustrated Mike Jarvis reacting to the Red Storm’s loss to Providence. Is there any chance the two may be connected?

Coach Jarvis costs the University $1,171,255 annually, and the team is playing 12-11. Even if the Red Storm was winning its division how can the university justify paying one $1.2 million for a coach?

The issue is compounded even further when one reads on to discover that the Dean of the Law School – a law school that has produced Governors, congressmen, judges, skilled attorneys and many of our community leaders – Joseph Bellacosa, makes just less than $300,000. Then considering the other great programs of St. John’s, especially the School of Pharmacy and the Tobin College of Business (none of whose leaders are making anywhere close to $1.2 million), it becomes apparent that somehow our priorities have become misdirected.

Offer Jarvis a 50 percent salary cut to $550,000 – still almost double anyone else on campus – and use the savings for the academic programs. If Jarvis takes it, fine. If not, then there are a lot of fine young basketball coaches that would jump at the opportunity to coach the Red Storm. And they may just do better. It would be difficult to do much worse.

Anthony D. DiLernia,

Class of ’74, (BS), ’80 (MS), ’83 (PD)