BOULDER, Colo. -- No topic was off limits -- whether it was racial diversity, the sex and recruiting scandal or what they were going to do about bad attendance at basketball games.
Colorado's new athletic director held an extraordinary town meeting Monday morning, seeking feedback from a community that has grown disenchanted with a program that fell under hard times over the past few years and is now trying to emerge.
"I didn't know if we'd have 10 people or 500," beaming athletic director Mike Bohn said after the forum, attended by about 150 people, broke up. "I thought the questions were terrific. It's good to see there's a connection between what we think and what they think and that they're not all on another page than we are."
This was not all feel-good stuff.
Among those who stepped to one of the three microphones, placed around the hotel conference room, was a rape-crisis counselor who didn't feel the messages of preventing sex crimes was being taught to the right people -- most notably, the coaches and administrators who set the tone for the programs. Bohn and interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano outlined a proposal they're working on that would call for a "life lessons" class to be taught to every incoming students in the residence halls.
There was a longtime season-ticket holder for basketball games, who feels pretty much alone among those who support the largely under-attended and overmatched program. Bohn said Colorado's gray, boring events center needs an overhaul, and suggested that maybe coach Ricardo Patton needs to reach into the community a bit more to help raise the money for such a project.
And there was Milt Branch, the president of the school's Black Alumni Association, who sees the need for more outreach to minorities in nearby Denver, who he doesn't believe have the kind of connection they should with the state university.
"I'd imagine it's going to take three to five years for them to implement everything they want to implement," Branch said. "It's a long-term project. Do people have the patience? I don't know. I know I do."
Indeed, there are no quick fixes to the problems that ail Colorado, although Bohn is looking both for quick shots of public-relations energy -- like the slight altering of the logo announced earlier this month with much fanfare -- along with more long-term solutions.
Bohn is spearheading a fund-raising program to make $3.7 million in donations by Sept. 1. Colorado has brought in $1.1 million in the five weeks since the new AD came aboard.
The stakes are high: Because of low revenue, the athletic department had 15-percent cuts in the budget in the last fiscal year. In the next year, beginning July 1, there will be another 10 percent cut. Bohn said eight staff positions within the athletic department have been eliminated.
"That's why we're doing all the fund-raising," he said.
But as much as money, he is asking for more word-of-mouth publicity, as he tries to re-energize a base of volunteers, fans, faculty and students who don't seem as enchanted with the idea of going to a football game on an autumn Saturday afternoon as they once did.
