Brown University’s fencers, wrestlers and female skiers can relax — for at least another year, their teams are going nowhere.

In response to a report released last spring by the Brown Athletics Review Committee that recommended the programs be cut, Brown President Ruth Simmons proposed allowing the four teams — the men’s and women’s fencing teams, men’s wrestling team and women’s ski team — to seek the funding necessary to support themselves. Simmons will recommend to the Brown Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, that If the teams meet their financial needs over the next year through outside pledges in addition to normal program funding, they should not be cut, the Brown Daily Herald reported today.

Simmons also recommended no budget cuts be made to the Athletics Department over the next five years, but she did suggest the number of positions reserved for athletes during annual admissions be reduced from 225 to 205.

According to the Herald, Brown’s athletes are currently last in the Ivy League with the respect to the Academic Index — a measure of high school academic performance based on grade point averages and standardized test scores.

GAVAN GIDEON