The Great Campus Divide
The dangers of separating the athlete from the student
Much remains unclear about the alleged rape incident implicating members of the Duke University lacrosse team. But the episode last month at the Durham, N.C., campus has cast fresh light on the schism that often exists between college athletics and the wider academic community. Student athletes have long inhabited a world often less focused on learning than on winning. But what is becoming more apparent today is that the divide is widening--and that it can lead to destructive behavior. Although the Duke lacrosse players appear to be better students than most, a pair of faculty reports issued last week noted the team's "clannish" or "pack" culture, both on and off the playing field, and its connection to a rash of disciplinary incidents.
College campuses are often bastions of balkanization. Academic departments can be isolated from one another and the outside world, dormitory and Greek life is frequently cliquish, and administrators often lack any meaningful interaction with students. But, historically, it has been athletics that have caused the greatest conflicts with the true mission of higher education. As far back as 1929, the Carnegie Foundation published a report on collegiate athletics bemoaning lax oversight, high coaching salaries, and low academic standards. Sixty-two years later, reports by the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics came to the same conclusions.
Reforms. Today, as Duke conducts a rigorous examination of how it "educates students in the values of personal responsibility," other schools are looking at ways to bring athletics back into the mainstream of campus life.
Nearly three years ago, for instance, Vanderbilt University in Nashville took the radical step of abolishing its entire athletic department and placing all sports under the auspices of the vice chancellor for student life and university affairs. "Athletics has become disassociated, arrogantly so, from the university," says Gordon Gee, Vanderbilt's chancellor and architect of the reorganization. "The reforms were partly about who was in charge--the university president or a coach." Despite dire warnings to the contrary, the Division I school has continued to field competitive teams. Likewise, the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., recently reassigned the head of athletics so that he now reports to the commandant of cadets. The University of Colorado-Boulder and Ohio State University-Columbus are among other schools looking at ways to bring their athletic departments back into the fold.
The reorganizations have coincided with increased oversight by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In the past decade, sports have become one of the most regulated sectors on campus, as players are subjected to random drug tests, higher academic standards aimed at boosting graduation rates and team GPAs, restrictions on recruiting and endorsements, and codes of conduct that often hold them to a higher standard than other students.
Tim Curley, president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, points to a 500-page rulebook that the NCAA gives to athletic departments. "We have our problems like any other segments of the campus community," he says, "but there is also far more regulation and scrutiny than your average academic department."
A separate place. There are many reasons why athletic departments are worlds unto themselves. But perhaps the most important is that they are often entirely separate organizations--nonprofits that do their own fundraising, marketing, and recruiting and pay their own salaries. "Over the past 20 years, athletics have established separate departments with separate missions: win and raise money, which isn't supposed to be the mission of a school," says Peter Roby, director of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society. That isn't to say sports aren't valuable and compatible with academics, he says; rather, that athletics need to be reintegrated into the modern campus.
While the two reports from Duke have chronicled problems with the lacrosse team--three players were disciplined in 2001 for engaging in a drinking game while entertaining a potential high school recruit--an investigation into administrative shortcomings is expected soon. In the classic 2001 book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, researcher William Bowen highlighted the dangers to colleges that overemphasize competitive athletics. Later this month, on behalf of Duke, Bowen will weigh in on the subject again. The topic: the administrative response to the alleged assault and recommended changes in the treatment of student scholars.
This story appears in the May 15, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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