Guest editorial -- Silence no option in campaign vs. violence
By Donald G. McPherson
National Consortium for Academics and Sports
The silence has been broken. The campus is buzzing and the local media are on the phone inquiring about the accusations of a sexual assault by a student-athlete -- one of your student-athletes. You sit at your desk and wonder why this has happened and how could it have been prevented.
Silence is no longer an alternative. This issue must be addressed. But how will this affect your program? How can you confront the behavior of your student-athletes and still maintain their trust? How can you prevent this from happening in the future?
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If you're a small school and make it big in athletics, they call you a Cinderella. If you're a major Division I institution, well, making it big in athletics is expected. Either way, the story of athletics success is major news, and the exploits of student-athletes will be well documented. However, the off-field behavior of student-athletes is always news, regardless of the size of the institution, thus distinguishing your institution as harboring student-athletes capable of sexual violence in a culture of impunity.
In 1998, the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS) implored its membership to adopt a "zero-tolerance" policy against sexual violence. Consistent with the NCAS mission, the resolution was written to take a leadership position against gender violence on our campuses. But it takes more than words to prevent gender violence from occurring. That's why the NCAS offers the Mentors in Violence Prevention Program (MVP) to its members.
Created at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, MVP is a gender violence prevention program that is designed to raise awareness, challenge thinking, stimulate leadership and ultimately change the behavior of all men.
The philosophy of MVP is to reposition issues, historically considered "women's issues," as "men's issues," thereby involving both men and women in efforts to confront men's violence against women.
Gender violence affects everyone. All men have women in their lives that they care about --
mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters. The violence that affects them impacts men's lives as well. More than 90 percent of the violence committed against women is done by men. Therefore, for that violence to end, men must be involved in the prevention efforts.
The approach of MVP is not to address male athletes as the problem but rather to enlist them as potential contributors to the solution. By examining bystander behavior, MVP enables student-athletes to discuss behavior in a nonaccusatory environment. In fact, both male and female sessions involve discussion from bystander perspectives, not assuming males as perpetrators or females as victims. Both male and females engage in dialogue that teaches and promotes confronting potentially violent and abusive situations before they occur.
Today more than ever, student-athletes are faced with many challenges and decisions. As a student-athlete, I faced many similar dilemmas and decisions similar to those confronting today's student-athlete. In every workshop I conduct, I hear my own thoughts in the voices of student-athletes as they consider relationships, sexual behavior and even the law. Innocently, they ponder, "How do you know when no means no?" And sometimes the tone is arrogant. But the important point is that the question is being asked.
In the end, student-athletes learn that a comment like "you throw like a girl" tells boys to be tough, hard and insensitive while stating implicitly that girls are "less than" boys. This paradigm certainly will lead boys to disrespect and ultimately abuse girls. Derogatory language that is widely used also is examined as another way in which women are depicted as "less than" men.
Student-athletes learn to recognize the attitudes and behavior that lead to gender violence. MVP workshops use the MVP PlayBook, which helps the discussion of ways to prevent violent acts before they occur. That is the ultimate goal of MVP -- to prevent that phone call regarding an act of gender violence. MVP helps student-athletes recognize the factors that lead to gender violence while making them realize that they have a voice in its prevention.
Since its inception in 1993, MVP has conducted workshops on more than 70 college campuses nationwide. It has been used as a component of the NBA's rookie transition program and has even been introduced to the United States Marine Corps.
However, the greatest impact of MVP has been on college campuses. Institutions have implemented MVP in a variety of ways. For example, Bridgewater State College (Massachusetts), under the leadership of Bob Haynor, has created its own program comprising men from a cross-section of campus life. Men from athletics, residence life and fraternities have formed a unified voice of intolerance on their campus and their local community. Another method of raising awareness has been used by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, which has brought MVP to its campus on several occasions to address student-athletes.
On April 16, the University of Central Florida, through its Athletes in Service to America program, will introduce the MVP message to more than 500 student-athletes from around the state of Florida. The event will be a celebration of National Student-Athlete Day, one of the many programs also created by the NCAS to recognize the leadership of student-athletes and their service to the community.
The problem of gender violence affects us all. Whether we are administrators, coaches or student-athletes, these issues touch our institutions, departments and, most dramatically, our individual lives.
That is the bad the news. The good news is that the silence has been broken. And now the work begins to confront the problem through education and awareness. The MVP program is designed to stimulate the process of discussing solutions.
Prevention is the key to never having to answer the question of why an incident occurred. Prevention is the key to protecting the integrity of your program. And most importantly, prevention is the key to ending the violence that is committed against our mothers, sisters and daughters.
Donald G. McPherson is the associate director of programs for the National Consortium for Academics and Sports and a former quarterback at Syracuse University.
Comment -- Ruling merits a discriminating examination
By Arvid Adell
Millikin University
Judge Ronald Buckwalter recently ruled that the NCAA's use of a minimum ACT or SAT score to determine freshman eligibility discriminates against Blacks and other minorities. What the judge failed to mention was the two contrasting definitions of "discriminate" and the implications of those two definitions for Proposition l6.
One definition is "to make a clear distinction; to differentiate." The second is "to act on the basis of prejudice." (American Heritage Dictionary)
The first meaning of discrimination is what universities are all about.
Improving the discriminatory skills of students -- to enable them to make clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, relevant and irrelevant, valuable and worthless, beautiful and ugly, fact and fiction, truth and error -- is a good description of what educators from preschool to postgraduate are supposed to do. One might refer to the ability to discriminate in this sense as a virtue. Surely Judge Buckwalter did not have this definition in mind when he ruled against the NCAA's use of testing to determine eligibility.
Other meaning
The second meaning is what universities disdain. To prejudge persons by race and to treat them unfairly based on this prejudgment runs counter to everything for which the university stands. One might refer to persons who practice this kind of discrimination as vicious, lacking the virtue of discernment.
Therefore, the question is not "should universities discriminate?"
Discriminatory judgments are not only desirable but also essential to all institutions of higher learning. The proper question is: "Is the use of ACT and SAT tests an instantiation of virtuous discrimination or vicious discrimination based on prejudice against Blacks and certain other groups?"
Empirical evidence is offered to support the contention that the tests discriminate viciously against Blacks. As a group, Blacks applying for athletics scholarships and freshman eligibility do not score as well on either the ACT or the SAT tests as whites. Still, that statistic in itself does not prove prejudicial discrimination. A larger percentage of black students receive athletics scholarships in certain sports than white students, but few would suggest the reason for this imbalance is prejudice. In fact, most would agree that the disparity is due to discrimination in the virtuous sense: Coaches recognize good athletes when they see them and offer scholarships accordingly.
Identify and correct
Why do Blacks score lower on eligibility tests than whites? The accusation has been made that the tests are biased, either intentionally or unintentionally, in favor of whites. Of course, what is really meant by this is that those who make up these tests are biased and the tests reflect their partisanship. This may or may not be the case, but even if it is, this in itself should not lead to the inference that the tests should be discarded. A more constructive solution would be to enlist the services of black and white scholars to identify these biases and eliminate them.
Certainly there is a core of questions that transcend race and that are helpful in predicting a student's capacity to be academically successful in college.
A second explanation is that Blacks are genetically inferior to whites in test-taking; however, to assume a biological cause without a shred of scientific evidence to support this assumption is discrimination of the vicious kind and must be rejected.
The most plausible explanation would be that Blacks have not received the educational training necessary to develop their powers of discrimination (of the virtuous sort) sufficiently, relative to these tests. If the ACT and the SAT demonstrate that these abilities are deficient, it would seem far more worthwhile to remedy this deficiency rather than to get rid of the tests.
How can this be accomplished?
Start early
For many of these students, the primary mentors are their high-school coaches. Often, it is possible for these coaches to identify potential Division I athletes at an early age who are academically at risk.
Why not begin to hone their analytical skills at this stage? Introduce them to sound reasoning. Take the ball out of their hands for at least a few minutes a day and do test-taking. Acquire samples of the tests and present them as challenges that the student-athletes must meet. Don't wait until these students have been offered scholarships to take these tests. Administer them early and often. Remind them that test-taking and jump shots have something in common: Both require practice for proficiency.
Keep the ACT and SAT tests. They measure a student's capacity to discriminate in the virtuous sense, and they engage the student in developing this capacity. Because virtuous discrimination tends to vitiate vicious discrimination, those who press to eliminate these eligibility tests may unwittingly be nurturing the very thing they are trying to destroy: uninformed, prejudicial, harmful discrimination.
Arvid Adell is the faculty athletics representative at Millikin University.
Opinions -- Prop 16 ruling prompts comments from all perspectives
Clarence Page, syndicated columnist
Chicago Tribune
"It sounds to me like the judge is giving up too easily. Call me naive, but I still cling to the belief that black youths can compete with others in the academic arena as well as they do in the athletic arena, if they are given enough encouragement.
"Unfortunately, too many of us give up too easily. We dumb down the standards instead of trying to smarten up the kids. The NCAA rules may not be perfect, but they were trying to raise the academic bar and challenge young athletes to achieve it, the same way their coaches challenge them to superhuman achievements on the courts and playing fields.
"For a while, the new NCAA rules were causing good things to happen. High schools, their alumni and their athletes of all colors actually were starting to get serious about academics. The national culture that feeds high-school athletics into the huge sports entertainment machine was slowly changing.
"Who knows? Maybe something might have been done to attack the real problem, which is the substandard education too many African-American kids get in public schools.
"Now all that's been thrown into disarray until the judge's ruling is stayed or overturned or the NCAA comes up with new rules.
"Until then, universities are free to race to the academic bottom in their pursuit of new student-athletes.
"Too bad, but I guess that's what happens when the NCAA tries to let a good education get in the way of playing games."
Bob Ryan, columnist
Boston Globe
"A word (three, actually) to all the moralists out there:
"Take a hike.
"It's too late. The time to start clucking about graduation rates and eligibility standards on our Division I men's basketball teams has already come and gone. That time was, well, I don't know exactly when it was because that, frankly, is the way we Americans want it.
"You want pure 'student-athletes'? Good. Head to Hartford and see Trinity. Go to Manchester (Indiana). Point the car toward Hampden-Sydney, Virginia. They're all good Division III teams and they're all at home in their own nice little tournament this weekend.
"I'm not putting them down. I love basketball at all levels. One of those teams probably has a 6-3 inside man I'd adore. But that's one level of competition, and what we've got going on in the FleetCenter is another. The 64 teams in the real NCAA tournament have better athletes than the teams playing in lower levels, and those are the ones most sports fans want to see. And if a few of them (aside from the Lafayettes and Penns who have zero chance of winning it all) also happen to have a half-decent student or two, that's a bonus. ...
"If we really wanted to see pure scholar-athletes in this country, we'd have more of them. Real full-time students would play and the others would perform for independent clubs or in professional settings, the way they do everywhere else in the world. But we don't want that; we want March Madness.
"If any members of the press are offended by it all, let them phone in sick and allow the sports editor or news director to have someone else cover the games. This is not the time to be crying about graduation rates or eligibility standards. The rest of us long ago made our peace with the system. We're good Americans. We want it both ways, and we've got it."
Joe Paterno, Pennsylvania State University
Wall Street Journal
"(Proposition 16) was hardly onerous. ...Keep in mind that SAT scoring was changed a few years ago in response to complaints that it was socially biased; it's easier to get 820 today than in years past. Even if a student doesn't meet that low threshold, he can still enroll in college but can't play until he takes some remedial courses and proves that he belongs in a university. The success rate is higher with this approach than if you allow an athlete to play at once; you can't do remedial do remedial studying if you're practicing every day in a high-pressure Division I basketball or football program.
"No matter how long the current standards, the NCAA can't eliminate them altogether because of the possibility that high school grades might be bogus. We instituted those standards because a lot of kids were getting to universities when they weren't prepared. ... Some people say we're depriving inner-city kids of an opportunity to go to college, that we should take a "chance" on some kid who doesn't do well on academic tests. I have no problem with gibing a kid a chance if that's really why the coach is recruiting him, not because he needs a pivotal player for his team. But remember that when you admit one student you keep out another. ...
"Instituting standards doesn't mean we ignore the problems of the underclass -- quite the contrary. You have to address the problem of kids being raised by single parents or no parents. But you don't help them by lowering standards. That problem has to be addressed in elementary schools and high schools. We at universities have to attack the problem from our end by demanding certain standards for our kids to be eligible to play. That's the only way we'll keep the pressure on athletically talented youngsters to realize that their education comes first."
Chet Gladchuk, athletics director
University of Houston
Houston Chronicle
"We're getting better students, and that's the bottom line. Even if a student doesn't meet the standard now, he can still attend an institution, lose a year of eligibility but still have a chance to get his act together and compete down the line."
Nolan Richardson, men's basketball coach
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Kansas City Star
"I remember what one of the professors said to me that really destroyed and hurt me: 'In 20 years it will all work out.'
"I said, 'In 20 years? Do you kill that many people? Or do you deprive that many people an education?' "
John Chaney, men's basketball coach
New York Times
"Countless young black men have been damaged since 1986. Let's give the new generation a chance, even if it means the chance to fail. Every college should be allowed to formulate its own admission plan and judge each student on a case-by-case basis. The time for mandating standardized policies must end. It's already done enough harm."
Bob Smizik, columnist
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"The assertion by (John) Chaney and many others that eligibility standards are denying black athletes an opportunity is ludicrous. Take a look at your television set for the next four days and see if there is any indication black athletes are being denied opportunity. Blacks make up less than 15 percent of the population, but they represent at least 60 percent of the players starting in the tournament.
"The fact is that for virtually every black who is denied eligibility, his place is taken by another black, who is more qualified to do college work. This was not about denying opportunity, it was about allowing unprepared athletes to sit out their freshman season -- away from the enormous time and energy demands of collegiate sports -- and to get acclimated to college life.
"If you can't get 800 on your SAT exam, chances are very strong you're not ready to do college-level work. All the NCAA was doing was saying such athletes could not play as freshmen. They weren't depriving the athletes; they were helping them. People like Chaney and (John) Thompson twisted that into a racial thing.
"It was an education thing. Now they've wiped education out of the mix."
Jim Donaldson, columnist
Providence Journal-Bulletin
"The SAT (does not) take into account the student who will spend as many hours as necessary poring over his class work.
"But it is obvious that, without a standardized test -- one on which only minimal success is required -- there is no safeguard against unconscionably low grading standards.
"It was to correct that problem that the NCAA adopted standards for freshman eligibility.
"Instead of invalidating standards, we should be enforcing them. Rather than excusing students from acquiring academic skills, we should be insisting that they learn them. That is the opportunity we owe them. That is the chance they deserve. That's what's important -- not the chance to play basketball, football or any other sport."
