MONTEREY, California -- Division II student-athletes and administrators found great expanses of agreement on Bylaw 17 deregulation and new membership standards during their annual summit meeting July 21-22, but when it came to telephone calls, they discovered there is still static on the line.

In general, the student-athletes had no concerns at all about proposed changes in membership standards that will be considered at the Convention in January, and they liked what they heard about possible changes to Bylaw 17. They were enthusiastic about proposed legislation to restrict athletically related activities to a total of 20 hours per week for multisport athletes, and they liked what they heard when Division II Management Council member Mike Marcil said that the division's leadership wants to enforce the notion that voluntary skill instruction is truly voluntary.

But when the subject turned to telephone calls, there was a break in the line.

On the surface, the issue in question doesn't seem overly difficult. As part of the 1998 Bylaw 13 deregulation package, a proposal was developed that would permit athletics personnel to make unlimited telephone calls to all prospects after the National Letter of Intent signing date. The thinking was that the change would enable coaches, administrators and faculty athletics representatives to more easily advise walk-on athletes about matters that they needed to be made aware of. Moreover, supporters of the change believed that rules compliance was unnecessarily complicated by the one-call-per-week restriction that existed (and still exists).

Student-athletes, however, maintained that the calls in question would become de facto recruiting calls for prospects who did not sign national letters, exposing them to excessive and unwanted telephone intrusion. Their objections were strong enough that the Division II Presidents Council withdrew the proposal, and it wasn't considered with other recruiting deregulation legislation at the 2000 Convention.

In 2001, the proposal was back, this time with a compromise provision that limited the unlimited phone calls to prospects who had signed a financial aid agreement or an offer of admission. The Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee objected again, and the Presidents Council withdrew its endorsement of the legislation. It failed by a vote of 133-116-2.

In an era of good feeling between Division II student-athletes and administrators, the telephone issue has become interesting because it seems to be the one issue that can't be resolved. Paul Engelmann, faculty athletics representative at Central Missouri State University and chair of the Division II Legislation Committee, candidly admitted his frustrations to the Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, noting that the current legislation can prevent him from returning a call to a parent who has an academically related question about a son or daughter. "I don't go around calling student-athletes," said Engelmann, an economics professor. "All I want to do is return the call."

Mike Kovalchik, athletics director at Hillsdale College, sounded a conciliatory chord with the SAAC, noting that all Division II regulation approved to date has been either student-athlete friendly or neutral. "There's no fight here," he said of the Management Council's position toward telephone calls, "there's no 'dig in your heels.' "

SAAC members said they also had no interest in fighting, but they also made it clear that they still have little use for the concept.

Why not use e-mail instead of telephone calls, they asked. Not everybody has an e-mail account, Management Council members countered. Why are you concerned about paperwork demands, athletes inquired ("We work hard, too," one basketball player said). Management Council members responded that the issue has less to do with hard work than with simply being unable to comply since it's difficult, if not impossible, for a staff member to know if another staff member has called a prospect or the prospect's parents within the same seven-day period.

Earl Edwards, athletics director at the University of California, San Diego, said he believed that student-athletes are failing to make a distinction between the recruitment process and the information process for athletes who have already made a commitment to attend an institution, as indicated by the letter of intent, the financial aid agreement or the offer of admission. "That's the distinction we keep missing," he said. "Once the partnership is created, there should be dialogue back and forth."

Engelmann said the Legislation Committee has tried in good faith to develop legislation with which both sides can live. "We've given it our best shot," he said, "but we can't protect you against people who do stupid things. And if people like that are out there in droves, then our ADs have a job ahead of them."

"Signing a letter of admission shouldn't trigger unlimited phone calls," said SAAC member Tegan Bosard of the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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SAAC summit notes: Heather Andrews, the chair of the Division II SAAC from Missouri Southern State College, has attended all five SAAC-Management Council Summits going back to the first one in Denver in 1997 ... Attendees supported the notion of regional leadership conferences that would be modeled after the NCAA Foundation Leadership Conference conducted each May in Florida. Administrators and student-athletes at the summit identified objectives for such events and raised the question of whether the projected annual outlay of $100,000 would be sufficient ... Kay Schallenkamp, president of Emporia State University and Presidents Council liaison to the SAAC, thanked the athletes for the role they played with amateurism reform at the January Convention. "You went to bat for us and spoke eloquently for the legislation," Schallenkamp said ... Jerry Hughes, Division II Management Council chair, said administrators and athletes should focus on three goals for the approaching year: quality communication, development of SAACs for conferences that have not yet created them and the modification of membership standards in a way that does not disrupt programs and services for current student-athletes.