NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- "You are the decision-makers," NCAA President Myles Brand told Division III delegates before long-anticipated voting on nine Future of Division III proposals -- and the membership responded January 12 with decisive actions in areas ranging from financial aid to playing and practice seasons to multidivision classification.

The Division III Presidents Council won approval of seven of its nine "reform" proposals, including measures to create an electronic financial aid reporting process, eliminate the practice of "redshirting" and permit student-athletes to "self-release" to speak to athletics departments at other Division III institutions regarding a possible transfer.

The Council's proposal to reduce the length of playing and practice seasons was defeated, but the membership adopted similarly far-reaching reductions from alternative approaches offered by conferences.

Member institutions also decided that eight institutions currently offering scholarships for competition in sports at the Division I level will be permitted to continue to do so, while closing a door that permitted a limited number of other schools to pursue that option.

And, after debate that had been anticipated as much for its potential for rancor as for addressing weighty issues, unprecedented participation by institutional chief executive officers was credited with establishing a civil and productive tone for the proceedings.

More than 100 Division III CEOs attended the Convention and made their presence known, with 27 presidents stepping up to microphones at one time or another during the January 12 business session to speak about proposals.

"The tone of this Convention was very different, I think due to the CEO involvement and to President Brand's attention to our work. I think it was a higher-level conversation and very philosophically based," said Susan Bassett, who completed service as chair of the Division III Management Council with the Convention's adjournment.

"These were important matters, everybody knew it, and I think there was a sense of we can't let this golden opportunity pass," said John McCardell, chair of the Presidents Council.

Solving thorny issues

The actions taken by Division III members not only were the culmination of a two-year effort to align practices at member institutions more closely with Division III philosophy, but in several instances settled thorny controversies that have frustrated Division III members at previous Conventions.

"My take on this is that a remarkable amount was achieved in today's session," McCardell said. "When you look at the substantive proposals in such areas as financial aid, redshirting, the self-release and even in playing and practice seasons -- where, while we didn't win passage of the Presidents Council's proposal, we did get substantive legislation that spoke to the spirit of that proposal, with limitations both in the number of weeks and the rather significant reduction in the nontraditional season -- that adds up to a pretty significant collective accomplishment."

The membership strongly endorsed the Council's proposed financial aid reporting process, with 85 percent support from voting delegates. The process -- which will begin in fall 2004 with a division-wide pilot designed to refine reporting mechanisms at institutions and solicit initial data -- seeks to compare financial aid packages provided to freshman and transfer student-athletes with those provided to nonathletes.

Sixty percent of the membership endorsed elimination of redshirting, thus limiting student-athletes to four seasons of athletics competition and practice. A similar proposal failed in 2001. The new restriction goes into effect for any athletics participation occurring on or after August 1, 2004. Division III members also approved an amendment to the proposal that will permit a student-athlete to practice in the nontraditional season without losing one of those four seasons, in cases where academic pursuits cause that student to miss the traditional season.

One of the Convention's closest votes granted student-athletes the ability to initiate contact with another Division III institution to discuss a possible transfer, without first receiving permission from officials at the institutions where they currently are enrolled. Beginning this fall, a student-athlete will be able to download a form from the NCAA Website, fill it out, and "self-release" to speak to athletics personnel at those institutions where they may be interested in transferring.

Delegates opposing the proposal expressed concern that athletics directors and coaches will lose the ability to discuss and address the problems that prompt a student-athlete to consider a transfer, or be left unaware that a problem even exists until it is too late to do anything about it. But proponents argued that student-athletes should have the same ability as students in any other area on campus to explore other educational and extracurricular options, without fear of retaliation from a coach.

"We're all young adults here," said Brad Coffey, a soccer student-athlete at Amherst College and member of the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. "We should be able to stand up and make our own choices."

"Sometimes we say student-athletes don't have the experience to make that decision or they don't see the whole picture," said Sandra Slabik, faculty athletics representative at Neumann College and a member of the Division III Management Council. "In this situation, I think some of us don't see the whole picture. Student-athletes are living in that picture, and I think they know sometimes from their fellow student-athletes what some of the repercussions are as they look at another institution and then decide to stay."

Crafting season limits

Perhaps the day's biggest surprise -- and a memorably creative outcome -- came from the membership's handling of proposals seeking to reduce playing and practice seasons.

Delegates defeated the Presidents Council's proposal addressing that topic (Proposal No. 60), which featured a 10 percent reduction in contests for each sport. But they adopted another component of that proposal -- a reduction in the length of playing seasons to 18 weeks in fall sports and 19 weeks in winter and spring sports -- with approval of Proposal No. 61, which originated from the membership. Then, they took another step and significantly reduced practice and competition in the nontraditional segment with approval of another membership-sponsored measure, Proposal No. 63.

"This represents a reasonable reduction of the nontraditional season," said Dennis Collins, commissioner of the North Coast Athletic Conference, arguing for adoption of Proposal No. 63. "Basically, it cuts a portion of practice in the off-season but preserves a meaningful period of teaching and instruction, which is what the nontraditional season is all about. It reduces the contests to one, but the contests in the nontraditional season have proven to be the most onerous in the whole package of traditional and nontraditional seasons.

"It preserves a reasonable amount of practice time, which is what we all want. We want the teaching, we want the instruction and to work with the student-athletes, and it does preserve that."

Delegates approved Proposal No. 63 with the business session's smallest margin of victory (22 votes), prompting the day's only motion to reconsider, which was defeated by a similar margin.

High noon

The entire reform package was the subject of intense pre-Convention discussion and also received in-depth attention at a Sunday morning issues forum and during meetings of conferences and independent institutions.

It clearly was Proposal No. 65, however, that attracted unprecedented media attention to the Division III business session -- and the fact that discussion of the proposal began almost exactly at high noon in Nashville probably only served to sharpen the drama.

That debate over the proposal to eliminate a waiver that permits Division III institutions to offer athletically related aid in Division I sports programs they sponsored during 1982-83 -- as well as an amendment-to-amendment proposing to permit only the eight schools that currently offer such aid to continue doing so while ending the opportunity for the other institutions -- turned out to be typical of the morning's deliberations.

Institutional CEOs played prominent roles in the debate, with at least seven presidents speaking for or against the amendment-to-amendment (Proposal No. 65-1).

One of those presidents, Roger Hull of Union College (New York) -- an institution that sponsors men's ice hockey without scholarships in Division I -- told delegates that his position hinged on the question of "collegiality vs. conscience."

Union competes in league competition with three of the institutions benefiting from the waiver, causing Hull to hesitate to oppose those schools' efforts to win an exemption from the waiver's elimination. But Hull said that one specific argument among several offered by the schools for retaining the waiver -- that they could not be "competitive" in Division I sports if they no longer are able to offer aid to student-athletes competing at that level -- finally prompted his opposition because he considers his own school's hockey program to be competitive even though it typically is not in contention for championships.

"In the 22 years I've been a college president, I've urged people with whom I've worked to bear one simple thing in mind -- you, in this line of work, will be criticized, so you better do what you believe in," he said. "I believe I'd rather be criticized for upholding the principle in Division III of no athletics scholarships. Conscience and collegiality are both immensely important principles -- to me, conscience trumps collegiality."

But another president, John Strassburger of Ursinus College, spoke in favor of preserving scholarships at the eight schools.

"I came to the Convention because I'm totally enthusiastic about the reforms. I changed my mind on a couple of the issues because of the quality of the debate, and I'm impressed with the seriousness with which you are debating these issues," he said.

Strassburger told delegates that Proposal No. 65 failed to achieve the same level of reform sought in proposals addressing the topics of playing and practice seasons and redshirting, because it targets only a tiny portion of the Division III membership and threatens more harm than good by damaging the institutions and the sports involved.

"The schools that have this exemption have no special advantages in competing in Division III, the exemption exists for peculiar and historical reasons, and supporting 65-1 doesn't affect the reform package, because it doesn't affect the rest of us," Strassburger said.

Eventually, delegates decided by a 188-vote margin to permit the schools to continue offering scholarships, then shut the door to permitting any other schools to use the exemption by a vote of 304-89 (with 18 abstentions).

Other components of the Presidents Council's reform agenda -- including a proposal to eliminate a current exception that permits out-of-season instruction between coaches and student-athletes in fencing, gymnastics, rifle, rowing, skiing, and swimming and diving -- passed easily.

Presidential engagement

The comments by Ursinus' Strassburger seemed to reinforce the impression that Division III presidents not only attended the Convention in record numbers, but actively participated.

"Anecdotally, I can tell you that a number of conversations I've had with fellow presidents suggested to me they felt that coming was worthwhile, they learned a lot, and they felt they contributed to the discussion," McCardell said. "They didn't just sit with their delegations; they spoke and engaged and participated.

"One of our ongoing goals is to keep presidential involvement at this level, and we hope to continue to grow it. And I think the reactions of the presidents with whom I spoke are really quite encouraging."