The funds will support five new $30,000 CHOICES grants — used for development, implementation and evaluation of alcohol-education and prevention programs at recipient schools — while providing $175,000 for speaker grants, including 100 full $1,000 grants and 150 matching grants of $500 each.

Addressing the other side of the equation, the Council also approved a $500,000 effort — half funded from the Division III budget and the other half supported by Association-wide funds — for a pilot education and testing program involving up to 100 institutions. Institutions will be asked to volunteer to participate in the program, which begins in fall 2007.

Student-athletes at the schools would be randomly selected sometime during the academic year and tested without penalty for performance-enhancing substances and street drugs. The initiative includes survey-based research to measure the impact of both education and testing on substance and alcohol abuse.

It will be the first time the NCAA has conducted testing for Division III student-athletes outside of championships competition.

Approval came after a Council debate shaped in part by the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee’s support for combining education with testing and feedback obtained August 2 during the first meeting of the Division III Presidents and Chancellors Advisory Group.

The latter group, including representation from every Division III conference not currently represented on the Presidents Council as well as independent institutions, offered opinions on a variety of divisional issues during a three-hour discussion August 2 in Indianapolis with Council members.

Among questions raised by the advisory group and considered during the Council’s debate of the proposal: What is the objective of drug testing, and why treat student-athletes different from other groups of students by subjecting them to the tests?

Council members who supported the proposed approach replied there are indications ranging from survey data to observations by student-athletes that at least some level of substance abuse occurs in Division III athletics, and the pilot program represents a "modest" effort to understand the extent of the problem better through testing while also offering an educational component.

They also suggested that Division III needs to balance the desire to treat student-athletes like other students against concerns about treating them differently from student-athletes in Divisions I and II, where year-round testing programs already exist. Health and safety, along with competitive equity, are specific needs of student-athletes, they said.

After approving the pilot program, Council members asked the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to present a detailed implementation plan and to report regularly on the program’s effectiveness. They also pledged to carefully review results of the initiative before making any decision to extend testing beyond the pilot.

Membership growth

In its last opportunity to sponsor legislation for consideration at the 2007 Convention, the Council also formally proposed ways of slowing membership growth — thus responding to concerns that have prompted a call by a Division III conference during the past year to implement a membership cap and resulted in the formation of an Association-wide committee to study membership issues.

The Council not only agreed to support a pair of proposals that resulted from recent recommendations by the Division III Membership Committee for managing the division’s growth, but also acted to extend a current moratorium on accepting new members through January 2008.

"Perhaps the most significant action is that we’re extending our membership moratorium," said Ivory Nelson, president of Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) and Presidents Council chair, noting the action gives Division III an opportunity to pursue alternatives to the North Coast Athletic Conference’s proposed cap while giving the NCAA Executive Committee’s membership issues working group time to explore Association-wide solutions to membership growth and migration from one division to another.

One of the Council’s membership-growth proposals for the Convention would limit to four the number of institutions that annually would be granted provisional or reclassifying membership and also would require full compliance with all of the division’s regulations during the first year of provisional or reclassifying status.

The other includes new measures for active members, ranging from annual reviews of compliance with sports-sponsorship, contest and participant requirements to requiring annual attendance by institutional personnel at the Convention and periodic attendance at regional rules seminars.

In a discussion of the proposals during the Division III Presidents and Chancellors Advisory Committee meeting, the NCAA staff reported that the proposed annual class size of four provisional or reclassifying members and the heightened requirements for provisional or reclassifying status dramatically would have reduced the number of institutions that recently have entered the membership process.

Other proposals

The two membership-growth proposals are among 10 proposals that the Council will sponsor at the 2007 Convention.

Among other measures, the Council agreed to sponsor proposals endorsed by the Division III Management Coucnil to increase the number of schools required to propose legislation at the Convention; preserve participation opportunities for female student-athletes by limiting the use of male practice players; and place limits on athletics activity during the one day of competition that schools can schedule during a sport’s nontraditional season (see the July 31 issue of The NCAA News).

However, the Presidents Council decided it will not join three member conferences as sponsors of a proposal to permit student-athletes to practice during either a fall or spring nontraditional season without losing a season of participation.

Council members acknowledged that student-athletes who play fall sports currently are not provided the same opportunity to practice during the spring that those who play spring sports are provided during the fall, but they were reluctant to expand student-athlete involvement in athletically related activities beyond current limits.

The Council also decided not to sponsor a proposal originating from the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to limit athletics department personnel and enrolled student-athletes to one telephone call or electronic communication per week to prospective student-athletes.

Members agreed with the SAAC’s belief that numerous calls by multiple coaches and other individuals are putting too much pressure on prospects, but they decided to solicit feedback from the membership about additional or alternative solutions that Division III should consider to reduce the impact of recruiting activities.

That question soon will be posed to participants in the Division III virtual focus groups. The governance structure will use that feedback to identify legislative options to consider at the 2008 Convention.