The Division III Presidents Council will oppose a conference-sponsored proposal that would permit the division’s schools to provide academic or other support services specifically for student-athletes, so long as they are comparable to services provided for nonathletes.

It was one of eight membership proposals for the 2008 Convention on which the Council adopted positions during its November 1 meeting in Indianapolis, and is one of 10 proposals on which roll-call votes will be recorded during the annual Division III business session in Nashville, Tennessee.
The proposal sponsored by the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic and Northern Athletic Conferences would give institutions more flexibility to provide programming or services similar to those available to all students but geared more specifically to needs and interests of student-athletes.

Presidents Council members debated the proposal after the Division III Management Council split during its October meeting on whether to recommend support or opposition.

They concluded that institutions should not provide nor should athletics departments administer separate services in areas such as academic or career counseling for student-athletes.

The presidents also will oppose a proposal by the same two conferences to permit extending the regular season to “make up” a conference postseason contest suspended because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances for the purpose of determining a conference champion or NCAA automatic qualifier.

However, the presidents also granted the Division III Administrative Review Subcommittee and NCAA staff broader authority to consider and grant waivers in such situations for “extraordinary” circumstances, such as unusually bad weather.

Council members acknowledged that the proposal generally would result in only a limited extension of the regular season — typically just one day — but also agreed that conferences can anticipate the possibility of weather-related delays in competition and schedule events accordingly, or rely on conference policies for determining a champion or automatic qualifier in instances where competition cannot be completed.

They also noted Division III already has a waiver process in place to deal with extraordinary circumstances, and said they prefer treating such situations through waivers over creating legislation to permit the exception. However, they also acknowledged that waivers have been difficult to obtain in the past, and the Council determined that the ARS and staff could be more accommodating in dealing with waiver requests in the future.

Other roll-call votes

That proposal also is scheduled for a roll-call vote, along with two other proposals the Council agreed to oppose at the Convention:

A proposal by the Capital Athletic and State University of New York Athletic Conferences to move the starting date for the first contest in basketball from the Friday immediately before Thanksgiving to November 15.

A proposal by the North Eastern Athletic and North Atlantic Conferences to allow current provisional member institutions that have completed the first year of provisional membership and any institution that becomes a provisional member after August 1, 2007, to be counted by a conference toward the seven-institution requirement to receive automatic qualification in a sport. (The sponsors also have submitted a proposed amendment-to-amendment that would permit only institutions in the third or fourth year of provisional membership to count toward the requirement. The Council will discuss a position on the amendment-to-amendment at its January 12 pre-Convention meeting.)

Also scheduled for roll-call votes are two membership-sponsored proposals that the Council agreed to support:

A proposal by the Midwest, American Southwest, Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic and Northern Athletics Conferences to permit admissions offices to publicize nonathletics-focused campus visits of prospective student-athletes in the same manner that all visits by prospective students to an institution are publicized.

A proposal by Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic, Northern Athletics and State University of New York Athletic Conferences to permit institutions in fall sports other than football to calculate the first permissible practice date by counting back 16 practice opportunities from the first contest, even when September 1 falls on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday and the first contest is played before that date.

In another action affecting a Convention proposal scheduled for a roll-call vote, the Council approved a waiver process that would permit the Division III Championships Committee to award automatic qualification to a single-sport conference formed before September 2007 and including at least seven active members.

The waiver process would achieve the same objective as a Convention proposal sponsored by the North Atlantic and Massachusetts State College Athletic Conferences. The conferences later notified the national office that they will withdraw the proposal.

Rounding out the package of roll-call votes are four of the Council’s own proposals for the Convention:

A proposal it is co-sponsoring with the Centennial and New England Women’s and Men’s Athletics Conferences to ban the use by athletics department personnel of text messaging and other electronic communication (except e-mail and fax) to communicate with prospective student-athletes.

A proposal to restrict the use of male practice players in women’s sports.

A proposal to require the presence at games and practices of at least one non-student institutional employee certified in first aid, CPR and use of an AED.

Permit the employment of prospective student-athletes and presence of institutional personnel at sport camps and clinics.

Other proposals

There are four other proposals on Division III’s legislative agenda that will not require roll-call votes, including a membership-sponsored proposal the Council will oppose and another sponsored by the Council that it briefly reconsidered during its Indianapolis meeting.

The Council accepted a recommendation from the Division III Management Council to oppose a proposal by the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate, American Southwest and Northern Athletics Conferences to allow more time (until September 1) for a conference or 10 institutions agreeing by July 15 to sponsor a proposal at the Convention to obtain co-sponsorship for that proposal from another conference or 10 additional institutions.

It also discussed withdrawing its own proposal to permit an institution to decide whether to accept online courses taken at any institution for purposes of determining a student-athlete’s academic standing or satisfactory progress. Council members questioned whether the proposal is necessary, but ultimately determined that online courses should be specifically identified legislatively as permissible to distinguish them in Bylaw 14 from correspondence courses.

However, the Council also asked the Division III Interpretations and Legislation Committee to consider proposing broader legislation that would support the principle of allowing institutions to accept any approved course from an accredited institution for academic-standing or satisfactory-progress purposes, without specifying types of courses that are permissible.

The Council also whittled a fifth non-roll-call proposal from the Convention agenda when it decided to withdraw a proposal to permit an extended term for the chair of the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports. The Council agreed it could instead accomplish that action through noncontroversial legislation.

As a result, delegates currently are scheduled to consider 14 proposals (plus one proposed amendment-to-amendment) during Division III’s January 14 business session in Nashville.

Other highlights
Division III Presidents Council
November 1/Indianapolis
Re-elected current Chair John Fry of Franklin & Marshall College and Vice Chair Paul Trible of Christopher Newport University to continue serving in those positions through the 2009 NCAA Convention.

Nominated current Council member Marcia Keizs of York College (New York) for re-election by Division III presidents to a full term, and nominated Presidents Livingston Alexander of the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford; Walter Bortz of Hampden-Sydney College; and Catherine Hill of Vassar College for election to the Council beginning at the end of the 2008 Convention.

Approved a slate of nominees to fill positions on the Division III Management Council beginning at the end of the 2008 Convention. Delegates to the Convention will be asked to ratify the appointments of Joan Sitterly, director of athletics at State University College at Cortland, and Rita Wiggs, commissioner of the USA South Athletic Conference, to the Council, and also to re-elect Lee McKinney, director of athletics at Fontbonne University, to a full Council term.