If we make a decision to put just a hard cap on here, it sends the wrong message to other people who perhaps would want to join Division III. You don’t want to say those who are in Division III now are the only people who will ever be in Division III. You want something that will allow the division to moderate or slow its growth, but you also want something that will allow people to come in and go out, and you also want something that will improve the division as it stands. Additionally, if we make a decision to put a hard cap on, it will affect the other NCAA divisions.

In the long term, our approach, with a moratorium and ongoing study permitting more input, will be better within the Division III philosophy and the way the division operates.

A lot of presidents believe we have two competing philosophies, but the philosophy that drives Division III is academics. We should make sure our athletics rules directly support academics, and that the rules do not send double messages.

Having this strong philosophical base, reaffirmed by our membership, helps as we decide about specifics like redshirting, capping the membership and the other things that come before us. Using this philosophical underpinning, and understanding how it was developed and how much it was discussed and how people were passionate about certain things (if you look at some of the Future of Division III survey answers, you can see how the membership wanted the division to act and how that informs our decision-making), we have a way in which you can make specific decisions in a coherent fashion that’s supportive of the membership.

Going back to our philosophy, we are about education. And the education piece and the drug-testing piece collide when you start talking about athletics. On our campus, under the philosophy, athletes are the same as students. If we’re going to put in drug testing for our athletes, it puts into play the serious question: What about our general philosophy, that our athletes are going to be treated exactly like students? Education is most important because we want to treat all of our students — athlete or nonathlete — similarly.

Once we conduct the tests, I think we will answer two questions: Do we have a lot of use of (performance-enhancing) drugs in our athletics programs, and do we have the street drugs that affect all of our students? We want to stay within our philosophy, while recognizing that students and other folks are saying we do have a problem with drugs in our athletics programs. It’s a way for us to come up with some data to look at the issue. Then, once we find through this pilot program what’s actually happening, I think presidents will look it straight in the eye and come up with a program.

If that’s the case, if we have an athletics program on our campuses, we are about education. While we want good sports (programs) and all of the things that go along with that, we need to provide opportunities for athletes that represent what we believe is important academically. To me, we need money in our total athletics program that not only would facilitate the athletics piece of the program, but also facilitate all of the other things that foster our philosophical base — we want to make sure that by participating in athletics, students get opportunities to learn the important things that will carry them through the rest of their lives.

We should make sure we don’t spend all of our money just to conduct athletics contests. We should spend a portion of our money to do these other things. The only way to do that is to establish a principle that a certain portion of this money always will be there for programmatic things.

It’s important that the athletics program understands the philosophy of the institution, and that it conducts its activities consistent with the NCAA. And then, as president, I may want to put in even higher standards than what the NCAA requires — to say I want athletics conducted in a way that reflects what I stand for and what the institution stands for academically. It is very important for presidents and chancellors to be thoroughly involved in this enterprise — setting the rules and standards and conduct.

People are snipping at a lot of recent decisions and trying to bring things back — redshirting being a classic example. If presidents and chancellors stay involved, we can keep the basic Division III philosophy intact. If presidents and chancellors are not involved, you’ll have folks who will say this is about athletics and nothing else. We’re saying, no, it’s about integration of athletics into the academic community and, especially in Division III, the student is first while athletics is an integral part of that. If presidents and chancellors do not stay involved, the philosophy will not stay intact — I can assure you of that.

In Division III, if we’re going to be that place where student-athletes are students first and athletes second, we have to make sure it stays a part of the institution — that we don’t create foundations to run athletics, or separate residence halls for athletes to live in, and all those things that send the message that to be an athlete is something extra-special on our campuses, and the student piece is secondary.

People are going to have to continue to talk about this, and the NCAA especially is going to have to set the standards. Even as we set the standards and believe in the philosophy, individuals at particular campuses still may send the message that, ‘Athletics is so important for fund-raising and visibility that I’d pull it out and give it special treatment.’ But if we’re going to be true to the Division III philosophy, we’ve got to keep the student as the central focus, and not allow athletics to become the tail that wags the dog.