The Division I Board of Directors heard recommendations Thursday from the Division I Committee on Infractions that would toughen penalties for those committing major infractions, including a “dusting-off” of the television ban penalty in specific cases.

The committee also expressed its desire to treat cooperation with infractions investigations as an obligation of membership instead of a mitigating factor in determining penalties.

The Board did not act on the recommendations, noting that it wanted to learn more about the infractions process and to gather more information from various constituents before conducting a more in-depth discussion. With the reorganization of the Division I governance structure this fall, Thursday’s meeting was the first at which the Committee on Infractions reported to the Board.

The Board will discuss the issue at future meetings, and the infractions group will hold off on any changes until receiving the Board’s approval.

The recommendations were the result of an infractions penalty-structure review conducted by a subcommittee and approved by the full Committee on Infractions. The broad-based and comprehensive review was launched to ensure that the infractions penalties are taken seriously and to bring the penalties in line with those meted out by other groups like the Committee on Academic Performance.

The recommendations include:

• Employing a broader base of penalties, including fines, postseason bans and other punishments that have not been used in the recent past, such as the television ban.

• Eliminating cooperation with the investigation as a mitigating factor in assessing penalties.

• Assessing penalties that convey the magnitude of the violation, no matter the type of violation (for example, imposing a scholarship penalty even if the violation does not relate to financial aid).

• Making public the names of staff members involved in infractions cases.

The committee is considering reinstating the television ban, not used in more than a decade. The committee will seek feedback from different conferences before imposing such a penalty, with special awareness directed toward any implementation difficulties.

 More careful consideration of postseason bans would also be employed in cases with repeat violators or academic fraud.

How the committee treats institutions that cooperate with investigations of alleged violations is one of the major recommendations. Historically, the Infractions Appeals Committee has given weight to an institution’s cooperation with an investigation when hearing an appeal of a Committee on Infractions decision. The Committee on Infractions believes that the more appropriate way to handle cooperation is to charge refusal to cooperate as an independent violation. 

Jo Potuto, former chair of the Committee on Infractions and the faculty athletics representative at Nebraska, said that giving credit in the penalty process for institutions that cooperate is problematic on several levels. The committee isn’t in a position to assess the degree to which an institution cooperated with the enforcement staff, she said, and it could provide an unfair competitive advantage to an institution that commits a violation and then receives a reduced penalty because of cooperation, she said. 

In its review, the subcommittee learned that certain penalties in its arsenal are viewed as more significant than others, with scholarship losses seen as one of the signals of a major violation.

“We get the sense that only certain penalties mean it’s a serious violation,” Potuto said. “We want to do a better job of conveying the gravity of a violation.”

She noted that the Committee on Academic Performance’s Academic Performance Program prescribes serious scholarship penalties for failure to meet academic standards and that the Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee can assess a loss of a competitive season combined with a loss of eligibility for an academic fraud case.

Finally, Potuto said cleansing the names from infractions reports is a practice that began before staff members accused of violations had the opportunity to respond to allegations of violations, appear before the Committee on Infractions and appeal any finding to the Infractions Appeals Committee.

The group will also recommend further education of the membership when infractions decisions are announced, perhaps through direct communication with compliance directors and other administrators and associations about penalties assessed for specific violations and a more public announcement of infractions cases.

 “The committee feels that over the years, the penalties have become out of sync with the magnitude of the violations and what other committees such as CAP are doing,” Potuto said. “We believe we need to ramp up the penalties to reflect the magnitude of the violations and get our penalties in line with those assessed by other committees.”

The Board will begin addressing the various issues in the report after receiving feedback from the membership, likely starting with the more editorial items already within the committee’s purview.