By Jack Copeland
The NCAA News
ATLANTA – After launching an initiative to boost Division III's identity, the division's Presidents Council hopes a rare membership vote Saturday christened another initiative rooted in its 2008 series of white papers – to boost presidential leadership.
Delegates voted 466-0 – the first unanimous vote recorded on a Division III Convention proposal since 2000 – to state for the first time in the division's philosophy statement that institutional presidents have ultimate responsibility for and authority over intercollegiate athletics at the institutional, conference and national levels.
Encouraged by the support, incoming Presidents Council chair Jim Harris reported to delegates on other steps that will be considered during the coming year to further equip presidents to provide leadership.
"From the onset, it's important to understand what the Presidents Council means in the white papers by what it refers to as presidential leadership," he said. "This discussion is really about allowing presidents to do what we do best – deal with strategic issues and the fundamental issues and principles of Division III – while delegating to our trusted athletics colleagues issues that are more administrative and operational."
Harris detailed several methods for doing so that the Council will consider, beyond this year's introduction of a more focused "presidential grouping" of legislative proposals to call presidents' attention to legislation of strategic importance.
First, consideration will be given to expanding the Division III Management Council to add representation of "direct reports" – senior institutional administrators such as vice presidents to whom athletics departments report on campuses. Harris noted that a 2008 membership survey indicated that 80 percent of Division III institutions' athletic departments have such a reporting structure.
"There's nothing wrong with the model, and in fact it seems a great way to reinforce that athletics is fully integrated into campus life and the administrative framework on all our campuses," he said. "It also helps to reinforce the earlier point that we are best served when (presidents) can delegate operational and administrative issues."
Harris suggested that appointing direct reports to the Management Council – and possibly also giving that group authority to propose legislation dealing with administrative or operational issues on the Convention agenda without requiring Presidents Council sponsorship – could help emphasize presidents' strategic role in the division.
"(Direct reports) are experienced in determining which issues need and deserve presidential attention, and those that do not," he said. "By adding these individuals to the Management Council, we can help identify strategic and fundamental issues that need to move forward to the Presidents Council, and the more administrative-operational issues that can be resolved by the Management Council."
Harris also addressed aiding presidential leadership by taking steps to preserve Division III's core principles in legislation and by encouraging greater leadership at the conference level.
Legislatively, the Council will consider asking the membership to designate core legislation as "division dominant." Doing so would mean that the legislation then only could be changed by a "supermajority" of voting schools.
"The obvious example for our division is our financial-aid provisions," Harris said. "Under this scenario, the financial aid legislation could be established as ‘division-dominant' legislation...if two-thirds of the membership voted in favor, any subsequent amendments to the financial aid legislation would require a two-thirds majority vote to be effective.
"The benefit of this approach is that it would help us identify and designate those legislative provisions that are fundamental to the division's philosophy and identity, and specify that those provisions could only be changed if it is the will of a supermajority of the division's members."
Harris said that the Council's recent efforts to share information with presidents about the new strategic-positioning platform pointed to another need. He said Council members attempted to schedule time to talk with presidents during conference meetings, but found that some conferences' presidents do not regularly hold meetings.
"To be frank, it is difficult to understand how conference presidents effectively can exercise their leadership and oversight authority without meeting, at least via conference calls, on a regular basis," he said.
The Council, now armed with that unanimously adopted new language in the Division III philosophy statement, will seek ways to encourage greater presidential leadership at the conference level.
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