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Experts discuss domestic violence
and student-athletes

For NCAA President Mark Emmert, who has spent his adult life on university campuses, having to deal with issues related to relationship violence and sexual assault was sometimes an unfortunate part of the job. He moderated an Association-wide educational session Wednesday on how violence affects student-athletes and led a discussion of how campuses – and the NCAA – can prevent and deal with such incidents.

“It is an insufficiently understood dynamic, and we have insufficient data and understanding of it,” Emmert said. “It lives in the shadows far too often and it creates far too many problems for very many of our student-athletes.”

The panel included Allen W. Groves, the associate vice president and dean of students at Virginia, Ada Meloy, general counsel for the American Council on Education, and former NFL player and Syracuse student-athlete turned social activist Donald G. McPherson.

When asked about the NCAA’s role in assisting the membership with the issues, Emmert said the assessment of the right role for the Association and its institutions is in progress. The Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct and the NCAA Executive Committee are studying the issues surrounding the impact of violence involving student-athletes.

“I hope that this is something that we can continue a conversation on with the individual boards and committees to find the most valuable things that we can do to help serve you and help address what I think we all agree is a very substantial problem,” Emmert said, adding that the NCAA has outreach programming in place.