The Division II Management Council is referring back to the Academic Requirements Committee a concept to require a year in residence for transfers who have been suspended from their teams but are still enrolled at the originating institution.

The ARC earlier this fall recommended legislation for the 2011 Convention that would expand existing rules regarding players who have been dismissed from school for disciplinary reasons to include student-athletes who have been kicked off of their teams but may still be enrolled.

Current legislation requires transfers under a disciplinary suspension to serve a year in residence before being eligible to compete at the new institution. The rule does not apply, though, when a student is suspended for disciplinary reasons from his or her athletics team.

Under the proposal, student-athletes who transfer while serving a disciplinary suspension from either the school or the team would be held to the same year-of-residence standard. In addition, those transfers would have to be academically eligible had they remained at the institution.

Several Management Council members, though, hesitated to legislate what they consider to be an institutional decision. They also are concerned that student-athletes who may be dismissed simply because of a disagreement with a coach – or perhaps run off by the coach because of athletics skills – would be unfairly affected by the proposed legislation.

One Council member put it this way: “It would be too bad if we have to consider legislation that would replace good judgment.”

Academic Requirements Committee members discussed the same circumstances that concerned Council members and emphasized that the proposal is intended to address disciplinary and other serious cases. The Management Council, however, believes the disciplinary suspension is too broad and that the Academic Requirements Committee should clarify the proposal accordingly.

The Academic Requirements Committee next meets in February.

Other academic proposals

The Management Council did agree to ask the Division II Presidents Council to sponsor two other proposals from the Academic Requirements Committee for the 2011 Convention.

One states that for a transfer student-athlete from a two-year college who was a partial qualifier or a nonqualifier to be eligible to play, practice and receive athletics aid during the first academic year, he or she must have successfully completed six semester or eight quarter hours of English and three semester or four quarter hours of math that are transferable toward any baccalaureate degree program at the certifying institution. (English and math remedial courses could not be used to satisfy the provision, regardless of whether the Division II institution accepts remedial courses as transferable credit.)

Committee and Council members alike believe the proposal better ensures transfers’ academic preparedness and facilitates the ultimate goal of graduation. If approved at the 2011 Convention, the effective date would be August 1, 2011 (for student-athletes initially enrolling full time in a collegiate institution on or after August 1, 2011).

The other proposal the Council will ask the presidents to sponsor is an exception that allows a two-year transfer with previous four-year attendance to play, practice and receive athletics aid during the first year at the certifying institution, as long as the student-athlete attended the last two-year college as a full-time student-athlete for only one semester or quarter and graduated.

That proposal would be effective August 1, 2011 (for a two-year transfer with previous four-year attendance enrolling at a Division II institution on or after August 1, 2011).

Additional action

In other highlights at the Division II Management Council meeting, members:

• Did not support a recommendation from the Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to request legislation for the 2011 NCAA Convention to require institutions to designate, educate and identify a person or persons to serve as the athletics resource for student-athletes’ nutritional supplement questions or review. However, the Management Council asked that the matter be referred back to the competitive-safeguards committee for further review. Divisions I and III are considering the same proposal.
• Referred to the Planning and Finance Committee a recommendation from the Committee on Women’s Athletics to add gender equity (participants, financial aid, recruiting and operating budgets) and athletically related financial aid as elements of the dashboard indicators project being developed for Division II.
• Referred back to the Division II Academic Requirements Committee a proposal to specify that a foreign exchange student or other exchange student may qualify for an exception to the one-year transfer residence requirement, provided he or she is enrolled in the certifying institution for a specified period as an exchange student participating in an established educational exchange program recognized by the institution’s academic authorities.
• Also referred to the Academic Requirements Committee a proposal to establish a two-year pilot program to collect additional data on all two-year college transfer students in baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, and football in the NCAA Division II Academic Performance Census for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 reporting years. The Management Council supports the data collection to help inform decisions on eligibility standards for transfers but wants the Academic Requirements Committee to refine what is asked of the institutional personnel submitting the data.
• Adopted noncontroversial legislation to specify that the NCAA International-Student Records Committee will consist of six members, including two Division I representatives, two Division II representatives and two representatives who may be from either Division I or Division II. (The legislation will not be effective unless it also is adopted in Division I.)