SACUA asks Senate Assembly to back athletics reform

Updated 11:00 AM November 17, 2003

SACUA asks Senate Assembly to back athletics reform

By Kevin Bergquist

The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA) will recommend to the Senate Assembly Nov. 17 endorsement of a national faculty movement to reform intercollegiate athletics.

The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) was formed in 2002 as a network of faculty leaders from more than 50 NCAA Division I-A schools. According to COIA, it was created "to promote serious and comprehensive reform of intercollegiate sports, so as to preserve and enhance the contributions athletics can make to academic life by addressing longstanding problems in college sports that undermine those contributions."

A key COIA goal is the development of a framework for reform that, in a comprehensive way, addresses five issues: academic integrity, athlete welfare, governance, finances and over-commercialization.

Among other things, the coalition wants colleges to adopt academic standards for potential recruits, and to require that athletes maintain those standards for continued eligibility. In the interest of student welfare, COIA wants colleges to allow time for athletes to be involved in other activities by limiting sports to a single term. The proposed framework also calls for cost cutting in scholarships, squad size, season length and recruitment; and it asks schools to step back from what it calls excesses in marketing college sports.

SACUA chair Dr. Charles Koopmann attended the American Association of University Professors Governance Conference Oct. 9-11 in Indianapolis, where, he said, the topic was "strongly put forward." He said many schools are waiting to see the position U-M takes on the coalition.

"I would ask the Senate Assembly to sign U-M on to the coalition. I think we need to be contributors to it," Koopmann, associate chair of the Otorhinolaryngology Department, said at the Nov. 10 SACUA meeting. "The only way [U-M] will have any influence is to sign on."

COIA co-chairs Bob Eno of Indiana University and Jim Earl of the University of Oregon requested in an Aug. 29 memo to Big Ten faculty leaders "a general endorsement and a decision by faculty leaderships to participate in the coalition and help us make it an effective means of engaging faculty in national reform of intercollegiate athletics." COIA has asked schools to pass the resolution in the current academic year, Koopmann said.

SACUA voted unanimously to recommend endorsement, though not without discussion.

"There are some things where the principle is good, but we could not endorse fully," SACUA Vice-Chair John Riebesell said. "Are there strings attached? Is it possible we could get quoted on things we don't know anything about?" asked Riebesell, associate professor of biology at U-M-Dearborn.

If the Senate Assembly agrees with the endorsement at its meeting today (Nov. 17), SACUA then will take up another charge of the coalition and designate a faculty member as an ongoing liaison to the group.

Senate Assembly endorsement does not mean U-M accepts all details of the framework, a point made in an Oct. 20 letter to Big Ten faculty leaders by the COIA steering committee.

Information on COIA and the proposed framework for reform is available at http://www.math.umd.edu/~jmc/COIA/COIA-Home.html .

SACUA asks Senate Assembly to back athletics reform

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