Council passes athletics proposal

IU's faculty unanimously approved a plan Tuesday which puts an emphasis on academics, not athletics. The vote, supported by Athletics Director Michael McNeely and basketball coach Mike Davis, is the first step in a process of overhauling collegiate athletics across the country.\nThe Bloomington Faculty Council passed the intercollegiate athletics resolution after much deliberation and separately added three addendums to the proposal with almost full support from the council. \nAlthough BFC president Robert Eno anticipated the resolution to pass, he said he was surprised the addendums were accepted with relative ease.\n"I really did not expect the entire addendum package to be passed by the BFC," Eno said.\nThe council's passage of the proposal will have no immediate effect on IU, Eno said. The major changes that will be visible will not occur unless there is more support from other conferences and university presidents.\n"This isn't policy and we didn't draft it as policy," Eno said. "This is an expression of the faculty's will. Our hope is that we can have multiple conferences' faculties expressing a similar desire to see this sort of reform that may lead towards policy changes coming from the presidents of the universities."\nThe approved policy outlines three points: the academic importance regarding student athletes and the integration of athlete's academic support services within the entire University; the reduction of commercialization and limitation of game schedules; and the scaling back of the intercollegiate "arms race," which includes the athletics department operating under the same standards of all other University departments.\nThe three addendums adopted by the council signal the importance of intercollegiate athletics within the academic community, while making the distinction that many of the athletic events within the University have been too time-consuming for student athletes, the competitiveness of athletics and the entertainment industry strains the University's financial resources and takes the public and student focus away from academics and places it on athletics, and the CIC and the PAC-10's urging to presidents and faculty of Big-10 conference schools and of other institutions in intercollegiate athletics to take control of these topics.\nThe council took on the large discussion of the reform, which McNeely participated in, to clarify any misunderstandings that the council had on current athletic policy and proposal issues. \n"I think in general these are all very good things. Overall, I am very supportive," McNeely said. "We are always looking on how we can improve on all these areas, particularly with academics where we have a system now that has been successful and is connected with the academic units across campus, so we plug into those resources as much as possible." \nThe main items of the debate were single-year scholarship renewal and scaling back athletics focus. Davis said he supported the overall proposal.\n"A lot of times, guys put all their eggs in one basket, it's like do or die," he said. "A lot of times guys aren't going to make it to the professional level. I'm not saying that they can all graduate, but more can graduate than play professional." \nThe ideas proposed in the meeting are only one small step in terms of reform, said Professor Murray Sperber, an expert on collegiate sports. Sperber said that he was surprised by the overwhelming approval by the BFC since many faculty members spoke against the proposal. Sperber also said many university presidents "walk the walk, but when it comes down to reform, they can't talk the talk." \nThe translation of this reform into a reality is not only dependent on the faculty councils of all NCAA universities, but various NCAA councils, Sperber said.\nThe overall resolution will be sent to the CIC faculty senates that will have to consider it along with the CIC presidents. Other NCAA conferences will also be looking at the proposal but how far it gets is hard to say, Eno said. University presidents and faculty support is very important, he said.\nJake Oakman, IUSA president, was present at the meeting and had a voice in the proposal discussion.\n"I think it's a good overall proposal and I think that it will have positive effect on student athletes, but as for the student's not involved in athletics, I don't think that they will see a change," Oakman said. "I think that this proposal shows that IU is at the forefront of athletic reform and hopefully this will get other schools on the bandwagon"