According to recent reports, cheating among NCAA athletes is not only in the news again but it’s being subsidized by their respective universities. At Florida State University, Texas Tech and the University of Minnesota, among others, it has been reported that the special tutoring programs for top athletes are being encouraged not to merely help the athletes, but to actually write essays and do homework for them. \nThe Editorial Board would first like to commend IU for not being among those colleges listed as promoting cheating, and we take pride in our long history of coaches, including Bobby Knight, Kelvin Sampson and the late Terry Hoeppner, who have put an emphasis on academic excellence. We believe it is tremendously important to continue this commitment to academic honesty, despite the myriad of pressures to excel athletically to the detriment of academic performance. Besides the moral imperative that scholastic dishonesty is always wrong, as it depresses the value of every student’s degree and improperly represents the school, allowing athletes to cheat in order to spend more time on athletic pursuits does a disservice \nto the cheaters. \nThe hard truth is that only a small percentage of college athletes actually go on to play professional sports. They are expected, with their degrees, to have acquired marketable skills outside of the sport in which they specialized during school. So while the programs push the athletes to cheat in order to make more money off of them, promising them futures of professional sports, they are stealing those students’ opportunities to acquire marketable skills. The athletes are here with the opportunity to acquire higher education – something many in our country can only dream of – and it is the responsibility of the NCAA to keep education a goal equal to that of athletic pursuits.
DISSENT: \nPut academic integrity aside for a moment and think rationally about the subject; this is a complex issue with shades of gray. Sure, cheating is the academic equivalent of first-degree murder, a violation that can end a student’s university career after only one incident. However, let’s be realistic: Scholarship athletes, especially ones with big-league futures, are here to play sports, not study. They make their contribution to the university by generating revenue to provide university services to students who truly wish to further themselves \nintellectually. \nThe background of the athlete is a factor as well: Not every student athlete comes from a cushy suburban high school. What if a player from a rough inner-city district, recruited for athletic rather than academic ability, comes to college to play sports but wouldn’t have made the cut based on scholastic background alone? Shouldn’t that student get a break academically to pursue an athletic career? Academics are simply secondary for athletes with pro futures. Would you suspend a business student from classes for cheating in intramural basketball? \n– Dave Dawson
