NCAA President Mark Emmert was called to task before the United States Congress recently and politely prodded into assuring that body of lawmakers that the issues discussed would promptly be raised with the NCAA leadership and corrective measures taken.
It’s a sad state of affairs when the organization responsible for the overall welfare of student athletes in this country has to be called to appear before Congress just to get their attention. The issues are nothing new. They have been bandied about in the press, and in sports bars around the country, for months now.
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri wanted to know how it was possible that over 20% of NCAA member universities still allow the athletic department, coaches and staff, to oversee and pronounce punishment for sexual assault cases against one of their athletes. I can see where she has a point. This is not lifting crab legs from the grocery store like a boyish prank. She said sexual assault cases. That’s heavy. McCaskill called it ‘borderline outrageous’.
But the SEC’s Mike Slive came right out and said that when any student athlete, indeed any student breaks public laws, they ought to be held accountable to legal authorities. If university rules are broken, then the appropriate judicial body within the university system should deal with it. Unsaid were the words “not the athletic department”.
On many campuses around the country, for most of our lifetimes, there has existed a separate system of law governing gifted athletes competing for the university. The coaches preferred to keep small disciplinary issues ‘in house’ so as not to detract attention and respect from the team. Understandable, to a degree, but sexual assault case? Probably not.
All universities have a system in place for adjudicating and handling discipline cases there on campus. They have their own police-security forces and a system of courts already there, and Mr. Slive is correct in saying that this is a better system to judge student on campus, any student, athlete or not.
A list of 64 US universities and colleges has been released by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that are currently being investigated for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints. So, it’s not exactly a local, isolated issue.
The days when coaches and trainers are allowed to pass judgment on students for anything not concerning their performance with the team must now come to an end and the appropriate judicial bodies be left to such tasks.
