An
Opinion
by Alex Hutchins
Mad as a March Hare
This is an interesting time of the year for most Colleges and Universities because of several items:
The
first of these is no doubt March Madness for basketball
The
Spring Semester is almost over
Next
year faculty contracts are usually available
Early
advising and registration begins
Students
and spring fevers
But,
it is also a time to reflect (as an instructor) upon all the athletes in one’s
classes who got special treatment and/or consideration because they were an
athlete.
What
brought this to mind is an email I received from a student who was absent from
classed due to an NCAA tournament and who missed half a dozen assignments from
class alone, who informed me that my work would soon be there because he had
been very busy getting the work of other professors done first.
It
is not so much that he elected to complete my work last, but I am concerned
about the other students in the class that were penalized for late work
submissions who were not athletes. And,
that all of the athletes who attend classes at this institution stand a better
chance of winning the lottery than they do of getting called to play professional
sports.
So,
why the emphasis?
Are
all these players’ students or athletes first?
And,
more importantly, how are they viewed by the administration?
Recently,
Northwestern University football players challenged the system by claiming that
they were more athletes than students and should be considered full time
employees of the college so they could form a union. Forming a union makes a
little sense when one realizes that the University's football program alone generated $30 million which is only about 20% of what other schools
generate annually on football.
I
think playing sports helps in the world of business but I also think that being
in a combat war zone also helps in the world of business… but the colleges and universities do not
benefit as much from the latter as they do from the former.
No comments:
Post a Comment