The right road for Division III
Anyone who has played competitive sports knows that it is more fun – far more fun –
to win than to lose. Yet anyone who reads the sports pages or who is raising children knows, too, that sports are “out of control.” Winning at all costs, parental and spectator fights, and year-round sports (I'm still a fan of three-month seasons) are the order of the day. It doesn't have to be that way, and it isn't at Union.
This winter, for instance, the women's basketball team had its best record ever, made its first appearance in the NCAA tournament, and had, in Erika Eisenhut, a three-sport standout with a near-perfect GPA; the men's basketball team went to the ECAC tournament; and the men's hockey team made a late-season run that boosted it into the middle of the ECAC standings, secured home-ice advantage in the playoffs, and battled full-scholarship teams evenly to the final buzzer.
Of course, all of us on campus were proud of the teams' achievements. What I was even more proud of is how our men and women played the game and represented Union. At a time when an old adage is all too often tipped on its head to become “It's not how you play the game, it's whether you win or lose,” I'm pleased at how our teams play the game – and, of course, that they win far more then they lose.
That all was brought home to me again recently. At the NCAA convention in Nashville in January, 420 Division III members approved a number of proposals as part of a reform package, including a reduction in the length of playing and practice seasons, an end to “red-shirting” of athletes, and a new annual financial aid reporting process.
A measure that failed, however, was a proposal that would have restricted all Division III institutions from providing athletic scholarships. Currently, eight Division III colleges and universities that choose to play a sport at the Division I level are allowed, because they were grandfathered, to provide athletic scholarships. Adoption of the proposal would have ended scholarships for those programs. (The colleges and sports are men's and women's lacrosse at Johns Hopkins, men's and women's ice hockey at Clarkson University, men's ice hockey and women's soccer at Colorado College, men's soccer and women's water polo at Hartwick College, men's soccer at the College at Oneonta, men's ice hockey at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, men's volleyball at Rutgers University-Newark, and men's and women's ice hockey at St. Lawrence University.)
Despite playing at the Division I level in men's and women's ice hockey, Union does not offer any athletic scholarships for that sport or for the College's other 23 sports, which compete at the Division III level. We are the only Division III institution playing hockey at Division I without athletic scholarships, and one of three Division III colleges that play a sport at the Division I level without athletic scholarships (the other two are Franklin & Marshall in wrestling and Hobart in lacrosse).
I spoke in favor of rescinding the scholarship exemption for Division III institutions playing at the Division I level. Although I have great respect for those eight institutions and their presidents, I ultimately concluded that I had to do what I thought was right for Union and for all colleges like us. For me, the vote came down to a question of conscience over collegiality. Simply stated, I am philosophically opposed to treating a group of men or women differently from any other athlete or non-athlete on a campus like ours.
Although the vote was the culmination of a number of articles, books, and studies over the past several years, my position has not wavered since Union introduced Division I hockey thirteen years ago. Nothing has changed since then, even though the issue has attracted more attention, and even though it is clear that there are those, including some at Union, who feel we should have sought an exemption from the prohibition on scholarships for Division III colleges
and universities.
Those who have competed athletically know the tremendous lessons that can be learned on the courts, fields, pools, and rinks, as young men and women learn the joy of trying hard, of working as a team, of winning and losing gracefully, and of keeping the proper perspective on sports in relation to academics. To me, college athletics ought to be about those lessons and about student-athletes. Competition does not require wins; it requires effort and commitment and a fair chance of winning – and one can do that without athletic scholarships, as we have demonstrated. This philosophy is one that embodies the broader mission of the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum, and it is one that continues to guide Union College.
It is also, I might add, the philosophy of the NCAA itself, which says: “Colleges and universities in Division III place highest priority on the overall quality of the educational experience and on the successful completion of all students' academic programs. They seek to establish and maintain an environment in which a student-athlete's athletics activities are conducted as an integral part of the student-athlete's educational experience. They also seek to establish and maintain an environment that values cultural diversity and gender equity among their student-athletes and athletics staff.”
To achieve this end, the NCAA continues, Division III institutions take a number of steps, which include awarding no athletically-related financial aid to any student and assuring that athletics participants are not treated differently from other members of the student body. It is that philosophy that I voted to support – and not the exemptions to it that were granted more than twenty years ago to eight colleges. Athletic scholarships do not belong on a campus like ours.
