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College athletes need to put role as student first

Last month a well-known university made a groundbreaking announcement in the field of college athletics.

Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University announced it would liquidate its athletic department and merge it with its intramural sports department. Both programs will continue to operate with teams intact but now control will be shifted to Vanderbilt’s central university administration.

Chancellor Gordon Gee said he is restructuring because intercollegiate athletics has become an industry that has grown apart from the primary purpose of education.

Gee’s decision is not going to be the beginning of a trend in college athletics, but it is a stance that until now has never been taken before.

Vanderbilt has declared itself an institution that places education above athletics. By doing this, it has created an atmosphere in which other institutions should ask what their focus is.

The university’s move is the work of a top administrator who cares about his university enough to address an issue that has gone unresolved for too long.

College athletes are an aristocracy within the campus society and this is the case only because athletic departments have become bodies independent of the universities they represent.

Athletes are recruited, receive scholarships paying for their tuition and fees, on average have lower academic standards than most students and are given access to exclusive facilities and services.

Selecting an education focusing on athletics is not bad; it is just different than a traditional one. The key is maintaining that freedom while adhering to university standards. Vanderbilt’s chancellor believes that can be done with the university overseeing athletics.

Collegiate athletics has the power to usurp the primary function of universities. Gee’s actions are singularly meant to address this. Athletics are a component of the university, and athletes are a component of the student body. Neither part is greater than the whole.

The most important thing to take note of in this issue is not the liquidation of a major university’s athletic department or the removal of an athletic director. What is important is that one university has stood up and said, “Student athletes need to put their roles as students first.”

This is a staff editorial from the Daily Lobo at the University of New Mexico.
This editorial was distributed by U-Wire.