In the NAIA, there are rules and regulations when it comes to scholarship money and college athletics. While these rules vary from sport to sport, there are still many rules and regulations to be followed when it comes to controlling any type of university money. Our athletic department at the University of St. Francis probably has the most influence over the student body, but why?
When you look around the campus, you will notice that a large part of the student body are athletes, who are likely on some sort of athletic scholarship. The NAIA website will tell you that “each sport has an overall limit on the amount of financial aid it can award to students who will compete in varsity contests in that sport.” So, how is it possible for everybody to be walking around on an athletic scholarship? Why are some scholarships worth more than others? How is it determined who gets more scholarship money than another athlete?
The NAIA leaves these matters in the hands of individual universities, meaning that here at St. Francis, our athletic scholarship warden would be our athletic director, Dave Laketa… right?
The USF Student Athlete handbook is something that as a non-athlete, I was unfamiliar with. When I was chatting with some athletes, they explained to me that the handbook is reviewed every year at a mandatory meeting held by Dave Laketa. However, getting an athlete to speak on scholarships (or anybody in the athletic department for that matter) is like pulling teeth (from a journalistic standpoint of course). It’s almost as if the student athletes are too afraid to dive deep and ask questions for themselves. That, or they simply don’t know what questions to ask, or even if they should ask questions.
In the overall nature of being informed, of course I got down to the nitty gritty of the student athlete handbook. With me not being in the athletic meeting to witness what exactly is said, I must say that my cold read from an outside perspective is no different from those of the athletes that attend the meeting: confused and left feeling like maybe I should just shut up.
I encourage all student athletes to thoroughly read the whole handbook (and I mean thoroughly) and form their own opinions. I say this, because the first line you read when you get to the scholarship portion of the handbook is that “It is impossible, within the scope of this handbook, to expound fully on all of the scholarship policies.”
Now, from my general understanding (and that of Google), a handbook is supposed to provide a clear understanding of responsibilities, policies and procedures. How is it that in the student athlete handbook (for the students), the athletic department is unable to expound on their policies?
Further on, the scholarship portion mentions “reasonable rules” established by the athletic department that student athletes must adhere to “in regard to conduct at practice and at games”, which thus apply to all USF Sports teams. When I searched the handbook for a list of these “reasonable rules”, I was unable to locate any. The only bit that I found about rules was that “disciplinary problems, financial aid suspension and a student-athlete quitting the team are issues that can cause scholarship termination.” Would that then make the “reasonable rules” simply not getting caught doing anything bad by the university, and essentially getting into a stockholm syndrome-esque relationship with the athletic department? And then of course you have the direct contradiction of only being able to be penalized for conduct at games or practice, to being able to be penalized for [any] disciplinary problems. Or is it that you can be penalized for behavior in both instances? I guess we’ll never know, because the handbook sure won’t tell us.
At this point, I was extremely concerned. As a person who loves a good well written handbook (which this handbook can be argued as being well or poorly written), I knew that this handbook wasn’t created in the best interest of students– but in the best interest of the athletic department being able to make moves concerning student’s scholarships (essentially, their academic career) with giving their athletes little to no ground to stand on when it comes to advocating for themselves. Where are the student’s rights? How is this fair to not only student athletes, but non- athlete students at the university?
It’s up to students to ask questions to make sure that our money is talking, so that the athletic department can’t run games on our peers.
For more information on the USF Student Athlete handbook and for the continuation of this column, please check out the official Encounter website and educate yourself further. If you just want to read the handbook, it can be found on the gofightingsaints.com website, under the “Inside Athletics” dropdown menu.
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