<p>The debate about the role of college athletics at institutions such as Williams has been debated recently amongst the faculty.</p>
<p>The NYTimes in a 2002 article highlighted this debate:</p>
<p>AMHERST-WILLIAMS: The Biggest Little Game in America; Where Winning Breeds Criticism<br>
By BILL PENNINGTON (NYT)
Published: November 9, 2002</p>
<p>At Williams, and similar colleges in the region, the question is: Can an institution prized for its academics harmoniously house a powerhouse athletic program, even as it is defined by Division III, in which recruiting and athletic scholarships are prohibited and in which the football coach can double as the assistant track coach? </p>
<p>‘‘We must assert the primacy of academics; we’re not here to produce professional athletes,’’ said Stephen C. Sheppard, a Williams economics professor who helped write an in-house report last spring that outlined an overemphasis on athletics. ‘‘We’re getting uncomfortably close to the Division I model. A great athletic experience does not mean your football team must be undefeated. We always hear about the life lessons sports teaches, so wouldn’t the odd loss here and there be therapeutic?’’…</p>
<p>These students (athletes) are referred to as coaches’ ‘‘tips’’ because they were designated on a list devised by coaches and submitted to the college admissions department during the application process. These students, Williams officials say, have average SAT scores of 1300 to 1350 and are ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class. The average SAT score for the latest freshman class at Williams, including athletes, was 1408, and those students typically had a class rank in the top 5 percent. </p>
<p>The disparity may not seem great, but because 80 percent of applicants to Williams are rejected, every slot in an incoming freshman class of 525 is scrutinized and highly valued. With 66 tipped athletes gaining admission and another 20 applicants admitted who are termed athletic ‘‘protects’’ – those whose grades and scores meet the usual academic standards and who were also singled out by coaches – the number of athletes admitted has led to a campus controversy. Until the recent release of the in-house report, many Williams faculty members had no idea that athletics played some role in the admission of roughly 16 percent of the student body. </p>
<p>‘‘When the faculty heard those numbers, there was more than surprise; it was perhaps outrage,’’ said Lee Y. Park, chairwoman of the chemistry department. ‘‘There is a significant portion of the faculty that thinks we’ve gone too far in our pursuit of athletic success.’’…</p>
<p>With 31 varsity teams, nearly 40 percent of the Williams student body plays an intercollegiate sport…</p>
<p>‘‘There is no question the vast majority of athletes I’ve encountered are committed to their academics,’’ Park said. ‘‘But I have had a few students in my classes who were athletes and I wondered why they were here. Academics were secondary to them. We have to do something about that, and we’re not the only schools looking into the role of athletics in the same way.’’ </p>
<p>Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., joined Williams and Amherst this year in reducing the number of tipped athletes admitted to 66 (from 72 for Williams). Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., reduced its number from 99 to 79…</p>
<p>A key factor in the discussions at each of the colleges was the 2001 publication of ‘‘The Game of Life: College Sports and Education Values,’’ by James Shulman and William Bowen, a former Princeton president. The book was harshly critical of the effect athletics has on academics and focused on how small elite colleges, like those in New England, are not immune. </p>
<p>The book advanced the phrase ‘‘culture of athletics,’’ and it was meant to describe how athletes take over the social fabric of some colleges and hurt the classroom dynamic in others. Some of that was borne out when Williams surveyed its students recently. </p>
<p>Morton Owen Schapiro, Williams’s president, calls Bowen a mentor and has recently overhauled some housing and classroom policies to moderate some of the effects delineated in ‘‘The Game of Life’’ and in Williams’s own study of athletics.</p>
<p>From the Williams College Report on Varsity Athletics as reported in the Williams Record May 6, 2002:</p>
<p>…40-45 percent of non-athletes believe that the athletic culture is too pervasive at Williams and over half of all students think that their status at athletes or non-athletes defines them at Williams…</p>
<pre><code>The report describes a social scene at Williams that is fairly segregated along athletic lines, according to non-varsity athletes. Teams are characterized as dominant or significant in the social life of the College by three-quarters of [non-athletes]…"
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<p>The report also finds that athletes, especially male athletes, are significantly more likely to be involved in disciplinary situations than non-athletes: athletic admits were more likely than the student body as a whole to receive probation, suspension or expulsion; about twice as likely to receive discuss/warnings; and three times as likely to be found guilty of honor violations…</p>
<p>Though students generally do not find that athletics detracts from their education, the academic faculty is significantly less enthusiastic. Thirty-six percent of the faculty believes that varsity athletes are less engaged than non-varsity athletes…</p>
<p>In terms of grading, the FCA found that while the GPAs of varsity athletes as a whole are 0.13 lower than that of non-varsity athletes, and the GPA of male varsity athletes excluding two teams, which were not identified was 0.08 below male non-varsity athletes, the mean GPA of the two weakest mens teams was much lower than that for male varsity athletes in general. </p>
<pre><code>Further, the FCA identified 38 of the 805 courses offered at the College as easy courses. Football players
are 47 percent more likely than students who are not football players to take easy courses, and mens ice hockey players are 93 percent more likely than other students to take easy courses, reads the report.
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