Colleges confront athletic issues; institution leaders attack gender violence, other problems with a zero-tolerance zeal and a sense of urgency

Sporting News, The, Feb 10, 1997 by Richard Lapchick

Although we continue to read about problems confronting college sports, there has been a growing -- and welcome -- trend of presidents, athletic directors and the sports community acting quickly to confront the issues.

Boston College immediately suspended 13 football players when a gambling scandal rocked the campus -- and none was allowed to return in 1996. Any hint of gambling on campus understandably triggers fears of organized crime and the new BC president the Rev. William Leahy charged his administration to act. Chet Gladchuk, the school's athletic director, made the story public, brought in the district attorney and quickly removed the implicated players from the team.

Less than 18 months after Jim Harrick led UCLA's basketball team to a national championship, an expense-report scandal vaulted him into the headlines. With a speed rarely seen in college sports, UCLA chancellor Charles Young and athletic director Peter Dalis removed Harrick as coach.

When more than 30 Rhode Island football players sealed off a fraternity house and assaulted three residents, school president Robert Carothers and athletic director Ron Petro acted quickly. They removed two players from the team, suspended 25 others and forfeited the team's next game at Connecticut.

UConn officials were the ones doing the suspending a few months later when they reported two basketball players for NCAA infractions involving the reported purchase of airline tickets and suspended them.

In each case, the damage to the school's image and reputation has not been fully measured. But the immediate and decisive responses of institutional leadership tell the public that even though things had gotten temporarily out of control, order has been restored.

The latest example of "taking control" has national implications. It came when the National Consortium for Academics and Sports became the first sports organization to take a zero-tolerance stand for athletes convicted of gender violence. The 127 member colleges and universities adopted a Sense of the Consortium Resolution at the closing session of its annual conference recently in Boston.

The resolution stated that any athlete convicted of rape, sexual assault or battery will be banned from intercollegiate competition for a minimum of one year at the member institution. This applies to any student athlete who has been convicted of such an act in campus judicial proceedings or in the criminal courts.

Consortium leaders believe it will be a powerful way to protect potential victims, send a zero-tolerance message to perpetrators and provide a process for those perpetrators to receive appropriate counseling and work their way back into the campus community.

If a banned student athlete meets certain criteria -- participation in ongoing counseling, public statements of apology, messages to young people about the unacceptability of gender violence and all forms of abusive behavior -- he can petition for reinstatement. If convicted of a similar act a second time, the student athlete would be permanently banned.

Incidents of athletes being accused of gender violence have created the impression that athletes are more inclined toward gender violence than nonathletes. That's not true. The problem clearly is one of men in America -- and not just athletes.

There are approximately 850,000 rapes in America each year, or more than 2,300 per day. Another 3 million women are battered annually, or more than 8,000 every day. Three major newspapers have surveyed athletes and gender violence over a span covering 10 of the past 15 years (the Philadelphia Daily News, 1983-85; The Washington Post, 1989-94; and the Los Angeles Times, 1995). The surveys pinpoint 308 athletes accused of some form of gender violence. On the face of it, that is a frightening number. But to put it in perspective, that total is matched by American men overall every 44 minutes.

Keith Lee, the director of the consortium's western office at the University of Nevada, says, "By this stand, the consortium is once again taking a leadership role on the issue of men's violence against women."

The quick and conclusive actions at Boston College, UCLA, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined with the consortium's initiative on gender violence, are welcome signs that those in charge will not ignore the realities of society as they continue to enter the previously cloistered world of intercollegiate athletics.