Sunday, March 02, 2008
The Times Slam Dunks Harvard
The Times reports on the apparent lowering of academic standards in Harvard's basketball program:
The group of six recruits expected to join the team next season is rated among the nation’s 25 best. This is partly because Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker, who starred at Duke and coached in the Big East and Big Ten conferences, has set his sights on top-flight recruits. It is also because Harvard is willing to consider players with a lower academic standing than previous staff members said they were allowed to. Harvard has also adopted aggressive recruiting tactics that skirt or, in some cases, may even violate National Collegiate Athletic Association rules. [emphasis added]
...Two athletes who said they had received letters from Harvard’s admissions office saying they would most likely be accepted have described tactics that may violate N.C.A.A. rules, including visits from a man who worked out with them shortly before he was hired by Harvard to be an assistant coach.
“We can say that any statement about someone being admitted to Harvard who is not qualified would be absolutely inaccurate, as is any suggestion that our standards have been lowered for basketball. Harvard’s admission criteria are — and remain — very high. They have not changed at all.”
Mr. Stone's comment does not address the points above, and in the context of the information presented in this article, is not credible.
But note how carefully crafted it is: He says that Harvard's admissions standards haven't changed. He doesn't say whether those standards have been violated.
(The first part of Stone's statement is misleading, but technically correct: the athletes in question have received letters saying that they are likely to be admitted, but have not officially been admitted.)
Surely the ability to speak with such finesse is why Stone is one of the highest-paid officials at Harvard.
Harvard is recruiting players whose ratings on the Academic Index, a combination of GPA and SAT scores, fall below the 171 minimum for Ivy League athletes.
Amaker, meanwhile, doesn't speak on his own behalf. (Perhaps he wasn't allowed to.) Instead, he released a statement that says, in part, "We work within the spirit of Harvard and the Ivy League."
Careful language, almost surely vetted by Alan Stone: within the spirit of.....
What's dismaying about this story is not so much that these incidents happened. Amaker's a new coach with a mandate to revitalize the program; perhaps he's just made some beginner mistakes. (Though, with many years experience in the NCAA, he's no beginner.)
But why does Harvard always have to deny, deny, deny? Come on, people. You are a great university. You are better than this. If you've made mistakes, say so—shit happens, and we all understand that. What they don't understand is the officials of a university that should be setting an example of leadership sounding like Karl Rove.
(Sorry about the language, but I get all worked up about this.)
Why must the Washington impulse always kick in? Deny, hedge, stonewall, obfuscate, mislead without actually lying....
And even the Washington lessons are not well-learned: As anyone who's spent time there knows, the cover-up is always worse than the crime..... ¶ 9:53 AM
The group of six recruits expected to join the team next season is rated among the nation’s 25 best. This is partly because Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker, who starred at Duke and coached in the Big East and Big Ten conferences, has set his sights on top-flight recruits. It is also because Harvard is willing to consider players with a lower academic standing than previous staff members said they were allowed to. Harvard has also adopted aggressive recruiting tactics that skirt or, in some cases, may even violate National Collegiate Athletic Association rules. [emphasis added]
...Two athletes who said they had received letters from Harvard’s admissions office saying they would most likely be accepted have described tactics that may violate N.C.A.A. rules, including visits from a man who worked out with them shortly before he was hired by Harvard to be an assistant coach.
...Yale Coach James Jones said he had seen an academic change at Harvard. “It’s eye-opening because there seems to have been a drastic shift in restrictions and regulations with the Harvard admissions office,” he said.
“We don’t know how all this is going to come out, but we could not get involved with many of the kids that they are bringing in.”
University spokesman Alan Stone offers this rebuttal:“We can say that any statement about someone being admitted to Harvard who is not qualified would be absolutely inaccurate, as is any suggestion that our standards have been lowered for basketball. Harvard’s admission criteria are — and remain — very high. They have not changed at all.”
Mr. Stone's comment does not address the points above, and in the context of the information presented in this article, is not credible.
But note how carefully crafted it is: He says that Harvard's admissions standards haven't changed. He doesn't say whether those standards have been violated.
(The first part of Stone's statement is misleading, but technically correct: the athletes in question have received letters saying that they are likely to be admitted, but have not officially been admitted.)
Surely the ability to speak with such finesse is why Stone is one of the highest-paid officials at Harvard.
Harvard is recruiting players whose ratings on the Academic Index, a combination of GPA and SAT scores, fall below the 171 minimum for Ivy League athletes.
Amaker, meanwhile, doesn't speak on his own behalf. (Perhaps he wasn't allowed to.) Instead, he released a statement that says, in part, "We work within the spirit of Harvard and the Ivy League."
Careful language, almost surely vetted by Alan Stone: within the spirit of.....
What's dismaying about this story is not so much that these incidents happened. Amaker's a new coach with a mandate to revitalize the program; perhaps he's just made some beginner mistakes. (Though, with many years experience in the NCAA, he's no beginner.)
But why does Harvard always have to deny, deny, deny? Come on, people. You are a great university. You are better than this. If you've made mistakes, say so—shit happens, and we all understand that. What they don't understand is the officials of a university that should be setting an example of leadership sounding like Karl Rove.
(Sorry about the language, but I get all worked up about this.)
Why must the Washington impulse always kick in? Deny, hedge, stonewall, obfuscate, mislead without actually lying....
And even the Washington lessons are not well-learned: As anyone who's spent time there knows, the cover-up is always worse than the crime..... ¶ 9:53 AM
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Harvard is recruiting players whose ratings on the Academic Index, a combination of GPA and SAT scores, fall below the 171 minimum for Ivy League athletes.
“There are guys that we couldn’t touch that other schools in our league could recruit,” said Reddicks, who is now an assistant at Boston University. “It makes a huge difference.”
Seems to me that Reddicks is speaking about his time at Harvard; we=Harvard, not BU. I.e., when he was at Harvard, others in the Ivies could recruit people that Harvard couldn't. Now Harvard is dropping to the standard of the rest of the Ivies. So not below 171. Just closer to 171 than it had gone previously. I have no special knowledge. But this seems to be to be the clear reading.
“There are guys that we couldn’t touch that other schools in our league could recruit,” said Reddicks, who is now an assistant at Boston University. “It makes a huge difference.”
Seems to me that Reddicks is speaking about his time at Harvard; we=Harvard, not BU. I.e., when he was at Harvard, others in the Ivies could recruit people that Harvard couldn't. Now Harvard is dropping to the standard of the rest of the Ivies. So not below 171. Just closer to 171 than it had gone previously. I have no special knowledge. But this seems to be to be the clear reading.
# posted by 
: March 2, 2008 11:50 AM
: March 2, 2008 11:50 AM
A pretty nasty piece of work, that Scalise. Denigrating two hapless former assistant coaches like that (in the article). And he's now a top dean at FAS?! Even a temporary one?
# posted by : March 2, 2008 6:02 PM
: March 2, 2008 6:02 PM
The new dean, Mike Smith, was on one committee before he was elevated to dean--Athletics. This really suprised many of the involved faculty who serve on so many committees and do so much of the "volunteer" work that makes Harvard run. But people were eager to get back to work and eager to have an administrator they could trust. Faculty were hopeful that Smith could make University Hall work smoothly again after the turbulence of the Summers/Kirby fiasco and the illness of Knowles in his final interim year. But Smith has been a monumental disappointment on so many levels. And faculty are grumbling to one another about how bad the situation is. The fact that he asked Scalise to step in for Nancy Maull was hard to believe. Now I wonder how much Smith has approved this unethical and stupid behavior. Athletics seems to be the only thing he paid attention to before he was dean, is he paying attention to it now? How high up does this scandal go?
# posted by : March 2, 2008 7:21 PM
: March 2, 2008 7:21 PM
And women-only hours in the gym for religious reasons. Or for feminist reasons? It's hard to tell - sounds like the call came from the Women's Center, not from the Muslim students. Hello - is anybody in charge at the Athletic Dept?
# posted by : March 3, 2008 6:34 AM
: March 3, 2008 6:34 AM
Richard,
11:50 a.m. claims you were wrong to say that "Harvard is recruiting players whose ratings on the AI ... fall below the 171 minimum for Ivy League athletes." You accept his correction. But you shouldn't. The article says explicitly that Frank Ben-Eze has "orally committed," is "Amaker's biggest [recruiting] coup," and "has not attained the 171 minimum." Harvard is recruiting players who fall below the 171 minimum.
But there is a difference between recruiting and admitting. Alan Stone says, "any statement about someone being admitted to Harvard who is not qualified would be absolutely inaccurate." Your analysis of Stone's statement is worthy of the Kremlin watchers, but it seems to me the best interpretation is the most natural one: we haven't admitted Ben-Eze, and so long as he doesn't attain the 171 league minimum we won't. The article gives even more support for this interpretation, since it says explicitly that Ben-Eze has not received a likely letter, and that that's because he has an AI below 171. There is nothing "misleading" about this at all.
There is a separate issue, as 11:50 a.m. correctly points out, about what Harvard's own standards are. Stone himself treats these issues separately: "“We can say that any statement about someone being admitted to Harvard who is not qualified would be absolutely inaccurate, *as is* any suggestion that our standards have been lowered for basketball." The issues are separate because, as the article points out, Harvard voluntarily commits itself to a significantly higher standard than the league requires: an average AI of 202. How exactly to interpret this standard is not clear from the article. Is it a floor or a target? Does it apply to each recruiting class or to the team as a whole? What happens to the average if a recruit comes to Harvard but doesn't play? And so on.
Whatever the interpretation of the standard, Holden and Reddicks claim that Harvard's version is "tougher than those of other Ivy programs," and that as a practical guideline "they could not recruit a player whose index was lower than 195." When Stone claims that our standards haven't been lowered he seems to be referring to this voluntary standard and to the article's claim that two other recruits have AIs that fall "well below" the 195 mark. But surely these claims are consistent. The voluntary standard is an average, however it is understood, and the natural interpretation of Stone's second statement is that even with these two recruits the average AI will satisfy our own voluntary standard. You are therefore wrong to say that "in the context of the information presented in this article, [Stone's statement] is not credible." Indeed, as you yourself point out in the later post, nothing in the article speaks to this issue at all.
I have never met Alan Stone nor any of the other people involved in the story. But I think it's important to think carefully before tossing around allegations of denial and cover-up. I'm sure that Alan Stone can take care of himself, but it puts the student-athletes in a very awkward position.
Sean
11:50 a.m. claims you were wrong to say that "Harvard is recruiting players whose ratings on the AI ... fall below the 171 minimum for Ivy League athletes." You accept his correction. But you shouldn't. The article says explicitly that Frank Ben-Eze has "orally committed," is "Amaker's biggest [recruiting] coup," and "has not attained the 171 minimum." Harvard is recruiting players who fall below the 171 minimum.
But there is a difference between recruiting and admitting. Alan Stone says, "any statement about someone being admitted to Harvard who is not qualified would be absolutely inaccurate." Your analysis of Stone's statement is worthy of the Kremlin watchers, but it seems to me the best interpretation is the most natural one: we haven't admitted Ben-Eze, and so long as he doesn't attain the 171 league minimum we won't. The article gives even more support for this interpretation, since it says explicitly that Ben-Eze has not received a likely letter, and that that's because he has an AI below 171. There is nothing "misleading" about this at all.
There is a separate issue, as 11:50 a.m. correctly points out, about what Harvard's own standards are. Stone himself treats these issues separately: "“We can say that any statement about someone being admitted to Harvard who is not qualified would be absolutely inaccurate, *as is* any suggestion that our standards have been lowered for basketball." The issues are separate because, as the article points out, Harvard voluntarily commits itself to a significantly higher standard than the league requires: an average AI of 202. How exactly to interpret this standard is not clear from the article. Is it a floor or a target? Does it apply to each recruiting class or to the team as a whole? What happens to the average if a recruit comes to Harvard but doesn't play? And so on.
Whatever the interpretation of the standard, Holden and Reddicks claim that Harvard's version is "tougher than those of other Ivy programs," and that as a practical guideline "they could not recruit a player whose index was lower than 195." When Stone claims that our standards haven't been lowered he seems to be referring to this voluntary standard and to the article's claim that two other recruits have AIs that fall "well below" the 195 mark. But surely these claims are consistent. The voluntary standard is an average, however it is understood, and the natural interpretation of Stone's second statement is that even with these two recruits the average AI will satisfy our own voluntary standard. You are therefore wrong to say that "in the context of the information presented in this article, [Stone's statement] is not credible." Indeed, as you yourself point out in the later post, nothing in the article speaks to this issue at all.
I have never met Alan Stone nor any of the other people involved in the story. But I think it's important to think carefully before tossing around allegations of denial and cover-up. I'm sure that Alan Stone can take care of himself, but it puts the student-athletes in a very awkward position.
Sean
# posted by : March 4, 2008 5:45 AM
: March 4, 2008 5:45 AM
Sean--thanks for that thoughtful post. Tell you what: I'll re-read the story, and if any of my comments, reconsidered, seem out of line, I'll write a post to that effect.
Sean: A few things.
It's very hard to tell what the ultimate conclusion of this story is, because the writer ran with it before the players involved were formally admitted. But Tommy Amaker certainly seemed to think that Ben-Eze will be admitted; the article refers to him using Ben-Eze as a lure for other recruits.
As to the question of the average AI: Well, this is something that can be jiggered. On a small team, one or two athletes with really high AIs can compensate for several who fall below Harvard's past standards (even if they never play a minute).
Perhaps we may see a few such players next year.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the article said that in the past, Harvard didn't recruit players with an AI below 195, and that now it is doing so. So Harvard's standards are clearly lower than they were in the past, regardless of the mean AI.
I will agree with you on one point: There is a difference between lowering standards and recruiting violations, and, though both may have happened here, the inclusion of both in the same article is confusing.
As to Alan Stone's quote: If I said it was literally untrue, then I agree that I misspoke. But I hold to my assertion that it is "not credible." It is designed to suggest that there is no story here, and clearly there is. (The other Ivy League coaches certainly seem to think so.)
It does make one feel sorry for Mr. Ben-Eze, who appears to have been caught up in a mess not of his own making. One wonders if Harvard, which, according to Amaker, had planned to accept him, will now simply cut him loose on the grounds that he did not reach academic standards.
As to EADW's point about Scalise: Note that while the coaches involved appear to be legally bound not to discuss him due to confidentiality agreements, he seems to be under no such restriction, and thus can say whatever he wants to about them.
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It's very hard to tell what the ultimate conclusion of this story is, because the writer ran with it before the players involved were formally admitted. But Tommy Amaker certainly seemed to think that Ben-Eze will be admitted; the article refers to him using Ben-Eze as a lure for other recruits.
As to the question of the average AI: Well, this is something that can be jiggered. On a small team, one or two athletes with really high AIs can compensate for several who fall below Harvard's past standards (even if they never play a minute).
Perhaps we may see a few such players next year.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the article said that in the past, Harvard didn't recruit players with an AI below 195, and that now it is doing so. So Harvard's standards are clearly lower than they were in the past, regardless of the mean AI.
I will agree with you on one point: There is a difference between lowering standards and recruiting violations, and, though both may have happened here, the inclusion of both in the same article is confusing.
As to Alan Stone's quote: If I said it was literally untrue, then I agree that I misspoke. But I hold to my assertion that it is "not credible." It is designed to suggest that there is no story here, and clearly there is. (The other Ivy League coaches certainly seem to think so.)
It does make one feel sorry for Mr. Ben-Eze, who appears to have been caught up in a mess not of his own making. One wonders if Harvard, which, according to Amaker, had planned to accept him, will now simply cut him loose on the grounds that he did not reach academic standards.
As to EADW's point about Scalise: Note that while the coaches involved appear to be legally bound not to discuss him due to confidentiality agreements, he seems to be under no such restriction, and thus can say whatever he wants to about them.
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