At Harvard, the Scandal’s Impact Grows
Posted on September 19th, 2012 in Uncategorized | 21 Comments »
In the Times, Bill Pennington writes on the way that Harvard’s cheating scandal has prompted diminished pride in University athletics and a discussion over whether Harvard has compromised itself in trying to elevate its athletic program in recent years.
(Whew—sorry about that. It’s early.)
His story, which I’m reading online but may be Page 1: “Cheating Scandal Dulls Pride in Athletics at Harvard.”
(Despite what Drew Faust says about the scandal not being limited to any particular group of students, nobody really seems to believe her—another reason she probably shouldn’t have said anything at all. One gets the strong sense that, while what she said may be technically true, it is not fundamentally true.)
Pennington quotes senior Patrick Nash saying something that does feel true:
“Some athletes are here working hard, but others avoid academic challenges. You know you won’t find them in a deductive logic course, but you will find them in a much less taxing sociology course. They sometimes exist apart, and collectively gravitate to the same majors, like sociology or government. It’s known.”
A couple trends emerge from the article:
1) Harvard’s scandal, though it may be concentrated among athletes, is tainting the university more broadly.
2) It’s also tainting the Ivy League, when there’s not much evidence that the steps Harvard has taken to play in the big leagues, as it were, were also taken by other Ivies.
The article includes a bit of news that I hadn’t read before and seems to me quite shocking; Pennington reports that the basketball players who withdrew for a year to preserve their eligibility did so after receiving an email from a Harvard administrator encouraging them to do so, rather than be suspended for a year and lose a year of eligibility.
Casey, who was a preseason favorite for Ivy League player of the year, and Curry left Harvard days after a university administrator sent an e-mail message advising fall athletes who might be involved in the cheating scandal to consider taking a leave in order to preserve their eligibility.
Isn’t this like helping the cheaters cheat some more? By helping them to escape the consequences of their actions?
It certainly suggests that the Ad Board investigation is compromised, if a Harvard official is telling students how to mitigate its actions before the board has even finished its inquiry. (Of course, Drew Faust compromised it as well.)
I’m astounded by this piece of news, which suggest that a Harvard official has his priorities very, very wrong. If that’s the kind of message that Harvard authority figures send to students, no wonder they’re okay with cheating…..
21 Responses
9/19/2012 6:55 am
What Pennington reports (and what the Crimson had already reported) is that Harvard advised its intercollegiate athletes of the possible consequences of their actions or inactions for their NCAA eligibility status. That happens all the time (for example, “No! Don’t join the team photo that is going on the Wheaties box! Clause x.y.z.w of the NCAA manual says that constitutes a commercial endorsement and that means you will lose your eligibility if you do that!”) The NCAA manual weighs about 100 pounds and I still don’t fully understand the nuances of the eligibility rules. There is nothing wrong with somebody at Harvard who understands them explaining them to students who probably don’t, in advance rather than after it is too late for the student to have made a different decision about his or her actions.
No student can escape being thrown out of Harvard by withdrawing voluntarily first. You can be thrown out while you are already on voluntary leave of absence. Your official status changes even though you are already gone, and you pick up all the requirements for return that you would have had if you had been thrown out while you were enrolled. You can’t even accelerate the process of coming back by leaving early — it is my understanding (I could be wrong, but I don’t think so) that a student currently enrolled who is thrown out for this case would be eligible to return in the fall of 2013 if the student met the work requirement and other standard conditions.
9/19/2012 7:00 am
Richard,
I believe this mail is “old news”, and isn’t nearly as provocative as you suggest.
My understanding of what had been sent was a general reminder to students of what the various possible outcomes of an Ad Board investigation were, including the possibility of being asked to withdraw for 1 year, which would take place immediately, so they’d “lose” the current semester. In this note, it was pointed out that there would be eligibility implications for athletes, and what the possible choices were there.
You say, “Isn’t this like helping the cheaters cheat some more? By helping them to escape the consequences of their actions?”
No. What it is is being clear to the students what the possible outcomes are, how it might effect them, and how they might best manage the worst possible outcomes. This is part of what the Ad Board does. Indeed, I’ve often heard complaints from students (in various Crimson opinions and such) the other way — that the Ad Board process and outcomes are “mysterious”, lacking exactly in this clarity — which in my experience isn’t true, precisely because part of what the Ad Board aims to do is make sure these aspects of the process are explained to students.
Some students may be required to withdraw for a year, which is emotionally trying enough. (I’m not an apologist — if this is the outcome there’s a reason.). Now you want AFTER THAT to have someone tell them, “Hey, you might not have read the NCAA fine print, but once you’ve started the season, you’ve now lost your eligibility…” That is, you’d prefer that the administration NOT inform students of possible consequences they should be aware of but might not be because it’s a completely separate set of rules with a subtle interaction that they might not have realized?
Richard, you’re starting sound like a really bitter, unpleasant person. (Replace with appropriate swear word if desired.)
9/19/2012 7:32 am
Harry is right. This isn’t special treatment. I would even add that it’s responsible advising, not a favor to athletes. For example, any international students in this case have likely received guidance about how their decisions to take a leave now or stay through a November Board ruling could affect their status with the government and plans for an eventual return.
Another real problem is that people are ignoring the differences between an RWD and a leave of absence. Peter May did just that in advancing your point that it’s wrong for Harvard to advise athletes about eligibility maintenance (http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2012/09/19/harvard-cheating-peter-may). May boils RWD down to “a transcript notation” and ignores the work requirement, which isn’t part of a leave of absence. I touched on the anachronistic feel of the RWD’s work requirement in a blog post (http://bzeducon.com/1/post/2012/09/scarlet-letters.html). I hope the RWD’s work requirement gets included in the public discussion because it is an essential part of Harvard’s current policy.
9/19/2012 8:40 am
Harry, Michael and BZ-many thanks for your insights, from which I always learn, but I will admit to being a little confused here.
(Not bitter and unpleasant or some “appropriate swear word,” though! You are a little cranky this morning, Michael.)
I take the point that this was a widely distributed email clarifying the possible penalties involved and some of their implications. But the article BZ links to, by Peter May, is better informed about the email in question than I was yet raises exactly the same concern that I did. To quote:
“What ‘life lesson’ is being communicated when an athlete who cheated on a test and faces suspension gets told in advance by a university official that he can maintain his eligibility by taking a year off? He can then return to the athletic arena the following fall with only a notation on his transcript that he had been required to withdraw for a year. Isn’t the emphasis on athletic eligibility rather than academic integrity misguided?”
That said, I have one question and one further point to make.
The question is this: If you withdraw now voluntarily, and you are suspended for a year, you can still return in fall 2013 (as opposed to fall 2014)?
So your “voluntary withdrawal” counts as time served?
(This is a genuine, i.e., not rhetorical, question.)
Second, let’s consider what this means in practical terms. Yes, I know a year off can be genuinely difficult for a student. (A college friend of mine was once suspended for a year for cheating; it was deeply painful for him and for those of us who cared about him.)
And yes, the work requirement does seem substantial. But I have to ask, because this is the way of big-time sports programs: Will alums be reaching out to these players to set them up with jobs? And if they do, will they similarly reach out to the non-athletes involved?
Otherwise, the athletes who’ve preserved their eligibility will come back without really any other issues. There won’t be any stain on their record, because the waters here have already been so muddied (“the instructions were unclear”), no one’s going to fault these young people for long. Certainly no one in the sports world.
And the main thing they care about—their ability to play college basketball—hasn’t been affected one bit. If they’re worried about losing a year from their pro career, they can enter the draft early.
I’m not trying to be snarky or cynical here, but (Michael) writing as someone who cares very deeply about the values transmitted at our most important universities: Doesn’t this process convey a message of misplaced priorities—that the important thing for the university and the students is that no one lose a year of athletic eligibility? Basketball uber alles. What message would you take away from these events if you were a non-athlete (or a non-superstar athlete) who, as Bill Clinton used to say, “worked hard and played by the rules”—only to feel that the system has been rigged to favor others?
What happened to the old idea that Ivy League teams basically sucked, but that was all right because the Ivy League had its priorities straight? I can’t speak for Harvard, but I have never, ever run into a Yale grad who cared very much that our athletic teams weren’t on par with those of Duke or Ohio State or Stanford. What mattered were the values and culture of the university—in short, its true education.
Again, I write all this with the caveat that I don’t know any more facts than have been published and, in all likelihood, fewer than many of the posters on this blog. I hope everything will come out in the fullness of time.
9/19/2012 8:50 am
In the absence of good advising on such matters, the burden would differentially fall on socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Thus it has always been.
In the 1912 Olympics, Jim Thorpe was dubbed “the greatest athlete in the world.” He was later stripped of his medals for having violated the amateurism rules a few years earlier Those rules are now defunct everywhere except in the NCAA; they survive in the form we are now discussing. Thorpe acknowledged his error, adding, “I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know about such things.” Avery Brundage, the blue-blooded IOC president, who had also competed in the 1912 Olympics and moved up a notch in the record books after Thorpe was disqualified, stated, “Ignorance is no excuse.”
The IOC reversed itself after Thorpe’s death. Anyone who thinks that only students who have the wherewithal to hire their own lawyers to interpret the NCAA manual for them should have the benefit of advice about their athletic eligibility must also think the IOC got it right the first time.
Every university has to watch the eligibility of its athletes. They all, quite reasonably, advise their athletes against doing things that would cost them their eligibility. (The Wheaties box is a real example. When the US won the Olympic gold medal in women’s ice hockey, Harvard made sure that the only Harvard students in the photo that went on the cereal box were the seniors.)
9/19/2012 9:12 am
My last post was before RB’s most recent.
As for the timing of leaves, this case is unusual because ordinarily a cheating accusation from a spring term exam would have been resolved before the start of the fall term. A more serious question than whether a student who leaves now and is RWD (required to withdraw) in a few weeks will be eligible to return in the fall of 2013 (I would imagine so, because that is my uncertain understanding of what will happen to students who are RWD without having taken voluntary leave) is about the tuition, room, and board that is accumulating. The Crimson reported that under Harvard policies, those who are staying in school are paying for the privilege of being here, and may not get the money back if they are RWD and the term gets wiped out. For students on financial aid that may not matter much (they will get financial aid for whatever time they are in school) but those paying their own way would, it seems under existing policies, be out the amounts they will have paid for tuition, room, and board for the part of the term they have been in attendance. In this case, otherwise rational policies seem to disadvantage the better-off students.
The idea that an RWD is not a serious matter is crazy. It has to be explained in every “dean’s letter” sent by the College upon request of a student applying to medical or law school. It is not just a notation of no significance.
I really don’t know what to say about your indignation that an alum might help an RWD student get a job. You can’t go work for your father. It has to be a real job. You need an employer’s attestation after 6 months that you took responsibility for your actions. I just don’t get why you think the right punishment, because it would hurt so much more, would be somehow to deprive the athlete of a year of eligibility, above and beyond what the NCAA rules require. In other words, to make it hurt more than it would hurt for the non-athletes in the same boat. (I don’t know what the ratios are, but yes, there are non-athletes swept up in this web too.)
9/19/2012 9:19 am
Yes, I am cranky this morning.
But seriously, I feel I am responding to not only misplaced criticism, but what seems to be some latent hostility on your part — whether it’s toward Harvard or students accused of cheating, I can’t say, but it feels at least in part the former.
However, my point still stands, and I agree with Harry and BZ.
“What ‘life lesson’ is being communicated when an athlete who cheated on a test and faces suspension gets told in advance by a university official that he can maintain his eligibility by taking a year off?”
The lesson should be that the student made a mistake, and is being punished for it. That doesn’t mean that the university stops caring for, advising, and helping the student. Indeed, it is often at these most difficult times that the student NEEDS advising.
“The question is this: If you withdraw now voluntarily, and you are suspended for a year, you can still return in fall 2013 (as opposed to fall 2014)?”
This would be up to the Ad Board, but my recollection is that when you face an RWD, you have to leave for 1 year. Obviously, in cases like this, where the decision comes mid-semester, there needs to be an understanding of what “1 year” means. It’s not generally not 1 temporal year, but 1 year of school — the student must leave immediately, and so is out that semester and 1 additional semester. Given that the incidents in question happened before the summer, I would assume that is what would happen here — the student would be required to take the academic 2012-2013 year off, and would return Fall 2013.
I don’t think your interpretation of “time served” is correct here, Richard. Whether they withdrew or not, if a student faced and RWD, I think the standard Ad Board response would be 2 semesters off, returning Fall 2013.
“Otherwise, the athletes who’ve preserved their eligibility will come back without really any other issues. There won’t be any stain on their record, because the waters here have already been so muddied (”the instructions were unclear”), no one’s going to fault these young people for long. Certainly no one in the sports world.”
Are you saying athletes deserve some special form of punishment? Why?
“Doesn’t this process convey a message of misplaced priorities—that the important thing for the university and the students is that no one lose a year of athletic eligibility? Basketball uber alles. What message would you take away from these events if you were a non-athlete (or a non-superstar athlete) who, as Bill Clinton used to say, “worked hard and played by the rules”—only to feel that the system has been rigged to favor others?”
No, it should suggest that this stain on your record is not the end of your life, you are still a Harvard student, and you will be treated accordingly. (With respect, advised to the best of our abilities, etc.)
How has the system been rigged in the athlete’s favor? They’ve had to leave for a year! Might a friend (of the family, or of athletics) give them a job? Yes, but that happens for non-athletes too, and Harvard as I recall will help students find a job during the off-time also. No special treatment.
It’s not the Ad Board’s job to come up with specialized punishments for individuals, Richard. It’s their job to determine what appropriate rule of the faculty is to be exercised. They’re not responsible for determining how people like the athletic community “feel about it” afterward, and to the extent the Ad Board feels a responsibility of this sort, it’s to let the student know that this is a mistake they need to learn from, but NOT THE END OF THEIR LIFE.
Seriously, your attitude about this frightens me, and if that’s why I seem a little hostile, it’s because I’m feeling hostility from you (not directed at me, but directed at something). It’s precisely the risk of these sorts of attitudes why the Ad Board is set up as an independent body, whose job is to enforce the rules, not decide individualized punishments.
9/19/2012 9:34 am
The actually shocking fact is that there seem to be faculty members who promote the view that their courses are easy (both grade guts and work guts, in Harvard lingo). Athletes, theatre types, singing groups, etc. all flock to such courses in their busy term. I once had a (male) recruited athlete as a freshman advisee, who told me he was signing up for a Women, Gender, Sexuality course his first term because the instructor had promoted the course specifically to athletes as easy and fun. He knew about this course before I had met him in my office for the first time. I had never heard of it.
If Harvard fixed the exam protocol, some of the specific problems about these cheating allegations would go away. But what really should happen is that Harvard should crack down on courses that all but advertise themselves as safe havens for students who will welcome the opportunity not to work too hard, if that is what their professor signals to them is the deal. It is fine for a course to be fun and lighthearted (hell, I used to lecture in a Santa suit sometimes). But this business of announcing that your course is a gut — there is an old history of that (some readers may remember Crane Brinton), but I just don’t understand why it is tolerated.
9/19/2012 9:40 am
Regarding RB’s specific question about “time served,” the short answer is yes. By taking a leave of absence, a student could preemptively and unilaterally start serving an RWD that he expects will come down in November. The standard two-term suspension would then be fall 2012 and spring 2013, which allows for an April/May petition to be readmitted in fall 2013. A student who makes that choice could find a job, work for six months, get the Board’s approval to return, and then have free time until returning to school.
None of this is specific to athletes. All Resident Deans have had this conversation with a student at some point in a disciplinary case (academic or otherwise). For reasons ranging from housing to course sequencing, many students don’t want to come back mid-year after a spring/fall RWD. Also, is it unethical to advise an international student about visa considerations in a case like this? Are advisers denying “life lessons” by sharing administrative insights and institutional memory to help a student sort through options in a difficult time?
Also, connections at Harvard are not limited to athletes. I don’t think student-athletes’ jobs to fulfill the work requirement should get any more scrutiny than those of non-athletes whose last name appears on a Harvard building. (There is some scrutiny, by the way.) That comes back to my post about rethinking sanctions.
9/19/2012 9:51 am
I’m not sure what my problematic attitude is, Michael-that a cheating case involving 125 students is a big deal, and that, if it’s true that many of those students are athletes, at a school that has been raising its athletic ambitions in recent years, there are some serious conversations to be had about university priorities?
And that these things are a particular tragedy if they happen at a Harvard (or a Yale, or any school widely admired for its high academic and moral standards) because these institutions are supposed to represent the highest ideals of higher education?
If that’s problematic, then we are all in trouble.
Michael, I think you are reading things in my writing that aren’t there, and may say more about your state of mind than about what I’m really saying.
Harry and Michael, I suppose that I don’t feel that working at a job is a particularly onerous punishment. (In fact, these days, it’s probably a blessing.) Granted, it’s tougher than sitting on a beach for six months, but…it’s hardly purgatory.
What I do think is tough, particularly in this economy, is *getting* a job-and few things make one appreciate the value of an education more than the very humbling process (for most people) of applying for work.
So it seems to me that if you remove that element of the RWD requirement, you’ve taken away something very central from an instructional point of view.
Now, I recognize that if you’re going to require that people work during their time off, it behooves you to help them fulfill that requirement. But I don’t really believe that Harvard’s attempts to find jobs for non-athletes will equal its efforts to find jobs for star athletes. That may be unfair of me, but athletic program alums and supporters do tend to have a “we take care of our own” culture.
Also, Michael, I would never suggest that the Ad Board generate custom punishments, and here again I think you are misreading me. What I’ve been trying to say-perhaps not very well-is that it would be unfair if Harvard, in one way or another, helped some students (but not or more than others) to mitigate their punishments.
Michael, one thing we can agree on: That this is an educational moment, as they say, and that this incident shouldn’t be the end of anyone’s life. I’m just not sensing that taking a year off, working at a plum job set up for you by a donor to the athletic program, then returning in the fall of 2013 necessarily teaches you a lot. And I’m highly sensitive to the idea—because I don’t think this is what Ivy League universities should be about—that athletes might get some preferential treatment in this matter.
(And by the way, I wouldn’t blame the athletes for this, not in the slightest; they’re just playing the cards they’re dealt.)
I’d be curious to hear what students think about this, and whether there’s concern on their part about whether special measures will be taken for the athletes.
9/19/2012 10:01 am
Incidentally, Harry, why would working for your father not constitute a real job? Your father (or mother) could own a small business, like a pizza parlor or a bodega. Or he could be the founder of a hedge fund… Either way, the student involved might do valuable work.
9/19/2012 10:15 am
Ad your last question, obviously because the conflict of interest would cast doubt on the reliability of the employer’s attestation. There are plenty of pizza parlors, and working in one is indeed a fine job-so go find one being run by somebody who is not your father. The Board looks the job — this is not the only reason it may say no to it, by the way. Some of my flock want to work for themselves, obviously a real possibility for them. The Ad Board doesn’t allow that either. You have to be responsible to someone who is independent of you.
You would say that the Ad Board policy should be that no student may take a job to which he or she had been referred by a Harvard alumnus? How far would you take that, to guarantee that someone had been appropriately humbled by their job search process?
BTW I don’t know what the time-away policies at Yale or other places are, or if they even RWD people for the kinds of things for which Harvard students are routinely RWD. But I have a very hard time imagining that Harvard’s policies on all this are abnormally lenient.
Yes, the Office of Career Services and the alumni network help any student who has to find a job for whatever reason find a job. I think you are grasping at straws to suggest that somehow this is a serious problem with the work requirement.
9/19/2012 10:36 am
Harry, the conflict of interest you mention is just as valid if you’re hired by a Harvard alum who really, really loves basketball, or that kind of alum sets you up in a job somewhere else.
And it sounds like public service/volunteering wouldn’t count as a “job”—even though public service might be a more instructive use of a year off? Or is that not the case?
I wonder if this this work requirement isn’t so problematic that maybe it should be scrapped. Your family might run a bodega whose employees work (as many in New York do, particularly, it seems, Korean families) incredibly hard–but that wouldn’t count as a valid job, while some no-show gig set up for you by a fat cat donor qualifies? (I’m exaggerating to make a point, but not beyond the realm of possibility.)
I can also imagine that, in this case, working for your parents might actually be more onerous than working for someone else. After all, they’re not likely to be very happy about your return from Harvard….
I think part of what rubs me the wrong way about this particular discussion—and I’ll admit, my reaction is a little emotional—is the implicit assumption that *of course* the Office of Career Services or a friendly alum will find you a job. No such guarantee would be made for, say, a student who graduated without having cheated…
That said, I’m not sure I have a better answer to the question of what Harvard should ask its students to do during a year RWD. But how about this: Make its students reapply, with their admission contingent on having done something meaningful during their time off. That seems a little more nuanced than just saying, Go get a job for a year—oh, and by the way-here’s a job.
9/19/2012 11:35 am
Of course nothing in this business is airtight. But you are the one making the assumption that the job is automatic, and then acting shocked by it. Show me the evidence that a job is automatic for athletes. Sure, everybody, athlete or not, seems eventually to find a job, though many don’t find one right away, especially in a down economy. That makes it “automatic”? Sure, some students get jobs through alumni and OCS connections. A lot of them just go back home and work someplace they already know about. Etc., etc. The Board does the best it can to determine if a job meets its criteria, which are meant to ensure that the students have taken responsibility for themselves in a role that makes them responsible for others. Sure, the Board may not get that right in any particular case. It discusses individual requests at length sometimes. It is your assumption of bad faith on the part of everyone at Harvard that needs documentation if you are going to keep this up. Either back up your attitude that there is a huge manipulative conspiracy in the Harvard administration, or move onto another angle. The fact that an email went out advising students of something the administration knew about their eligibility but they did not is not evidence of anything except, as BZ said, good advising. Any college that did not do that would be negligent. Rather than admitting that and moving on, you are now all over the work requirement, an equally bogus issue.
A re-application protocol, if you mean running the Admissions gauntlet a second time, would be tantamount to expulsion, since after all Harvard tends not to admit people in the first place if they have been thrown out of school for cheating. You are entitled to your opinion about that zero-tolerance attitude, but it would be inconsistent with the premise that most Harvard students who do something wrong-once-will learn something from the experience and grow up to be responsible members of society. Even Yale, I am pretty sure, believes in second changes. (At Harvard, a second RWD is ordinarily final.)
Here is the prose from the Handbook for Students. If you don’t like it, write to the president as an alumnus and advise her how to improve it. It is the result of years of evolution. In my experience, when wisely interpreted by the Board, it balances the equities well.
Readmission after Requirement to Withdraw for Disciplinary or Academic Reasons
Students who have been required to withdraw will be readmitted only if they can present convincing evidence that they are likely to achieve good standing with respect to both their academic record and conduct if given a second opportunity to study at Harvard. In all such cases the student must petition the Administrative Board to be readmitted to the College, and the Board’s decision will depend on its judgment of the student’s readiness to resume his or her studies and to rejoin the College community.
Students required to withdraw should not assume that readmission is automatic. Rather, they must fulfill to the satisfaction of the Administrative Board the Faculty’s and the Board’s minimum requirements for readmission listed below, and they must also meet any special requirements set by the Administrative Board and described in the letter sent them by the Resident Dean when they were required to withdraw. Examples of such additional, special requirements are (1) a specified level of achievement in a session of the Harvard Summer School, and (2) more than two terms spent away from the College and the Harvard campus. In certain cases, a student may also be requested to consult with Harvard University Health Services prior to return. The Administrative Board will not ordinarily approve the return of a student for the fall term whose experience in the Harvard Summer School in the previous summer has been unsuccessful or unsatisfactory. If a student is in any doubt as to the requirements for her or his readmission following a requirement to withdraw, it is the student’s responsibility to contact the Resident Dean for clarification.
Students request readmission through their Resident Deans, who present the students’ petitions to the Administrative Board. A petition for readmission is not normally considered before December or May prior to the term for which readmission is sought, and the petition must ordinarily be filed at least eight weeks in advance of the beginning of the term for which the student seeks readmission. Earlier deadlines for housing and financial aid applications will pertain even though petitions for readmission cannot be considered before December or May.
Minimum general prerequisites for readmission are:
A specified period of time (at the very least, one full term) spent away from Harvard College and University property.
Both residence and employment away from the Harvard campus for the period of withdrawal prior to readmission unless other arrangements have been specially approved in advance by the Administrative Board.
An acceptable record of performance for a minimum of six months of continuous, regular, full-time paid employment at one non-academic job, with a suitable letter of recommendation from the employer or employment supervisor.
A satisfactory standard of conduct during the period since the student was required to withdraw.
Indication that the student has an understanding of the reasons for previous difficulties in the College, particularly those related to his or her requirement to withdraw.
Assurance that the student has adequate motivation for resuming academic work and an appropriate program of study in mind.
Note: Students who through their own decision or action of the Administrative Board have been away from College for five or more years must petition the Board for permission to register. Those planning to return to the College after an absence of five or more years will not ordinarily be eligible for scholarship aid from institutional sources. Petitions to return after an interval of five or more years must include evidence of financial resources necessary to meet all College expenses.
Of course there are words in there like “acceptable” and “suitable” which are defined by case law. Again, if you think Harvard is corrupt, those words will look barn doors through which privileged people can be snuck. But you haven’t documented the corruption that seems to be the premise for every innuendo you launch-except that Harvard had a good basketball team last year. For some reason Yale’s good men’s hockey team 2 years ago never bothered you as much. Why is that? Certainly, by challenging the work requirement you have really gotten pretty far away from where you started. You are, as I said, looking for excuses to keep stirring the pot, to justify a foregone conclusion.
So what about Jim Thorpe and Avery Brundage? Did the IOC get that right the first time? You cheat and you face the music, period — it’s your own damned fault? And for kids who don’t have lawyers and lose a year of eligibility because nobody took them through the rules, “ignorance is no excuse”?
And for the record: At this point we don’t know anyone who has in fact been found to have cheated. The athletes have already paid a higher price than non-athletes because they became identified by their voluntary withdrawal. Goes with the territory-fine. But reputationally, when as far as I know they have not actually been tried and convicted, that is not a small thing.
9/19/2012 12:09 pm
Harry-okay, okay, it’s time to move on. But in truth, I got the impression that the job was automatic from your prior comments, not from any assumption that I made. I’m just going on what you wrote and what tends to happen in big-time athletic programs.
And I would probably say similar things about Yale hockey in a similar situation. That’s why I have included Yale in many of my parentheticals; while this situation certainly has some points unique to Harvard, there’s also a “there but for the grace of God” quality to it.
As to the larger issue-look, you’re asking me to take on faith that Harvard is handling this episode in the most upstanding way possible. Why should I? After many years of reporting on Harvard, I haven’t seen many instances where that’s the case. There are always constituents (like yourself, Harry) who really do think about university issues in serious and moral ways and advocate correspondingly. But then there is realpolitik. What you’re asking me to do now is not unlike saying, hey, don’t worry about Andrei Shleifer, we’re all honorable people here. But just because you are, Harry, doesn’t mean that everyone is. I know that you have generally applauded the resurgence of athletics at Harvard and are vigorous about defending athletes from stereotyping. More power to you. But you can’t have the emergence of big-time athletic programs closely followed by a cheating scandal and then say, hey, trust us, we got this. If you want a basketball program that’s going to the NCAA tournament, then you’d better be prepared for the same level of skepticism about recruiting, about special treatment for athletes, about alumni involvement, that any comparable program would face.
And you’re right that we shouldn’t get bogged down in the smaller issues. Heck, I don’t know enough about them to get bogged down in them. Let’s focus on these larger issues. You may not like the points I’m raising, but I can promise you I won’t be the last person to do so. And they’re important questions—not just for Harvard, but for all the Ivy League schools, and all the schools that may feel increasing pressure to compete on the basis of athletics rather than academics.
As always, posted with the caveat that this is written only on the basis of what little we know to date, and the actual facts, when they emerge, could contradict most of the above.
(This is quickly written, so please bear that in mind…)
9/19/2012 12:34 pm
Richard,
As I think you can see from Harry’s last comment, I may not be the only one that finds you’ve taken on a “problematic attitude”. (That is my interpretation of Harry’s comment.) If you want to ask questions and get feedback about things you’re admitting that you don’t know about, all well and good. But using Harry’s words, from my perspective you appear to be “looking for excuses to keep stirring the pot, to justify a foregone conclusion.” In particular, you take what I find to be clear evidence that the Ad Board is in fact NOT giving special treatment to athletes, and interpreting it as special treatment for athletes, which I admit I find especially disturbing.
So when you say: “Michael, I think you are reading things in my writing that aren’t there, and may say more about your state of mind than about what I’m really saying.” Maybe you’re right, and I’m being overly defensive for the Ad Board/Harvard. Maybe it’s your writing. Or maybe you’re not realizing or recognizing what you’re really saying. Please consider all of the above.
(I in fact agree with Harry’s point, which I intended to make myself, that “The athletes have already paid a higher price than non-athletes because they became identified by their voluntary withdrawal.” Indeed, because of the eligibility issues involved, the athletes appear to have been incentivized by the overall system to withdraw before a final decision by the Ad Board was reached — which I also think demonstrates that they have paid a higher price. As is often the case, I should probably just outsource my opinion to Harry and stay quiet.)
9/19/2012 12:38 pm
Richard — Pax. Which is why I hope the college will never be run the way the faculty is run. And why I noted in my HuffPo piece the lack of parallel between the proposed reaction to student plagiarists on the one hand, and the silence about faculty plagiarists and fraudsters on the other. And why I also noted my worry about the lawyers and communications folks getting in the way of an honest faculty discussion of what this says about faculty professional conduct, and my hope that the Board will be left alone to do its work in the fairest way it can.
Over and out.
9/19/2012 1:15 pm
Michael and Harry-in the interests of promoting common ground, I think you both raise a good point that the athletes may have paid a singularly high price here. As you both say, they’re the only ones singled out to date; and I would add that because of their athletic issues, they may have felt pressure to take the step of withdrawing before it was really necessary. Either they had a strong sense that they were going to get hit with a suspension, or they just had to prepare for the worst even though they had no inkling of what the Ad Board’s finding would be. Tough call.
Michael, we should have a beer sometime. (I’m buying.) You might find that I’m not the dyspeptic crank I seem to have convinced you I am. In any event, I will consider your thoughts, as I think it’s only fair that anyone who expresses his opinions as freely as I do here on this blog be equally open to those of others. I think too that this matter is a very big deal at Harvard, and I forget how painful it must be for people who work at and care deeply about the institution. As I said to Harry, more power to you, and I mean that figuratively and literally.
9/19/2012 1:57 pm
Richard,
I’d be delighted to finally make your acquaintance! Similarly, I’m not really a dyspeptic crank either, I hope. (And of course I enjoy reading your blog, else I wouldn’t hang out here; but I also call things out when I see things that bother me.)
9/19/2012 2:27 pm
Next time I’m headed to Cambridge, Michael, I will give you a heads-up….
9/21/2012 8:20 pm
Actually, Michael is a dyspeptic crank.