The university provides a lot of services for its students – on the most basic level, classes, scholarships and housing, along with tutoring, extracurricular activities and the campus facilities. But who would have imagined it also pays for a baby-sitting program?
Regrettably, we don’t mean the kind of baby-sitting program that would be provided for children of students, faculty or staff. Unfortunately, the type of baby-sitting the university provides is for its athletes – monitoring and spying on all of the university’s teams to ensure they regularly attend class.
The fact that the university pays eight to 12 students to make sure athletes attend class is pathetic and should frustrate the student body on multiple levels.
The worst part of the entire program is its existence in the first place. Scholarship athletes are given an extraordinary gift — a free education, some of the best housing the university has to offer and all the glory that comes with being a Division I athlete. It should not be a strain for an athlete to be responsible enough to check him or herself. It is the athlete’s job to go to class and playing a sport. As grueling as their season schedule may be, taking care of a minimal academic schedule is not so much of a burden.
Additionally, in providing these baby-sitters, the university emphasizes it’s more important to them that athletes attend class than other students, further perpetuating the idea these students, especially football and basketball players, deserve special treatment. While the university and the Athletics Department have a lot riding on the behavior of the school’s athletes, if they cannot make it to class on their own, then they don’t belong here in the first place.
The university has a lot riding on any student for whom it provides scholarship money, but there are certainly not spies to follow around Banneker Key Scholarship recipients to their classes. It would be more productive to let athletes know they are expected to behave the same way academically as the rest of the student body, providing a much higher standard than having the university tell them they’re so important they’re willing to pay money to spy on them.
The greater portion of the student-athlete population will never earn a dime from playing their sport professionally. They will need to use the skills learned in their classes to perform in the business world. With this in mind, athletes should have all the motivation they need in order to succeed in the classroom – without someone checking up on them.
