Every campus needs its heroes, a group of confident, high-profile students we can rally behind because they represent our pride in our university. More often than not it’s the varsity athletes who end up taking that role, especially here at Maryland where teams like men’s basketball are celebrated to the point of being undergraduate royalty. But what have they done to deserve that status? I’d venture to say not much.
Before we get all swept away in the excitement of Maryland Madness, let’s stop a minute and think about exactly who it is we’re idolizing here. First of all, they get full four-year scholarships to play basketball and they don’t even win games. Last Friday, the only exciting clips they had to play on the big screens were from the ACC Championship game. Newsflash: That was three years ago, and we’ve already seen those pictures plenty of times. I’m ready for something new.
So maybe they’re quality Maryland students to make up for it. Even disregarding the well-publicized bar brawls and sexual harassment suits, studies conducted last year by the NCAA showed the university’s men’s basketball team with an 18 percent graduation rate, lowest in the ACC. So much for that.
For me at least, those stats are even more embarrassing than our losing streak. Being a varsity athlete comes with countless special privileges that regular students don’t have: Each team has its own personal academic advisor, and the Academic Support and Career Development Unit (ASCDU) in Comcast Center is dedicated solely to aiding athletes with their classes. Athletes are required to be tutored their first semesters on the team, then can opt to receive extra help as they see fit. Still, the men are still floundering.
The ironic thing is that with the exception of men’s basketball, the Athletics Department has done a good job of keeping its players on par academically. We’re graduating a higher number of student-athletes than ever before, according to the same NCAA studies. Six-year graduation rates are around 75 percent, dead even with the student body. Athletes are busy, so kudos to them.
Nonetheless, men’s basketball is still in the spotlight. Ultimately it’s up to the coaches to make sure their team members are making the grade. In a recent Washington Post article, Gary Williams defended the academics of his team by saying players do eventually graduate, but they aren’t considered in the statistics because it’s after the NCAA’s six-year cutoff. Okay fine, but if other teams can do it in six years, why can’t these guys?
The comparison between the men’s and women’s basketball teams speaks volumes. First, just last year, the women won the national championship in a ridiculously exciting game against our rival, Duke, and have more than earned their place in Maryland sports history.
What’s more, the NCAA study noted that last year’s championship-winning women’s team had a graduation rate of 71 percent. If we were looking for heroes, I think we just found some good ones. I was genuinely surprised at Maryland Madness when the women came out first and the men second. Of course, if you ask anyone they’ll probably say the fanfare was equal for both teams so it doesn’t matter, but if it’d been up to me, the order would’ve been reversed.
Before sports, making money and trolling for donations, Maryland is an academic institution and should put its No. 1 priority on education. When we don’t, not only are we cheating the university out of a decent reputation, but we’re also cheating the individual players out of the degrees they could be earning. That’s why all this matters. Letting players get away with wasting their time in college is doing them a disservice, and if we really care about our players’ best interests, we’ll put a stop to it.
Our athletes are our representatives: They serve as Maryland’s diplomats around the country. Williams vowed at Maryland Madness that this year’s team would be comprised of “great student athletes and great citizens.” I hope this year he means it.
Laura Caputo is a senior physiology and neurobiology and Spanish major. She can be reached at elsie@umd.edu.
