Since the National Labor Relations Board’s decision that Northwestern University’s football players are employees of the college and have the right to form a labor union, advocacy for collegiate student athletes has gained momentum. Many demands that are central to this movement appear to have little relevance to the scholarship-free Ivy League: compensation for players, scholarships that cover the full cost of tuition, funding for continued education and guaranteed retention of scholarships for athletes whose careers are ended due to injury. After all, treatment of student-athletes is on the national agenda largely because of the revenue-generating capacities of certain sports; the thinking has been that institutions gaining millions of dollars in lucrative television deals are obligated to the students whose performance enables such revenue.
Though this phenomenon is beyond the realm of the Ivy League, our schools can still work toward creating fairer opportunities for student-athletes. In fact, this movement will be greatly strengthened by the active involvement of Ivy student-athletes. Solidarity among all student-athletes will tell college athletics establishment that business-as-usual is no longer an option. The Ivy League can add credibility to calls for reform — in many ways, it models the ideal balance between academics and athletics.
As the big-time programs make ambitious efforts to reel in ever-increasing media revenues, mid-week travel often leads students to miss classes, causing some to fall behind. Many student-athletes depend on one-year renewable athletic scholarships, and thus may receive little encouragement to find ways to avoid conflicts between school and sports.
At the Ivies, however, there is an understanding that the rigors of our education won’t tolerate athletics taking precedence. By engaging in national advocacy, Ivy athletes show what student-athletes really are — students first. Our schools’ participation in athletics may prove to narrow-minded athletic departments nationwide that an alternative is possible.
Why is this so crucial to the calls for reform? Underlying the Northwestern players’ case is the concern that their school is neglecting its foundational purpose — to educate young people — at the expense of athletic success. This is not merely a shallow debate about whether athletes should get paid; it is more fundamentally about how athletes’ academic priorities are being sacrificed for the coffers of their institution.
Additionally, Ivy League athletes never have to worry that an injury on the playing field will jeopardize their education. For students whose college enrollment is tied to an athletic scholarship, however, this is an unavoidable concern.
One concrete reform schools could make is to prohibit career-ending injuries from impacting a student’s access to education. It’s hard to imagine an official explicitly opposing such a policy, but we have still not reached a point where such a sweeping reform has been enacted. After all, how could NCAA member schools defy their own mantra that “most of us go pro in something other than sports,” as the oft-repeated commercial tells us?
Indeed, as the Northwestern students continue their fight, they may even be able to influence the Ivies. One of their agenda items is funding for further education, allowing them to gain a fully-funded master’s degree. Graduate-level athletes who have not exhausted their eligibility are generally not allowed in the Ivy League barring rare medical waivers. But this is typically allowed in other conferences. For example, Dartmouth’s own Alexi Pappas ’12, a distance runner, enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Oregon to join its team. This is one area where the Ivies have failed to keep up with the rest of the nation. If Northwestern students can push for graduate education funding beyond their four-year scholarship, might this open an opportunity for the Ivies to re-consider their restriction on graduate-level student-athletes?
For years Ivy League schools have seen themselves as worlds apart from a college sports landscape increasingly influenced by money. But now they have something valuable to contribute to a key national debate — and to shy away would be at the peril of student-athletes nationwide.
