When someone says “Penn State,” what is the first thing that springs to mind? For
many, given the past year, it is the Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky scandal. For any
university, having such strong ties with a disgrace is a nightmare. Past achievements are
ignored as the media and general population are consumed by conversation pertaining to
the scandal. This past Thursday, the Board of Regents here in Madison heard a proposal
intended to increase transparency between the board in terms of legal and
ethical issues regarding campus athletics. 

So what does that mean for the sports teams at the University of Wisconsin? Put simply, heightened instances of communication between the university
and the board.
Initially, this seems like a great idea. Although there was no glaring red flag at
UW to instigate the change in relations, why not protect ourselves from future
issues through the implementation of more communication and monitoring of our sports
teams? 

For one, this puts an increased pressure on the student-athletes of UW to
keep themselves in check at all times. The argument I’m sure will be made by many officials is that our athletes should be constantly well-behaved, since in
many instances they are the faces of our university and it is their responsibility to act as
such.
But is that really a fair pressure to place on our athletes who already are under
intense scrutiny to perform on their respective domains at all times? With their names
constantly splashed across local and national media sources, is it a reasonable request to
dip into into their personal lives as well? 

The Board of Regents is responsible for “protect[ing] the integrity” of the
academic and athletic programs in the system, explained Senior Vice President for Administrative and Fiscal Affairs Michael Morgan. The new proposed system would
simply involve increasing transparency across the school and keeping an eye on how
athletes are doing academically as well as monitoring programs’ spending and ensuring
compliance. 

While I agree with the monitoring of spending of the various sports teams
across campus, I feel the inspection of the athletes’ academic performances is an
invasion of privacy. As a former athlete at the University of Wisconsin, I can say student-athletes on this campus already comply with a rigorous set of compliance
standards to remain eligible in their given sport. This includes a minimal GPA
requirement established by the NCAA that is universal from university to university
across the country for any given sport. With pressure to excel academically and
athletically and the knowledge that their grades are the business of their academic
supervisors, coaches and the NCAA, I don’t believe it is fair to go the extra mile and
share this information with the Board of Regents. Academics are any given
student’s own personal affair.

Student-athletes lose that privacy as their grades
are shared with coaches and the NCAA, but this is a sacrifice they make to participate in
an activity they love and the rest of us, as spectators, love to watch.
Yet this proposal also threatens to go further than academics to report on the
social behaviors of student athletes cross campus. They defend that minor alcohol
infractions may not necessarily need to be reported to the board. This raises my eyebrows
and makes me question whether the board will stay true to that point. Is it fair that just because a given student is also a UW athlete that they should also have their behavior out of the spotlight watched as well?

We’ve already seen the implications of alcohol, student athletes and the media when five men jumped football player Montee Ball early in the morning this past
summer. The incident was reported on and spread across the country, leading to
investigations of whether or not the incident was provoked and a pressing into of Ball’s
personal life. While Ball is an exceptional circumstance given his celebrity in the
football world, do we really want this kind of monitoring behavior impressed upon all
of our athletes across campus? What does our university stand to gain if this proposal is
employed? 

While it may protect us from scandals such as what occurred at Pennsylvania
State University this past year, it leaves the private lives of our athletes in the crosshairs.

Christin Wiegand ([email protected]) is a junior with an undecided major.