Other busy students cry foul at priority registration for athletes
Trevor Calero
Daily Staff ReporterNovember 9th, 2008
LSA sophomore Lee Collins, an Army ROTC cadet, wakes up before sunrise three days a week for physical training, leadership training and infantry tactics and land navigation.
But despite his busy schedule, Collins receives no help from the University when it comes to registration. He will soon struggle to craft a schedule along with the rest of the student body.
That is, except for student-athletes.
Under a new policy that goes into affect this upcoming term, athletes will receive priority over non-athletes when registering for classes, drawing criticism from other students who struggle to reconcile coursework with busy extracurricular schedules.
Collins said the new policy is unfair to people like himself.
"There are so many people who are working very hard, paying their way through college, there is no special consideration for them," Collins said. "(The policy is) basically saying that the athletic department is a step ahead of the rest of the school."
Medical School Prof. Charles Koopmann, a member of the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, the faculty's main governing body, said athletes run into many issues with scheduling because of their practice schedules. SACUA unanimously passed a resolution in support of the policy.
Koopmann said in an e-mail that SACUA had heard of many athletes who were forced to change from rigorous courses of study to alternative routes because they had difficulty registering for required classes.
Fridays are typically travel days for athletes, which often forces them to miss class, he said.
“Not all professors at U-M will allow students to make up the class work," he wrote. “It is really unfortunate that there are professors who are not understanding of the bind that such students are in — NCAA issues, competition requirements, limitation of course availability, etc.”
Koopmann said SACUA addressed the criticism leveled by students like Collins, and decided that because athletes formally represent the University whenever they slip a Wolverine jersey over they head and step onto a playing field, they should be granted priority registration.
Michigan Student Assembly President Sabrina Shingwani, who supported the resolution that MSA passed last April by a 23-3 vote, said in an e-mail that she met with members of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to talk about the issue before approaching several MSA representatives about sponsoring the bill.
When researching the proposal, Shingwani said MSA talked to representatives of other Big Ten schools with similar policies, like Northwestern University and Ohio State University, and other national peer institutions, including the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Virginia.
“MSA and SAAC’s goal, which we also believe to be the University’s goal, was to create and maintain a healthy balance between athletics and academics for student-athletes,” Shingwani said.
Because athletes comprise only 2 percent of the student body — roughly 750 students — Shingwani said priority registration for athletes shouldn’t have a major affect on the rest of the student population. She said she thinks students generally support of the resolution.
“We checked how much of an effect this would have on the rest of the student body, and we spoke to some specific student-athletes to get their personal testimonials about how the lack of priority registration affects them,” she said. “All of the collective evidence overwhelmingly proved that student-athletes need priority registration.”
According to the Office of the Registrar, there were a total of 5,631 undergraduate courses offered during the 2008 winter term. Fifty-five percent of those ended at or before 2:00 p.m.
Shingwani said most athletes can’t take classes after 2:00 p.m. because of practices and games.
Collins said he understands that students who play on a varsity athletic team have tight schedules, and that he agrees with the University’s desire to help them, but he said help shouldn’t be limited to just athletes.
“I see the situation, I’m just not sure if this is the correct way to go about it,” he said. “I understand how certain athletes, they might need a little but of extra help because they do have very demanding schedules, but I don’t think putting them ahead of the student body is the way to go about it.”
And despite the University’s support for athletics, Collins said student-athletes should remember the “student” part of their designation.
“In ROTC, they say that you should be a student first and a cadet second,” he said. “And because they are student-athletes, they are students first, and athletes second.”
Printed from www.michigandaily.com on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:42:42 -0500