BOARD EDITORIAL

Whitman can offer outstanding sports facilities, outstanding academic programs and outstanding quality of life to any high school athlete. Yet three Whitman varsity teams have gone deep into their conference schedules without winning a conference game in the past year. For a college that strives for excellence, how can this mediocrity be tolerated?

It appears that Admissions and Financial Aid expect the Athletic Department to bend to their needs. Coaches are expected to recruit only athletes that would get in by themselves and then when those athletes get better financial aid offers from schools in conference, those coaches have to work twice as hard to get them to campus.
This is a huge problem because the very first step in building a strong team is getting good athletes to play for you. However, this can’t happen if the board of trustees is solely focused on academics.

As it stands now, coaches recruit a few athletes they want on their team and then give a list of those top recruits to Admissions. Admissions then tries to meet the needs of each team, but an athlete’s fate is ultimately up to whether admissions thinks they can succeed academically at Whitman.

We at the Pioneer think it is time Admissions re-evaluates this process.

Currently, high school athletes and non-athletes entering Whitman have almost the same average GPA. At first glance, this statistic appears as a positive, but what it actually means is that Admissions does not take into account the time athletes spend practicing in high school. Admissions expects athletes to get the same grades as non-athletes with a less amount of study time.

It seems that we are discriminating what interests we think are valid in our incoming class.

Of the athletes that Admissions does let in, the vast majority show they are as up to the academic rigors of Whitman as any other student.

After a year at Whitman, there is a minimal difference of about one one-hundredth of a GPA point between athletes and non-athletes.

However, administrators see this as a sign that we are on the right track athletically. They always want to conflate the two and their favorite teams seem to be the ones with the best students.

“Some of our best sports are academic sports. It’s not hard to find good students that happen to be good soccer players, or tennis players, or swimmers,” said Dean of Admission and Financial Aid J. Tony Cabasco.

Administrators should not be afraid of a division between athletics and academics. The culture of academics is so strong at Whitman that any amount of athletic success is not going to change that. Therefore, letting in a highly skilled athlete who so far hasn’t performed in the classroom is not going to change the face of the college from academics to athletics. In fact, the institutional academic support on campus will help that student get an education they wouldn’t have otherwise received.

If the college allowed this change then the pool of players that a coach could recruit would grow. Instead of worrying about what Admissions might think of an athlete, they could only worry about what they thought of an athlete.

Admission is only half the battle, though. According to Athletic Director Dean Snider, coaches really start to recruit athletes to Whitman after they get in and receive their financial aid award. A lot of Whitman recruits also applied to at least one other school in the Northwest Conference and so an athlete with a 3.8 in high school is going to get a much better financial aid offer at that other school. And in today’s failing economy, the price of college is going to weigh on each student’s college decision even more than it does now.

Whitman also reviews each application for financial aid “athlete blind.” That policy means that Whitman will never consider the applicants athletic status in making an offer and it is required for all Division III schools. This rule is fair and should not be changed, but it does mean Whitman will remain the most expensive school in the Northwest Conference, unless something drastic is done.

The change that we propose is for the college to move towards a system like they have at Stanford. Right now, Stanford pays a student’s tuition if their parents earn less than 100,000 dollars a year and parents earning less than 60,000 dollars a year don’t have to pay tuition, room and board, or other expenses.

These programs require a much larger endowment then Whitman currently has, but we are heartened to know that Whitman is in process of a major fund-raising campaign to work towards programs like these. It will benefit both perspective athletes and non-athletes alike.

However, Director of Financial Aid Services Varga Fox doesn’t seem to be on board.

“I have a philosophical problem with handing a student an education because we all know that when you work for something, you appreciate it more. So a student that is invested in their education has a stronger desire, I think, to do well and to appreciate it more,” said Fox.

We at the Pioneer disagree with Fox. We do not think that the most expensive meal is always the best and our parents paying for our education don’t either.

Academics and athletics are the two most prominent aspects of college life and we at the Pioneer think they should not be treated as adversaries. Athletics can be a fun diversion from academic pressures as well as promote a healthy lifestyle. There is no danger of a division between the athletes and the non-athletes on campus. What is good for the athlete is good for everyone.