Reply to Amherst College Paper Article on Athletic Recruiting.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Every school has a budget.  Money is allocated each year across many areas, including sports and other non-academic activities.  Families have often endowed these programs in perpetuity, never having participated themselves, whether it be the concert hall, a pool, a hockey rink, etc.  Why?  Schools need well-rounded students. Schools need lessons beyond the classroom.  Guess what?  They are right.
[/quote] None of these is a good justification for giving athletes a backdoor into the university. Athletes already get a holistic boost for being athletes, why isn't that enough for them?[/quote]

These schools want to field teams which are elite and well beyond competitive. Doing so requires participation in the quest for talent because athletic talent combined with academic talent is a rare commodity and leaving to chance the ability to form a competitive team isn’t an option for these schools.[/quote] that's right - it has nothing to do with athletics making the students better people, as if it did, there would be little reason to choose to recruit for some sports but not others, or indeed recruit if any sport but not other valuable extracurriculars like music or debate.

But then the question is, why such a huge emphasis on a maximally competitive team for certain sports but not others, or even for  other extracurricular activities like music or esports? You don't see schools giving likely letters or giving nearly as much weight to letters of support from the music director or the coaches of club teams or the esports coach.[/quote]

Yes, I think the gripe is so many spots are allocated to sports, most of which generate little enthusiasm on campus. If there was some degree of equity with other, equally enriching and demanding, programs, that gripe would be vastly lessened.[/quote]

The gripe is about scarcity and people preferences. There has never been a single applicant pool, there are multiple pools based on institutional priorities. Athletics is often seen as a large pool at small elite schools and one which has an admissions bar which few can meet which drives resentment because this pool is taking seats from their preferred pools.[/quote]

The athlete pool gets a special separate admissions process. No other pool is based on an EC.

Why deny this?
[/quote]

I’m not denying it at all. And, that doesn’t change the truth regarding my comment one bit.

You can whine about “fairness” all you want but athletics have been institutional priorities at these schools for roughly 150 years and that is not changing. The “little three” rivalry was voted top 10 in college sports rivalries in the past year. Your preferences do not matter. And, the gripe is still about scarcity as we do not see people complaining about Athletic recruiting at Towson for example.[/quote]

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