Reply to ‘Playing volleyball here was a nightmare’: Inside the Dartmouth women’s volleyball team’s culture

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Just more evidence of how hard-core competitive athletics really has nothing to do with college.

I think we need to stop pretending that these sports have a connection to undergraduate education.

The sports that people pay to watch are more obviously misaligned.[/quote]

You have no idea what you are talking about. [/quote]

OK, please explain to me why the practice of semi-pro volleyball fits with a liberal arts undergrad education in New Hampshire.

What is the essential connection between these practices that I'm missing?

[b]The modern university started out as theological and clerical training for men.[/b]  With a splash of med school at some locations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volleyball

Volleyball seems to have been intended as basketball lite for YMCAs.

There is no necessary reason why NCAA teams need to exist.  It's just "fun" for most and a future career for the top players.  Universities do not need to prepare students for careers as pro athletes.  That could be handled by non-academic minor leagues.

Sports coaching has a lot of body control, abuse, and scandals associated with it.  It's even more shameful at a school where you'd hope for people to be a little smarter than average.

Please explain why these sports are a necessary part of the college experience.  Not about the fun of them, the why they simply must be part of the experience.  What with transfer portals, they are getting even more unhooked from whatever the original goals were.  There was a post on here complaining a few weeks ago about too many European advanced soccer players going to some state college down South where Europeans would otherwise never bother with. That's ridiculous.[/quote]

DP. The bolded part cuts into your argument. Just because the modern university started one way, it doesn't mean it cannot evolve into something different. Without evolution, the universities would still be doing theological and clerical training for men. Nowadays, the theological and clerical training for men is a minuscule part of the university (and programs are getting cut). I agree with the PP who wrote that universities offer choices: some of these choices may be great for some students and not that great for others. That's part of how they attract students - they will come if they have the choice they want. [/quote]

PP.  My point was just that the university is an ancient intellectual format with roots in religious education.  And attaching serious, high-level sports to it is quite a graft.  America has grafted more sports onto our higher education than anywhere else in the world and it doesn't fit very well.  Drama, mentioned by a PP, actually is also ancient and evolved in part for religious purposes.  There seem to be a lot fewer drama club "scandals" at colleges...but perhaps that's just because drama is mainly a cost center.  My point about mentioning that the ancient university educated men was just to point out that it's a long way from educating male priests to preparing top quality female volleyball setters.

I'm very tired of pastimes that attract scandalous leaders who claim noble purposes (such as leadership training) and then exploit and degrade people.  And leave them with permanent sports injuries.  It also seems that at many schools the athletes have lower measurable academic qualifications (this may not be true at Dartmouth).  I have a friend whose daughter is dropping out of D3 softball this year.  The 20 hours a week of practice interferes with her schooling and has left her with a shoulder injury that's new since starting college.  She is going to transfer colleges now.

From my perspective, it seems time to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Colleges do not seem to be producing the noble educational effects they claim by offering these sports.  College football and basketball should go first, but are money machines that are too entrenched to get rid of.[/quote]

The “long way from training male priests to female volleyball setters” line is not the profound point you think it is. It just restates that universities evolved. They also moved from excluding women entirely to educating them, from theology to modern science, from classical languages to engineering and public policy. For some reason, all of that evolution is acceptable, but women competing at a high level in sports is where you draw the line. That reads less like a historical argument and more like selective discomfort.

The “I’m tired of pastimes that attract scandalous leaders” point also falls apart once you apply it beyond athletics. Those same dynamics show up anywhere there is hierarchy and pressure. Theater programs have had recent repeated harassment and misconduct cases at places like University of Oklahoma, Indiana University, University of Michigan, University of Central Oklahoma, Central Connecticut State University, Salve Regina University, Mesa Community College, and Columbus State University. Research labs and graduate studies programs have long-standing issues with abusive advisors. Music and dance programs produce real, sometimes permanent injuries. ROTC does as well. Universities do not respond by eliminating these areas. They impose oversight and hold people accountable.

Then there is the suggestion to “start with football and basketball.” At many schools, those programs help fund large parts of the broader university ecosystem, including non-revenue academics and arts. So the proposed fix for problems in one volleyball program is to remove revenue streams that support everything from niche departments to student services. That is not a targeted solution.

What you’re really arguing is not about structure, it’s about personal preference. You don’t value athletics, so you’re comfortable treating it as disposable. But once you apply your own logic consistently across campus, it takes down far more than sports. That’s why no serious institution operates the way you’re suggesting.[/quote]

+1 To put it more succinctly, but less eloquently, this poster sounds like someone who doesn’t like sports and resents their presence on college campuses when the vast majority of students and alumni love their college sports teams and that component of their educational experience. [/quote]

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