SAAC Releases Statement- Student Athletes want to be heard

 

We are here for an education; there is nothing less that is expected of us simply because we are student-athletes, and we hold ourselves to the same standard as every other student on campus.

Please.  For the major sports, that's a little ridiculous. The rest of it sounds reasonable.

Seems like a reasonable request given that they do pour their heart and soul into athletics and academics for the University.

The letter's basic premise is that the student athletes' voices need to be heard on athletics matters.  Of all the stakeholders in Michigan athletics, the student-athletes would seem to have the biggest stake.  Also, the letter never used the word "muggle" once. 

So all-in-all I thought it was a fine letter.  Maybe a teensy bit whingy about Schlissel's "unqualified" statements, but still a tempered response from a group that has more at stake regarding changes in the Athletic Department than any other group.

Mmmmm.  Stake.

I think one of the major issues is that a lot of people say "student athlete" but really mean "Football player" -- forgetting the other 800 student athletes at a school.

I'm not saying anything bad about football players, those guys work harder at school and their sport more than I did, but it's hard to argue that there aren't issues involving the sport around the nation and specifically things like academic standards that other sports don't deal with.

and then had to spend time scraping it off his shoe. One of Hackett's jobs is to educate his boss on the entire picture of collegiate athletics at UM.

More "Athletic Department Against the World." I guess I just don't get it. Nor did I really think Schlissel had much to apologize for or clarify. But that's just me.

I don't see this as an "us vs. them" piece; seems to me to be exactly the opposite.  These kids work as hard as anyone on campus and harder than many, and I applaud their effort to make sure they are viewed as students first.  Fits in very well with what Schlissel says he wants.

It's a pointless statement... they don't mention whether they think Harbaugh will take the job.

I hope Schliss did his research before he came here.  Athletics are part of the very DNA of Michigan, and he's not going to be able to wish that away.

He may conclude that athletics are not part of the mission statement of the University, but he should not make the mistake of concluding that they are not part of his job.

I think the comments regarding the misrepresentation and stereotyping of student athletes as dumb jocks was very well said. From the experince that I have with college athletes, most student athletes are very hard workers and get solid grades. Many athletic departmets have Cumulative GPAs of 3.0 and over. The stereotypes come from the two revenue sports, which although may be true in some cases, certainitly don't represent everyone in those two sports. I'd like to see the average college student try to maintain a soild GPA having to adjust to living in a new state, having time commitments similar to that as a full-time job, withstand grueling physical expectations, and spend significant time out of the classroom due to roadtrips. 

The SAAC presents only part of the Schissel quote. The rest of it is below and he's citing actual data and using football as the catalyst for low historical gradiuation rates (which is true, since RR recruited a ton of kids that never made it).

''These past two years have gotten better, but before that, the graduation rates were terrible, with football somewhere in the 50s and 60s when our total six-year rate at the university is somewhere near 90 percent, so that's a challenge.''

 

I can't wait to read an article from the IFC pointing out the readily obvious fact that not every single greek life student is here getting blackout drunk and pilaging the sororities every night despite the growing anti-greek sentiment, and that most of them manage to function like human beings attending school. 

I find it both interesting and sad that one or two "fans" on a sports blog are attacking student-athletes for speaking their minds.  I think the piece is well-written and that student-athletes have every right to be pissed at being stereotyped as "dumb jocks," even if that particular phrase was never used.  

Extracirricular activites are supposed to be a sign of "leadership" and "ability to collaborate" on a resume.  It would be terrible if any degree from the University of Michigan was degraded by the pharse "varsity athlete."  

Great job by the SAAC.  

were hurtful and had relatively little utility because they didn't fully establish a context/swept with too broad a brush, but it's a tad ridiculous for them to deny the factual basis that student athletes are admitted on lower standards than non-student athletes (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/29/admit).

It's like they refused to throw the football team under the bus, but by doing so it sacrificed the validity of their statement. You can't argue that there is no problem with the balance of academics and athletics when football is the most visible and important aspect of the AD and has a very clear problem nationwide. 

Edit:  What I'm surprised about is that they didn't point out was that Schlissel was using outdated data to publicly attack the football program. 

It's fine for what it is, but as noted above I thought they've been pretty vocal about their feelings regarding the AD in recent months.  Yes, the president of your university shouldn't make blanket statements implying that athletes are not academically competitive with the rest of the student body when he is, at best, erroneously referring to a subset (football and basketball), but he apologized and seemed genuinely sorry for the misstep.  

But this feels a bit like outrage for the sake of it; the idea that athletes aren't being "listened to" is silly; student-athletes have not been shy about speaking about their experience at UM and how they feel they are viewed/how they view their peers.  And they released a letter in support of Brandon at the beginning of October - it's just that people in control didn't really care.  That might be troubling them more, but that's life.

Student Athletes Are Scrutinized on The Field and in The Classroom
Tracking graduation rates and team GPS's are fairly recent examples. Yes, a number get admitted that are "below average." But, in many other student circumstances the University admits "below average" students for diversity, demographics, etc. But, the success of these students is not tracked and published in newspapers and blogs. I suspect not all of these students graduate at the same rate as "normal" students. I support admitting both types of students and giving them a chance to succeed. Schlissel needs to look at some of these numbers for perspective.

From a purely logic point of view, Dr. Schlissel's quote only truly asserts that some student-athletes wouldn't be at Michigan if it weren't for their talents on the field.  Regardless of his intent, he didn't actually stereotype or generalize anyone.  I know we're not robots, so it's natural to read between the lines, but I think the reaction to this is based more on historical frustration than any present reality.  I also think the student-athletes are leveraging this comment as an excuse to express their displeasure at not having a say in the fate of Dave Brandon.

There isn't a problem with academics and athletics at Michigan. Maybe if you're coming at it in a Brown sense there's a problem but our APR is high and lots of players graduate. The only problem is that we aren't wining.