Athlete admissions policy discussed by Faculty Council

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Committee: Some athletes may not be prepared for rigors of Rice

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by James Tolle

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Chandler Davidson, sociology professor and Admissions Committee chair, voiced his disappointment with some of the progress made in that area over the past two and a half years.

In 1992, the general faculty voted on proposals to raise the academic standards for incoming athletes. As a result of that vote, several changes were implemented. Before the 1994- 95 school year, President Malcolm Gillis initiated a committee consisting of faculty, the director of admissions and members of the Board of Governors.

The committee agreed to give the final authority over athletic admissions to the dean of admissions. It also set up a subcommittee of three faculty members to work with the dean to raise the academic standards of athletic admissions.

Davidson reported that the subcommittee's advice to reject some lower quartile athlete applicants with low SAT scores made little impact on the dean's admission decisions.

The three-member subcommittee was asked by the dean of admissions to evaluate athlete applicant profiles and to advise the dean in his decisions of acceptance or rejection.

This subcommittee, consisting of Davidson, Computational and Applied Mathematics Professor Edward Cox and Linguistics Professor Phillip Davis, made its judgments based on their evaluation of the applicant's ability to handle the rigor and difficulty of the Rice academic situation, according to Davidson.

"The goal was to regularize the admission of athletes," Dean of Admissions Dick Stabell said.

"We wanted to have one common application process which everyone would follow. Right now we consider athletes outside the process because of timing," he said.

Since there are NCAA regulations specifying when letters of intent are signed and scholarships awarded, difficulties arise in having a uniform process with students who apply before a fixed date and are informed of their admission later.

"We started this [the new process] last year. It took a while last year to learn the process," Stabell said. "I think it will work better this year."

He said Rice was working towards the goal of raising academic standards for athletic admissions.

Some students disagree with the idea of raising the athelete admissions standards.

Cross country team member Jeff Lewis said that raising academic standards would only weaken the athletic programs that already have to deal with higher admissions standards.

"If they raise the standards, our chances of being competitive will decrease," Lewis said. "If someone's main focus in high school was not academics, then it makes sense that they will have lower grades and test scores."

Lewis thinks that the main admissions consideration should be the chance to compete and get a good education. He said that Rice has higher academic standards than other Southwest Conference schools and raising standards would weaken Rice's position to compete in the more challenging Western Athletic Conference.

"Rice puts a huge emphasis on academics to begin with compared with other schools," Lewis said. "The main thing is that it is fair to give athletes a chance to get a better education than they would at those other schools."

This item appeared in the News section of the October 27, 1995 issue.

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