When the Faculty Fumbles Sports Oversight

Athletics scandals rarely involve professors—much less the faculty members charged with overseeing academic integrity in the athletic department. But a handful of faculty athletics representatives, whose jobs involve that and sometimes more, have become entangled in high-profile controversies this year, as detailed in a package of articles in this week’s Chronicle.

One faculty representative lobbied admissions officials to fast-track high-risk applicants and tried to disband the Faculty Senate’s athletics oversight committee. Another says she persuaded professors to change the grades of failing athletes. Others cheer for their universities’ teams, and accept perks and stipends paid for by the departments they’re supposed to monitor.

The close ties raise thorny questions for colleges: Can you be a fan of the athletic department and adequately monitor it? (No, says the president of the Division I-A faculty reps’ group.) And are faculty members, whose primary responsibilities are teaching and research, really the right people for the job?

Gary R. Roberts, dean of the Indiana University Law School at Indianapolis, who has been a faculty rep for nearly 25 years on two campuses, says the position has inherent conflicts: “By the very nature of the job, you’re going to become an insider and less likely to be as diligent as you ought to be.”

His campus is trying what appears to be a new approach in Division I: dual faculty reps. And the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association says it plans to create an institute in which faculty representatives will receive additional training to help them do their jobs. Besides those solutions, what else can be done to solve some of the conflicts and challenges of the position?