Spring 1998

On the Role of Athletics at St. Lawrence

St. Lawrence has an unusually rich and diverse program of intercollegiate athletics for men and women when compared to those at other top liberal arts colleges. It also has a long and distinguished tradition of success, which I was lucky enough to experience myself as a member of the St. Lawrence’s varsity soccer, basketball and baseball teams.
Since I arrived in the summer of 1996, shortly after publication of the report of the Athletics Commission, Tom Coburn (academic dean, and the person to whom athletics now reports) and I have been in discussion with the department and, from time to time, with the faculty as a while and with student to sort out where we as a university want to be with regard to intercollegiate athletics. Here is an update.
We have agreed that intercollegiate athletics is primarily about the education and development of young people. Without that as the core purpose of athletics, it would make little sense to pursue it so vigorously and broadly at a liberal arts college. The first test of success, then, must involve assessment of educational outcomes, just as that is the test of our academic program. We are working with the department now on strategies for evaluation of coaches, with the primary focus on determining whether the educational goals we have are being achieved.
At the same time, we share with the department and a great many faculty, staff, students, alumni and parents the strong belief that our program of intercollegiate athletics can attract to St. Lawrence outstanding student-athletes who might otherwise choose to go elsewhere. It is imperative that members of the department take an active role, with the office of admissions, in identifying and recruiting to St. Lawrence the best students. St. Lawrence student-athletes are strong students. The academic performance of a significant majority of our teams is higher than that for the student body as a whole, in some cases by a large margin, and no team fails to be at least representative of the student body academically.
Third, the kind of athletic program which focuses on the development of young people will, in our judgment, also be very competitive with the teams of other colleges and universities. Excellent teaching, here as is every other pat of the University, brings the best out of students. Therefore, all St. Lawrence teams should enjoy significant competitive success, and that is also one of our important goals for St. Lawrence athletics.
It follows from all of this that, just as we need to care about the state of St. Lawrence’s academic and residential facilities, we also need to care about the state of our recreation and athletics facilities. Students today are incredibly active physically. We have told them for years that both their productivity and their health would improve with a disciplined, regular commitment to exercise. They took our advice.
Essential improvements in our recreation and athletic facilities are on the agenda for the next five to seven years, including the addition of an all-weather, lighted, outdoor playing field; an all-weather eight-lane competition track; relocation of the football field; construction of a new fitness center; renovation of Augsbury and Leithead; the possible addition of a second field house to include a competition 200-meter indoor track; construction of additional tennis courts; and the final stages of the renovation of Appleton Arena. We hope many of these improvements will be funded from Campaign St. Lawrence, and we are exploring gifts for these purposes now.
An important emphasis of the Athletics Commission report was gender equity, and increased gender equity in intercollegiate athletics at St. Lawrence is a critically important goal now. In pursuit of greater gender equity, the commission recommended elimination of several sports and reallocation of the savings at least partly for equity. Paradoxically, the sports recommended for elimination all involved important levels of participation by women, and many, including me, questioned whether eliminating sports would in fact save money. We know that, for the vast majority of student-athletes, the absence of their sport is a trip wire, ending their interest in attending a particular college. In a less competitive environment they might just be replaced with others, equally desirable in other way, but that is tough in the admissions world in which we live today. In my view, the most likely outcome of eliminating popular sports is less funding for gender equity and other purposes, not more. So, we will not eliminate sports and may even – at the right time and for the right reasons – consider adding sports.
To gain some flexibility to move into new directions, at our recommendation the faculty did decide to phase out the sport and leisure studies major and to eliminate the wellness requirement which involves successfully completing a sport and leisure studies course that provides the foundation for a lifetime of physical activity. This does not mean that no academic or wellness courses will be offered in the future – those issues are still under discussion. It just means there will be no major and no wellness requirement, and some resources can be reallocated to facilitate greater gender equity and strengthen existing athletic and recreation programs.
I view what St. Lawrence does in recreation and athletics as a key piece of a larger strategy. We need, first and foremost, to be distinguished academically, and to provide our students with a demanding, rigorous and life-transforming liberal education. We need also, however, to help our students achieve a kind of balance in their lives, and to take advantage of the fact that student can learn important things from athletics that are hard – though not impossible – to learn from other parts of our program. We aim to use an athletic program of absolute integrity to recruit, to teach, to compete. Come watch us!