More grist for the “what’s going on up at UH Manoa” mill.
According to a recent report by the Faculty Athletic Representative to the UH Manoa Faculty Senate, President M.R.C. Greenwood has had an “unprecedented” degree of involvement in major athletic policy decisions. According to the April 2012 report by Peter Nicholson, a professor of English and the designated NCAA Faculty Athletic Representative, an NCAA peer review team that visited Manoa last year identified “governance of the Athletics program” as an issue still needing to be dealt with.
When the decision was made to leave the Western Athletics Conference and to move to the Big West and the Mountain West, the system office took on an unprecedented role in what might normally be considered a campus matter. Not only did the President and Board approve the realignment, as is appropriate, but the President assumed the responsibility of representing the institution at meetings of the Mountain West (our new football conference), though not the Big West (our new conference for most of our other sports). The peer-review team noted the oddness of this arrangement, and it recommended that “your institution be represented by your campus head at all athletics conferences as soon as possible.” In its response, the university provided a letter from President Greenwood that included this paragraph: “As directed by the Board of Regents, I, as President, am representing UHM in the Mountain West Conference during the current transition period in which UHM is leaving the Western Athletic Conference and joining the Mountain West Conference (football only) and the Big West Conference (most other sports). The UHM Chancellor will assume responsibility for representation of UHM in the Mountain West Conference after the completion of the transition.”
Based on Greenwood’s letter, Nicholson wrote, it seemed the issue had been resolved and control would be assumed by the Manoa Chancellor.
Instead, Nicholson reports, “all normal procedures were again set aside in the hiring of the new football coach.”
…for the football search, the composition of the committee was determined by the system office. It contained no educators and no one from the Ma?noa campus, and there was no apparent attempt to bring together the full diversity of expertise that goes into the understanding of a coach’s role at a public university.
As faculty athletics representative, Nicholson is one of just five campus officials authorized to communicate directly with the NCAA on a variety of issues, and is considered by NCAA rules to be a key member of the campus athletics management team. However, he and the faculty senate’s committee on athletics have been excluded from participating in key decisions.
According to the recent report:
I have not, however, been invited to participate in any discussion concerning the football team’s membership in the Mountain West. The President’s office, moreover, which is taking such an interest in our football program, does not have the same relationship with the Ma?noa Faculty Senate that the Chancellor does, and the Senate’s Committee on Athletics too is therefore excluded from all discussion. And finally, I was told that when the constitution of the coach search committee was being decided, the idea of including a faculty member was specifically rejected.
The report then directly challenges the notion that “football is much bigger than Ma?noa.”
But I am afraid that what they are really saying is not about geography at all. In taking the football program away from the institution, they are saying that it’s not just about education or any of the proper functions of a university. It’s bigger than Ma?noa because it doesn’t exist just for the students. It’s about entertainment: it exists for the fans.
And that’s where we really have to resist. However much we might be afraid that they’re right, we have to continue acting like a university, and the only justification for having an athletics program at a university consists of the benefits that are derived by the students who participate – by the players themselves. It exists for them. We welcome the support and the enthusiasm of our community, but we are obliged to treat athletics as an educational program. It’s a matter of law. Title IX, which is well-known for requiring equity for men’s and women’s sports, should be equally well known for its fundamental underlying assumption: that athletics must be conducted, and they must be assessed, as education.
Football? Education? Radical!
–> Read the full Faculty Athletics Representative annual report dated April 26, 2012.
