Moratorium forum solicits suggestions

President Tilghman met with students, administrators and varsity athletes last night to discuss possible reforms to the seven-week athletic moratorium.

In December, the eight Ivy League university presidents met to discuss the rule, put into effect this fall, which requires athletes to forgo practice and contact with coaches for seven weeks during the academic year. The presidents will convene again at the end of the academic year to consider potential reforms.

During the December meeting, Tilghman said the presidents agreed that the rule was a "blunt instrument."

"We've heard from you, the staff, the coaches, [that] there were unintended consequences, and there were ways in which the moratorium [was] simply not achieving our goals, and we committed ourselves to considering alternatives in June," she said.

Her call for constructive thinking about how to modify the moratorium was followed, at first, by general objections to the concept as a whole.

The crowd of about 75 was dominated by student-athletes, who immediately raised a host of criticisms ranging from the impossibility of recreating the atmosphere and intensity of team practices to the drop-off in conditioning and increase in injuries endemic to unstructured workouts.

As the discussion moved on, one student questioned whether GPA should really be "the most important thing in our college career."

"It is the most important thing in the University," Tilghman quickly answered. "We value many things. First among equals is academic performance. The degree to which we are setting up a program that makes it hard for you to achieve what everyone in this room is capable of achieving is worrisome," she said.

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Tilghman said she worries the University might follow the national trend of unintentionally fostering an "athletic culture" that would separate varsity athletes from the rest of the student body.

Another student asked why, for example, the Ivy League presidents were not limiting the practice time of the Tigertones a-cappella group.

"We've done a direct comparison of music-oriented students and athletes," she said, "[and] music-oriented students do not academically under-perform."

Possible improvements

When the dialogue, contentious at first, turned to positive improvements, several substantive suggestions came from the floor.

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One suggested solution to performance drop-off and the possibility of injuries was budgeting one or two coach-led practices during each of the seven "off-weeks."

Other suggestions were Frist Campus Center late meals for upper -class student-athletes, taping and broadcasting on Tigervision more lectures that occur during athletic practices and better tailoring the moratorium to fit specific sports.

Athletic director Gary Walters '67 said, "One of the concerns we all have is the seven week moratorium is a Procrustean bed as we try to apply it to all sports. What we're attempting to do is to look at the moratorium again."

Tilghman said she also worried that the moratorium "didn't recognize nuances."

"It's going to have to do that," she said, but also noted that there was a commitment to keeping some form of the moratorium. "I don't want to leave you with the impression that we're going back to 2002," she said.

USG president Pettus Randall '04, in an interview after the forum, said he thought the meeting was a productive beginning to a dialogue that will continue throughout the year.

He said Tilghman was actively working with the USG and the Varsity Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to seek alternatives to report back to the Ivy League president's council in June.

Randall said he was very optimistic about researching positive and feasible ideas for reform through the USG and VSAC.

Randall acknowledged there was "an ideological difference that we're not going to be able to overcome," but said he thought the meeting was "a good starting point. The road to another solution is going to be quite long."