Athletic Board Meeting

Hello SGers,

The athletic board met October 17th. The meeting started with both the chair's and the director's reports. The chair, Walter Dickey, commented on his experience at the Big Ten meetings which took place earlier on. One of the most important subject discussed was the issue regarding mandatory summer school for basketball players. Currently there hasn't been too many members of the Big Ten in favor of mandatory summer school but the idea is gaining momentum throughout the conference, including some athletic department members here at UW. This is a very complex issue with both positives and negatives but for now we would just like to make it known that the idea is being discussed and will provide updates when we have more information.

There was also a discussion regarding the creation of a committee within the atheltic board to research the possibility of creating some type of academic sports program here at UW. We are waiting to hear from the chair still but both Logan and I will be very involved with this committee as soon as it is created. Logan did an independent research study on this issue and found that many Big Ten schools already have a program like this and many different schools throughout the nation have similar programs. With the increasing demand and popularity of programs like this we feel that it is essential that UW-Madison has a program like this because there are many people who would love to pursue some sort of career in athletics.

There was a member of the board who resigned from the athletic board. Despite the loss of the member, the board is moving forward in a positive direction and a new appointee will be named prior to our December 5th meeting. If you have further questions please ask.

A large part of the meeting was designated to talking about the Ad-Hoc committee which was designed to determine the exact role of the athletic board and how it operates. Each member of the board is assigned to different sub-committees and much of the work that gets done on the board is done on these various sub-committees. Some of the committees meet more often than others and some are also interrelated, so we may potentially combine some of these committees for the convenience of the members and efficiency of the board. There was a huge discussion regarding the functions of the board and what exactly is the role of the board members. We also discussed and tried to order the priorities of the board. This will be presented at the next meeting. The Ad-Hoc committee will be meeting and re-wording their draft in hopes that we can potentially approve the role of the board in one of our future meetings.

Finally, we are currently in the process of the NCAA-Self Study which is our way of self assessing our athletic department to make sure that we are complying with all rules and regulations and are also making attempts to improve upon our deficiencies in areas such as gender equity, diversity, and student athlete well being amongst many others. This process is supposed to be a community and campus wide project. We are near the completion of our answers to the many questions provided by the NCAA and as soon as we are done with this, we will be creating a website where members can submit questions and comments. We will be sure to let you know when the website is up and running.

Thats all folks. Any questions, feel free to ask.