I think the decision to participate in national championships was a mistake. It shifts the emphasis from student-athlete to athlete-student in ways that ripple to the admissions office and the classroom.

In my opinion, it is not only unnecessary, but runs against the original intent of Div III athletics at an academically elite liberal arts college.

To me, the one thing that a place like Williams can offer is the absolute best, most interactive academic experience in the country. Research universities can compete for national championships, but they can’t offer what Williams can academically. That is diluted when a signficant portion of the student body is missing classes and exams.

Does winning a women’s softball championship add value in the eyes of the alumni? I doubt it. Certainly not as much as beating Amherst.

What do you suppose was the original intention of being in NCAA Div III at an academically elite liberal arts college? One need not join the NCAA if they want to compete against a dozen other elite schools, on weekends only.

Anything the pros or the Division Ones do is suspect. To me post-season play exudes an air of artificiality and the stench of commercialism. It probably doesn’t belong at Williams. Can someone convince me that it does?

and I had always grown up assuming that everyone put on their pants the same way I do…

so much for that, I guess…

Aidan, the difference is that once our pants are on, some of us make gold records.

Explore the studio space!

If you will permit me to answer within the limited scope of the question “Why allow post season competition/national championships?” I think the answer is simple. You have to allow me not to contend with something like “Do we let them miss/reschedule finals?” and the other necessary costs that come when you need to reconcile priorities. But if I can be allowed to just answer Frank and Neal’s questions, I’d have to say:

I think it’s just a matter of letting people try to reach their best. Put broadly like that, all places like Williams yearn to see it happen in their members. How do you tell a team that has rocketed to the top of their conference that they cannot go further, and compete among the other best? If the Boston Marathon were on the same day as a major final, would we not understand, support, celebrate, a decision by Michelle Rorke to fail a class for it?

To have a policy of allowing Div III athletes to go as far as they can with their talent creates draws against academics and social lives, even for non-athletes, in ways that I do not write off and will not try to balance here. But to have the opposite policy, of no advancement to a level past conference, would seem an awful ceiling to have over me, as an athlete.

Johnathon:

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of semi-pro Division I schools where you can not only compete for NCAA championships, but can probably have your academic responsibilities set aside to do so.

Plus, those programs would push you to really “be your best” against a much higher level of competition.

As far as I know, Williams managed quite well for 200 years without competing in national championships. The policy change reflected a major shift in priorities for the school — athletics taking precedence over academic responsibilities.

BTW, I have read enough history of college athletics at liberal arts colleges to know that reigning in the model to ensure STUDENT-athletes participating in sports as an EXTRACURRICULAR activity came following a period of excess prior to World War I. At the time, colleges like Williams and Swarthmore basically had professional sports teams, stocked with players making little or no pretense of being students. In fact, many of these players would play for one school for a while and then move to another.

A picture of a bloodied Swarthmore football player “Tiny Maxwell” in national papers created such as stir that President Roosevelt threatend to take action to abolish football if colleges did not reign in the excesses and the professionlism. This era gave way to a sustained period of widespread emphasis on academics from the post-WWI period. In my opinion, colleges like Williams benefitted enormously from the emphasis on academics: carving out the one market niche in which the rapidly growing research universities could not, and cannot, compete. Give up that market niche and why would anyone go to Williams?

Jonathan: Why not withdraw from NESCAC (but continue to compete against some of the NESCAC colleges on a selective basis) and have each Williams team schedule a more challenging, interesting and creative schedule which would stretch the capacities of the team and its members within the regular season rather than from time-to-time play in the hit-or-miss, academic-calendar-disrupting post-season? For instance, perhaps the swim teams could annually schedule quadrangular meets involving Emory, Denison and Kenyon.

I still don’t understand why people have such a problem with Williams being good at many things. That is what I liked about Williams. I wanted to go to Williams not because it was where I could get “the absolute best, most interactive academic experience in the country,” although I though it was that, but because it was where I could get the absolute best, most interactive academic experience in the country while at the same time competing on an amazing swimming program with swimmers who can represent our team as one of the best in the nation and even do things like go to Olympic trials. Williams is not a special place because it is represents an amazing academic experience. There are many places that offer that, and although I believe Williams is better than those places it is not better to such a degree as to mark it as anything truly exceptional. Williams is a special place because Williams students can, and often do, do it all. I remember being told often throughout my years at Williams that a liberal arts education was the best form of education because it acknowledged that learning was a lifelong experience and thus it was more important to spend your four years of college learning how to learn and how to face different challenges and experiences than actually gaining a specific knowledgebase or skill set for the future. Williams exemplifies this by encouraging students to do as many things as possible, to learn not just in the classroom but also in the pool or the dance floor or a club meeting or by spending a perfectly good school day hanging out on the side of a mountain. We could certainly debate whether taking another set of finals was a more “interactive academic experience” than competing in a national championship tournament, but the beauty of Williams is that we don’t have to, it is possible to due and excel at both. That is what makes Williams a special place.

As for the decision to allow Williams students to compete in national championships, my understanding was that the decision came about because many talented students were wondering why their hard work on the playing field was being ignored and they were prevented from reaching the next level of competition merely because someone might be fearful about putting across the wrong impression about the priorities between academics and athletics, priorities that were never really in doubt for the students themselves. Apparently, HWC’s response to those students is that they must choose one or the other, that they cannot possible want to attend an amazing academic institution while at the same time spending a weekend competing at NCAAs. Indeed, the only other option offered is to go to a Div I school and have your academics set aside in favor of athletics. It does not seem that there is much room for a student to be more than a caricature who is either totally focused on academics or athletics. Personally, I would prefer a college that challenges students to defy such limiting categories and excel at multiple things at the same time, no matter how badly it disrupted our marketing niche.

There are many places that offer that, and although I believe Williams is better than those places it is not better to such a degree as to mark it as anything truly exceptional.

As an alum, I’m disappointed to hear a recent student say that the academics at Williams aren’t truly exceptional. For many decades, the school was known for precisely that — along with one or two other schools, the absolute best interactive academic experience in the country.

But, I can tell that winning Div III national championships is a very important priority now, for students and administrators. The faculty members on the Ad Hoc Committee expressed the sentiment that NCAA championship competition undermines the academic experience.

hwc-

are you reading what Kevin wrote? Kevin is saying Williams is academically the best college in the world–better than Yale, Harvard, Amherst, or your precious Swarthmore. However, Kevin is also pointing out that while Williams offers academically a better experience than these schools, the difference isn’t large enough to be considered “truly exceptional.”

Kevin is NOT saying that the Williams academic experience isn’t “truly exceptional.”

I think what IS pretty undeniably “truly exceptional” is your ability to twist and spin things others have said to reflect poorly upon Williams, as well as your continual self-delusions surrounding the magnitude of just about any of the problems on campus.

Just as in the David Horowitz controversy of 2002, Kevin’s meaning here depends on the antecedent of the last “it.” “It” could fairly stand for “Williams” or “the degree” that Williams is better:

Williams is not a special place because it is represents an amazing academic experience. There are many places that offer that, and although I believe Williams is better than those places it is not better to such a degree as to mark it as anything truly exceptional.

Because “Williams” is the closest possible antecedent to the second and third “it”s, it’s reasonable to interpret what hwc did. Either way, I’m all for presuming honest readings, and not “continual self-delusions.”

I am not quite sure how going to championships really affects the academic experience of students. Varsity athletes tend to miss at most a couple classes because of athletics, but most students tend to miss a class or two for one reason or another- athletes just have a legitamite reason for doing so. I also do not believe that rescheduling of finals really affects the academic experience at Williams- the athletes have already attended the classes and done the work, who cares if they need to take a test a bit earlier (a lot of the exams now are self-scheduled or take home anyways).

Playing against the best competition (and beating them) outside of NESCACs without attending championships would not be an equivalent accomplishment to winning a national championship because people like recognition for their hard work. It is one thing to beat a top team, it is another to be NCAA champion. You will not go down in NCAA history for just beating a top team, but you will go down in history if you are a champion (and get a banner).

A question I would have then is where do we make the cutoff for extracurriculars getting in the way of academics? Which extracurriculars are important enough to miss time? I would say we could agree that most JA related activities would be, and most of them affect academics (such as selection committee and being a JA). The people that organize MinCo events and perform in the Berkshire Symphony also probably perform worse in the classroom when it is the week of their show- should we limit their practice time? Sports can create a bond among a large percentage of the campus- just ask anyone who was at the NCAA tournament games when Crotty, Coffin, and Abba were working their magic.

All students miss time and class for extracurricular activities (or just because they don’t do the work) at one time or another. However, athletes are more easily picked out for this than other groups. I for one have thoroughly enjoyed being able to follow athletes throughout their championship quests. As a participant of a team that went to NCAAs for 2 years I can say that I do not believe it harmed my academic experience at all (I may have missed a combined 3 classes). Williams students are special not only because they excel in the classroom but also because they excel on the playing field.

As an alum, I’m disappointed to hear a recent student say that the academics at Williams aren’t truly exceptional. For many decades, the school was known for precisely that — along with one or two other schools, the absolute best interactive academic experience in the country.

As current eph points out, I never suggested that Williams was not truly exceptional or did not offer the best interactive academic experience in the country, if not the world. What I was pointing out is a crucial distinction that you seem to gloss over in the above quote. I believe that Williams has excellent academics–the best of any college I know about–but I am not sure I can claim that these academics are by themselves truly exceptional. When it comes to a purely academic level, there are plenty of places that also offer very excellent academics. Harvard, for instance, is full of very smart people and very smart professors. Although I would disagree, I could even see some people arguing that Harvard’s academics are better than Williams’s, because they have more resources, a whole big university, and all sorts of celebrity professors. However, I could not understand anyone claiming that Harvard has a better “interactive academic experience,” to use HWC’s term, than Williams. That is because academics at Williams goes much deeper than just the classes. Looking myopically at the academics marks Williams as one of the top colleges in the world, but not necessarily truly exceptional. Looking deeper at the entire Williams experience–the academics, the academic culture, the liberal arts philosophy, the location, the students, the faculty, the clubs, the arts, and, yes, the athletics–is what sets Williams apart as truly exceptional. Or, to put it another way, I do not believe I could make a persuasive argument that Williams is truly exceptional based solely on academics. I am quite certain I could make a persuasive argument that Williams is truly exceptional based on the learning that goes on there. And the reason I can make this distinction is that Williams, unlike many other institutions, has realized that learning encompasses far more than pure academics. This is a fairly crucial distinction, but I think it is everything about what makes Williams Williams.

I also think that there is another interesting distinction here. HWC writes, “I can tell that winning Div III national championships is a very important priority now, for students and administrators.” I would agree with this statement, depending on how you phrase it. For me, at least, I would not say that Williams college winning Div. III national championships is a very important priority. I would say that I consider Williams college students attempting to win Div. III national championships to be a very important priority. I believe that having students doing something incredible, particularly as part of a team of their peers from diverse backgrounds and with diverse skills, to be something very important. Winning a national championship is an example of this. Completing a thesis, or a play, or an art project, or running a WCFM radio show, or organizing a sucessful concert, or bringing in a speaker that packs Chapin are other examples. Attempting to win a national championship or accomplish any other impressive feat and failing can be just as valuable a learning experience. Challenging students to do these incredible things is an important part of the learning that goes on at Williams, which is why I don’t understand how a blanket ban on Williams athletes reaching the pinacle of their competitive experience is at all a good thing.