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CalTech Banned!
Caltech Gives New Meaning to ‘Academically Ineligible’
By ADAM HIMMELSBACH
Published: July 13, 2012
Athletics are not the hallmark of the California Institute of Technology. Its baseball team has lost 227 games in a row and its women’s volleyball team has lost all 168 of its conference games. In 2011, the men’s water polo team snapped a seven-year winless drought, and the men’s basketball team ended a 310-game conference losing streak.
Its academic reputation, however, is sterling. Caltech alumni and faculty have won a combined 32 Nobel Prizes. So when the N.C.A.A. on Thursday cited Caltech for a lack of institutional control of its Division III athletic program, specifically related to academics, there was a mostly quizzical reaction, as if it must be an error.
“I was definitely pretty surprised,” said the senior basketball player Christophe Kunesh, a computer science major. “It all seemed a little harsh.”
The N.C.A.A. determined that a total of 30 Caltech athletes on 12 teams practiced or played in games while academically ineligible from the 2007-08 to 2010-11 academic years. But most of the infractions, which were discovered and reported by Athletic Director Betsy Mitchell in 2011, were the result of Caltech’s unusual class registration system.
During the first three weeks of each trimester, students at Caltech, the academically rigorous college in Pasadena, take part in a process known as shopping, in which they are allowed to essentially sample classes before being required to register for them. Rod Kiewiet, Caltech’s dean of undergraduate students, said many students stayed in these classes for the entire term, but they, like so many college students, sometimes procrastinated.
“A very large number of them have already picked out their classes, and they’re going to the classes,” Kiewiet said. “They just don’t get registered until the deadline.”
If students are not officially registered for enough classes during this three-week period, they can be considered part-time students, and part-time students are ineligible to compete in N.C.A.A. events.
“Nobody was trying to get around the system,” Kunesh said. “It wasn’t like it was a loophole they lucked into. When you look at what happens at some Division I schools relative to what happens at Caltech, it’s all kind of silly.”
Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sport management at Drexel University, said the focus of the N.C.A.A.’s action seems misplaced. “A situation in which they have very specific reasons as to why they run their academic programs the way they do is a very different issue than an institution manipulating their academic program in order to allow athletes who should not be eligible to become eligible,” she said.
Caltech’s penalties include a one-year postseason ban for sports in which ineligible players competed, a one-year ban on off-campus recruiting, three years of probation and a $5,000 penalty.
Also, Caltech’s sports information department will soon meet with the N.C.A.A. to determine which wins and records the university must vacate. There was brief concern that the men’s basketball team’s 46-45 win over Occidental in 2011, which ended the 310-game conference losing streak, would be overturned. But no ineligible players were used in that game.
“That was huge, because it definitely would have been very upsetting if they reversed that,” Kunesh said. “It was such a big deal to break that streak.”
Mitchell said some athletes were found to be academically ineligible for failing to maintain individual requirements. But most of the missteps were related to the class shopping system. Mitchell said there was not enough communication between academic and athletic departments to certify whether an athlete was enrolled in enough classes to be eligible.
“It became clear we had gaps and holes,” Mitchell said, “and we weren’t doing things at least the way I was accustomed to.”
Many of those problems were rectified during the past academic year, Mitchell said. All 17 teams had a team grade-point average of 3.0 or higher, and the averages of the men’s swimming, women’s water polo and men’s cross-country teams were in the top three in Division III in their sports.
Mike Paluchniak, a junior guard on the basketball team, said there was a noticeably different tenor regarding class registration in the past year.
“There was a lot more focus put on making sure everything was being met with some compliance things,” Paluchniak said.
Considering Caltech’s record of athletic futility, the one-year postseason bans are not akin to a major college football team’s being banned from a bowl. But Paluchniak said the basketball team, for one, was deflated by the news.
“It sounds a little skewed to somebody not familiar with our program, but the postseason ban really has us bummed,” he said. “It’d be easy for somebody to laugh at that because of how things have gone, but this takes away from us. We’ve had our goal set on the postseason, and now we’ll just have to go out and win as many games as we can.”
Post Extras: * * *
Caltech Gives New Meaning to ‘Academically Ineligible’
By ADAM HIMMELSBACH
Published: July 13, 2012
Athletics are not the hallmark of the California Institute of Technology. Its baseball team has lost 227 games in a row and its women’s volleyball team has lost all 168 of its conference games. In 2011, the men’s water polo team snapped a seven-year winless drought, and the men’s basketball team ended a 310-game conference losing streak.
Its academic reputation, however, is sterling. Caltech alumni and faculty have won a combined 32 Nobel Prizes. So when the N.C.A.A. on Thursday cited Caltech for a lack of institutional control of its Division III athletic program, specifically related to academics, there was a mostly quizzical reaction, as if it must be an error.
“I was definitely pretty surprised,” said the senior basketball player Christophe Kunesh, a computer science major. “It all seemed a little harsh.”
The N.C.A.A. determined that a total of 30 Caltech athletes on 12 teams practiced or played in games while academically ineligible from the 2007-08 to 2010-11 academic years. But most of the infractions, which were discovered and reported by Athletic Director Betsy Mitchell in 2011, were the result of Caltech’s unusual class registration system.
During the first three weeks of each trimester, students at Caltech, the academically rigorous college in Pasadena, take part in a process known as shopping, in which they are allowed to essentially sample classes before being required to register for them. Rod Kiewiet, Caltech’s dean of undergraduate students, said many students stayed in these classes for the entire term, but they, like so many college students, sometimes procrastinated.
“A very large number of them have already picked out their classes, and they’re going to the classes,” Kiewiet said. “They just don’t get registered until the deadline.”
If students are not officially registered for enough classes during this three-week period, they can be considered part-time students, and part-time students are ineligible to compete in N.C.A.A. events.
“Nobody was trying to get around the system,” Kunesh said. “It wasn’t like it was a loophole they lucked into. When you look at what happens at some Division I schools relative to what happens at Caltech, it’s all kind of silly.”
Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sport management at Drexel University, said the focus of the N.C.A.A.’s action seems misplaced. “A situation in which they have very specific reasons as to why they run their academic programs the way they do is a very different issue than an institution manipulating their academic program in order to allow athletes who should not be eligible to become eligible,” she said.
Caltech’s penalties include a one-year postseason ban for sports in which ineligible players competed, a one-year ban on off-campus recruiting, three years of probation and a $5,000 penalty.
Also, Caltech’s sports information department will soon meet with the N.C.A.A. to determine which wins and records the university must vacate. There was brief concern that the men’s basketball team’s 46-45 win over Occidental in 2011, which ended the 310-game conference losing streak, would be overturned. But no ineligible players were used in that game.
“That was huge, because it definitely would have been very upsetting if they reversed that,” Kunesh said. “It was such a big deal to break that streak.”
Mitchell said some athletes were found to be academically ineligible for failing to maintain individual requirements. But most of the missteps were related to the class shopping system. Mitchell said there was not enough communication between academic and athletic departments to certify whether an athlete was enrolled in enough classes to be eligible.
“It became clear we had gaps and holes,” Mitchell said, “and we weren’t doing things at least the way I was accustomed to.”
Many of those problems were rectified during the past academic year, Mitchell said. All 17 teams had a team grade-point average of 3.0 or higher, and the averages of the men’s swimming, women’s water polo and men’s cross-country teams were in the top three in Division III in their sports.
Mike Paluchniak, a junior guard on the basketball team, said there was a noticeably different tenor regarding class registration in the past year.
“There was a lot more focus put on making sure everything was being met with some compliance things,” Paluchniak said.
Considering Caltech’s record of athletic futility, the one-year postseason bans are not akin to a major college football team’s being banned from a bowl. But Paluchniak said the basketball team, for one, was deflated by the news.
“It sounds a little skewed to somebody not familiar with our program, but the postseason ban really has us bummed,” he said. “It’d be easy for somebody to laugh at that because of how things have gone, but this takes away from us. We’ve had our goal set on the postseason, and now we’ll just have to go out and win as many games as we can.”
Post Extras: * * *
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