Talks about “tips,” the ability of athletic families to pay more tuition, and who actually benefits the most (hint: it’s the white guys).
I found this to be the most interesting line:
“The administrator added that, in his experience, the gap in academic credentials between white men who got into Wesleyan as “tipped” athletes and white men who were admitted to the school as non-athletes was the widest of any demographic group.”
And many of them will go on to be very successful on Wall Street. And will be very loyal ($$$$) to Wes. While T-shirt guy runs a small non-profit in Vermont.
I’m not anti-athletes. I was friends with athletes at Wes. Freshman year, my friends and I thought it was fun to go to football games. But this is VERY disappointing. This is not the Wesleyan that I loved.
Also, cheerleaders? At Wesleyan? They can seriously put together a bunch of women at Wes who want to wear skimpy clothes in freezing weather and jump up and down yelling for male athletes? Ewwww.
I thought this was a very interesting article. Very few writers want to address the issue of affirmative action for athletes. It seems that the general public has no interest in shining a spotlight onto this issue.
Some college administrators seem to realize that AA for athletes is kind of icky but they don’t want to rock the boat because of the economics of involved because happy athletes tend to help the bottom line.
In any case ,this topic is very interesting yet very under reported.
My D was a recruited athlete and considered Wesleyan. It wasn’t a good fit for several reasons, but one was a lack of seriousness about excelling that the coach exhibited. He seemed to have resigned himself to just trying to field a team–forget about ever winning. So this article surprised me. After all our tour guide even bragged about Wes’ “portable” football stadium and definitely implied that athletics were not a big deal at the school and that that was good thing. Having just gotten the very same impression from the coach, D felt she’d prefer to be at a college that valued athletes a little more. I will also say that the coach told D that because she was an URM, her test scores didn’t need to be as high to gain admission. While I know that’s a reality at many colleges, the fact he said it out loud to her was a major turnoff.
Clearly the writer has an agenda not to mention some embellishment. Wesleyan holds 5000 max and the writer says “They would be full by kickoff”. Umm the TOTAL attendance for Wesleyan this year was 7746 for an average of 1937. Basically 38% of the stadium capacity was full(including number of visitors at home games) and only 1 game made it over 50%.
@TheGFG When we toured recently, our tour guide was a varsity athlete, so the impression we got was different than what you describe. The tour spent quite a bit of time in the athletic facility, and our guide talked a lot about the sports rivalry with Amherst and Williams.
I took that to mean, the home team stands. I’ve never seen the visiting team stands completely full (it is on such occasions when you realize how wan the color purple really can be.) Photos from the Tufts-Wesleyan night game do show a packed Cardinal crowd, albeit that game was heavily advertised in the Middletown papers: http://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2017/09/27/wesleyan-defeats-tufts-during-night-football-game/
@circuitrider They would be stretching it for sure. “Metal bleachers on each sideline hold a few thousand fans. They would be full by kickoff.” EVEN if you only took the home side which is about 4500 vs 500 visitors…The totals for BOTH sides were 2,703…1603…1135 and 2305(Williams which is the biggest game for both Homecoming and Family Weekend). None of those would had come close to filling the home side stands even if every person attending sat on the home side.
Keep in mind, these are rows of benches, not individual seats. How a fire warden might define “full capacity” is anyone’s guess. But, 2000 people, would certainly give the appearance of a full crowd.
^There were no tickets the last time I attended Homecoming in 2013. Attendance was free. Crowd size was derived from a guy standing by the entrance clicking a hand-held counter. Welcome to NESCAC.
I found the article interesting as its a dimension of the student body at many NESCAC/Ivy schools that unless you are an athlete you can miss. When I was a student at Wes in the 1980s I confess that over 4 years I may have attended a football game maybe once, if that. I do not remember really watching any of the sports teams at all. Now that I am an Alum I actually tune in sometimes on NSNsports and do watch a game here or there… not sure why but it does make me proud to see them win a game, whether its soccer or football. I think having a talent for sports should be viewed as similar to having a talent for music or art, and if you can admit an amazing artist and overlook low SAT scores, then why not a talented white male athlete too? The diversity scope is big enough for all.
These sorts of articles, and there are many floating around emphasizing various aspects of the athletic programs and admissions at LACs, give me pause before sending a non-athlete to a (esp. rural) LAC. If 1/3 of the student body is athletes who chose the school more on that aspect of the school than others, and then tend to hang around their teammates first and foremost, that will have a dramatic effect on the life of a non-athletic kid. (I am not criticizing athletes for hanging out with other athletes—people tend to socialize with people they know best, and athletes spend a great deal of time together.) The whole scene just sound like a larger, suburban high school—1,500-2,000 kids divided into artsy types, study hounds, partiers, and jocks. Nothing wrong with that per se, but as someone who went to a school like that, back when I left high school, the last thing I wanted to do was spend four more years in a similar environment.
@BooBooBear You do realize schools like Princeton have a student body made up of over 20% playing D1 sports? ?
From Harvard’s website “It is easy to make athletics and physical fitness a regular part of the undergraduate experience at Harvard. In fact, nearly 80 percent of our students are involved in some kind of athletics—and nearly everyone joins in cheering on their friends and classmates and showing Crimson pride”
Again their student body has over 20% recruited athletes playing D1…not to mention recreational fitness, intramural and club.
Not surprisingly they picked an Ivy school for the academics and sports not because of their sports prowess.