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Post by mikegarrison on May 18, 2024 16:18:21 GMT -5
Part of the agreement is that they are not employees. Which is why it would be great if new legislation carves out a very narrow space for student-athletes to be able to have the full and exactly equivalent legal authority to collectively bargain *without* being employees. The law doesn't work like that. You can't make someone an employee in every respect except you deny they are an employee, and then expect that to stand up legally. I suppose if Congress specifically calls them out as some kind of exemption, they could do that. Otherwise, nope. |
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Post by mikegarrison on May 18, 2024 16:22:11 GMT -5
It's another thing for schools to jeopardize the BILLIONS of dollars they get from Federal funding by breaking Federal law. We as a society would allow funding to be taken away from brilliant PI’s who are researching how to cure cancer …… because of … sports? I heartily disagree that’s a real risk. I sure hope not That's the law. And it's a pretty good law, actually. Because the football programs should not really be the ones driving the rest of the university -- for the reasons you elude to in your post. |
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Post by mervinswerved on May 18, 2024 18:55:44 GMT -5
In general, I think the threat of losing federal funding because one of your university divisions broke federal law is a good deterrent.
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Post by mplsgopher on May 19, 2024 9:02:12 GMT -5
Couple things: 1) I am not advocating that schools who violate the law should go unpunished. They should be punished. Fines, settlements to the injured parties, and corrective actions, for sure.
2) Title IX applies to the whole school, as far as I know, and so extends well beyond just sports. For example, if a particular department of college was found to have discriminated against female graduate assistants by covering up several cases of harassment by a specific PI, I believe that would be a Title IX violation. What I'm saying is: if some PI has an R01 grant worth millions from the NIH to study a new way to cure cancer, and this person has never even attending a sporting event at the university let alone played sports themselves .... it would be abhorrent and frankly despicable to suggest that it would be appropriate to rescind that grant because of a T9 violation in the athletics department. That seemed to be what mikegarrison was suggesting could happen.
That would be just wrong. And hence why I don't believe we've ever seen such a thing even when terrible things happened (Penn State, Michigan State) or when academic scandals occurred (North Carolina ... even the U of Minnesota in the 90's with MBB) or when there was an admissions scandal (USC). Agreed, but it's not on the government to pull their punches, it's on the school not to break the law. The government should be protecting the rights of all citizens as the law provides, even athletes. FWIW, Michigan State was the rare case where the Dept of Education initiated a Title IX investigation, and the Trump administration didn't even really like Title IX, and even it found it necessary to fine Michigan State $4.6 million for Title IX and Cleary Act violations (a major state university in a swing state). Compared to $236 million in financial aid and $800 million in research (not sure how much of that is federally funded, $4.6 million isn't much but that on top of the $510 million in legal losses and $62 million in legal bills they already paid, which I assume was a consideration. It sold bonds for most of the Nassar debt so I don't know how much that impacted research budgets or staffing, but it wouldn't shock me if there was some impact. Appreciate the post. I think we're largely on the same page.
Agree with fines. And I wouldn't even be against the level of the fine being such that it caused them to (temporarily) decrease internal research funding. So be it, if that's what they (the school) chooses to do. What matters to me is that the punishment isn't specific and targeted at their research funding.
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Post by mplsgopher on May 19, 2024 9:08:36 GMT -5
Which is why it would be great if new legislation carves out a very narrow space for student-athletes to be able to have the full and exactly equivalent legal authority to collectively bargain *without* being employees. The law doesn't work like that. You can't make someone an employee in every respect except you deny they are an employee, and then expect that to stand up legally. I suppose if Congress specifically calls them out as some kind of exemption, they could do that. Otherwise, nope. You could be exactly right. I have no idea what may stand up to court scrutiny or not.
For however little it's worth, in my layperson mind when I said "new legislation" I was picturing something very much like what you say: a specific carveout for college student-athletes, which doesn't apply anywhere else.
Reasoning (again here as a layperson, I have no idea how to make this legally rigorous): 1) the (quite large) value of college athletics, other than at a couple handfuls of specific situations across the country in football, men's basketball, and then a few more on top of that over the gamut if sports, comes from putting the games on TV and getting fairly large viewership. For some reason, it seems to be that people will tune in to college sports, but not minor league professional sports. This is a whole discussion, that we don't need to get into here. We can just take it as truth, as the numbers clearly seem to indicate. And so, one possible consequence of this is that making the athletes professionals would drastically decrease the TV viewership and thus evaporate all that substantial value into thin air. 2) there are strict, specific limitations on the amount of time any person is allowed to be a student-athlete. Thus, it can never be a career. It's a short, specified window to play college sports as a college student-athlete.
This kind of reasoning is why I think a specific carveout law has a chance. I hope so, at least.
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Post by n00b on May 19, 2024 9:11:23 GMT -5
In general, I think the threat of losing federal funding because one of your university divisions broke federal law is a good deterrent. Right. And we aren’t even really talking about an “oops we screwed up” kind of Title IX violation. Universities get penalties for those all the time. We seem to be talking about getting a specific interpretation about how to apply non-discrimination law to a department ultimately overseen by the president of the university, and the university saying “nope, not gonna do it”. |
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Post by mervinswerved on May 19, 2024 9:38:16 GMT -5
Agreed, but it's not on the government to pull their punches, it's on the school not to break the law. The government should be protecting the rights of all citizens as the law provides, even athletes. FWIW, Michigan State was the rare case where the Dept of Education initiated a Title IX investigation, and the Trump administration didn't even really like Title IX, and even it found it necessary to fine Michigan State $4.6 million for Title IX and Cleary Act violations (a major state university in a swing state). Compared to $236 million in financial aid and $800 million in research (not sure how much of that is federally funded, $4.6 million isn't much but that on top of the $510 million in legal losses and $62 million in legal bills they already paid, which I assume was a consideration. It sold bonds for most of the Nassar debt so I don't know how much that impacted research budgets or staffing, but it wouldn't shock me if there was some impact. Appreciate the post. I think we're largely on the same page. Agree with fines. And I wouldn't even be against the level of the fine being such that it caused them to (temporarily) decrease internal research funding. So be it, if that's what they (the school) chooses to do. What matters to me is that the punishment isn't specific and targeted at their research funding.
What other federal laws should universities be allowed to break without risking their federal research dollars? |
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Post by mplsgopher on May 19, 2024 11:44:58 GMT -5
Appreciate the post. I think we're largely on the same page. Agree with fines. And I wouldn't even be against the level of the fine being such that it caused them to (temporarily) decrease internal research funding. So be it, if that's what they (the school) chooses to do. What matters to me is that the punishment isn't specific and targeted at their research funding.
What other federal laws should universities be allowed to break without risking their federal research dollars? To me personally it's no different than I don't think your house and your entire neighborhood should have their water shut off for a month as punishment for your neighbor cheating his federal taxes.
You're of course free to call that a flawed analogy. I would just like to ask you to explain your reasoning and put forth your proposal for how you'd like to see it work, please and thank you.
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Post by mervinswerved on May 19, 2024 12:42:24 GMT -5
What other federal laws should universities be allowed to break without risking their federal research dollars? To me personally it's no different than I don't think your house and your entire neighborhood should have their water shut off for a month as punishment for your neighbor cheating his federal taxes. You're of course free to call that a flawed analogy. I would just like to ask you to explain your reasoning and put forth your proposal for how you'd like to see it work, please and thank you.
An athletic department isn't an independent organization that just exists in geographic proximity to a university. It's a unit with in the school itself and when it violates federal law, it's the university violating federal law. I think title IX works pretty well in terms of discouraging schools from discriminating against people. |
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Post by Phaedrus on May 19, 2024 13:08:15 GMT -5
To me personally it's no different than I don't think your house and your entire neighborhood should have their water shut off for a month as punishment for your neighbor cheating his federal taxes. You're of course free to call that a flawed analogy. I would just like to ask you to explain your reasoning and put forth your proposal for how you'd like to see it work, please and thank you.
An athletic department isn't an independent organization that just exists in geographic proximity to a university. It's a unit with in the school itself and when it violates federal law, it's the university violating federal law. I think title IX works pretty well in terms of discouraging schools from discriminating against people. Can you explain this to me, I was never clear on this. I was told that the large schools with large athletic programs operates separately from the university at large. This was done years ago because of the fear that the athletics programs would financially impair the university. Of course we know that the athletic departments of the major universities are making much more money that the universities. I never understood the governance of the athletics within the context of the university and how the financials work? Are they siloed from each other? Thanks. |
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Post by mplsgopher on May 19, 2024 13:09:13 GMT -5
To me personally it's no different than I don't think your house and your entire neighborhood should have their water shut off for a month as punishment for your neighbor cheating his federal taxes. You're of course free to call that a flawed analogy. I would just like to ask you to explain your reasoning and put forth your proposal for how you'd like to see it work, please and thank you.
An athletic department isn't an independent organization that just exists in geographic proximity to a university. It's a unit with in the school itself and when it violates federal law, it's the university violating federal law. I think title IX works pretty well in terms of discouraging schools from discriminating against people. OK. No one (including me) has said that a school should receive no punishment for violating Title IX. They should receive punishment.
The punishment just shouldn't be allowed to come after individual PI grants already awarded or making it harder for PI's at the school to get/keep getting new grants, for violations that occur in the athletics department.
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Post by badgerbreath on May 19, 2024 13:21:57 GMT -5
An athletic department isn't an independent organization that just exists in geographic proximity to a university. It's a unit with in the school itself and when it violates federal law, it's the university violating federal law. I think title IX works pretty well in terms of discouraging schools from discriminating against people. The punishment just shouldn't be allowed to come after individual PI grants already awarded or making it harder for PI's at the school to get/keep getting new grants, for violations that occur in the athletics department.
It is usually a blanket ban on future funding for some period of time. AFAIK, money that has already been dispersed to the university by contract remains with the university. Clawing back money is a fraught process which could be subject to numerous other laws and would be a lot of work for both the feds and the university. Simpler to just avoid giving money in the first place. Whether support for continuing grants can be pulled in future fiscal years is something I don't know. |
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Post by mervinswerved on May 19, 2024 13:23:13 GMT -5
An athletic department isn't an independent organization that just exists in geographic proximity to a university. It's a unit with in the school itself and when it violates federal law, it's the university violating federal law. I think title IX works pretty well in terms of discouraging schools from discriminating against people. OK. No one (including me) has said that a school should receive no punishment for violating Title IX. They should receive punishment. The punishment just shouldn't be allowed to come after individual PI grants already awarded or making it harder for PI's at the school to get/keep getting new grants, for violations that occur in the athletics department.
I would encourage schools worried about losing federal funds to simply not violate federal law. |
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Post by mplsgopher on May 19, 2024 16:00:38 GMT -5
The punishment just shouldn't be allowed to come after individual PI grants already awarded or making it harder for PI's at the school to get/keep getting new grants, for violations that occur in the athletics department.
It is usually a blanket ban on future funding for some period of time. AFAIK, money that has already been dispersed to the university by contract remains with the university. Clawing back money is a fraught process which could be subject to numerous other laws and would be a lot of work for both the feds and the university. Simpler to just avoid giving money in the first place. Whether support for continuing grants can be pulled in future fiscal years is something I don't know. If you know off the top of your head, have you ever heard of a major public school whose students could not apply for FAFSA grants or whose PI's could not receive federal research grants?
I have never heard of that, but I have not looked into much. My wild guess is that no such thing has ever occurred, and indeed would be borderline absurd to punish researchers or (prospective) students who had absolutely nothing to do with the transgressions.
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Post by mplsgopher on May 19, 2024 16:01:18 GMT -5
OK. No one (including me) has said that a school should receive no punishment for violating Title IX. They should receive punishment. The punishment just shouldn't be allowed to come after individual PI grants already awarded or making it harder for PI's at the school to get/keep getting new grants, for violations that occur in the athletics department.
I would encourage schools worried about losing federal funds to simply not violate federal law. I'll do you one better: I encourage all schools to not violate federal law.
I guess we have solved the issue!
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