Fight, Blue Devils, fight

It's downright refreshing to see Professors Richard Hain and Fred Nijhout call for "a thoughtful debate about the role. of athletics on campus."

While we're on the subject, I think it's high time we discussed the advantages athletes enjoy in our admissions process.

First, let's start with the facts: For the Class of 2007, 768 male non-athletes were admitted to Duke with an average SAT score of 1,438, while 42 recruited athletes averaged 1,172. For females, 786 non-athletes averaged 1,403, versus 37 athletes' 1,258.

That's a 266-point gap for males and a 145-point gap for females.

And in case you're interested in a team-by-team breakdown, the eight men's baseball team recruits averaged 1,206 that year, while 22 football players averaged 1,063 and the five men's basketball players came in last at 997. All 14 other recruited male athletes averaged 1,258.

Considering the national average for the 2002 SAT was 1,026, it's a safe bet that few (if any) non-athletes could even get their foot in the door with stats like the ones above.

Yet the most elite recruits (read: prospective basketball players) can be tentatively admitted before they've finished their junior year of high school; all that's needed is a PSAT score and freshman and sophomore grades.

This must have been how our beloved Sean Dockery got admitted with a 2.3 GPA and an ACT score of 15; at the time, his credentials didn't even meet NCAA minimums of a 2.5 GPA and 17 on the ACT.

Truly, the ability to hit a golf ball or pull an oar is not a qualification for admission to a top-10 university like Duke; it says next to nothing about a student's willingness to participate in our academic community.

Administrators know this; a December 2000 report to the Board of Trustees notes that students admitted after intervention from the development or athletics offices "are less well prepared academically and personally to contribute to the intellectual atmosphere at Duke."

To be fair, administrators are quick to counter that student-athletes graduate at a rate of 94 percent (which is the highest in the ACC). We should all be so lucky to benefit from athletes' access to preferential course scheduling, personal tutors and summertime study.

This report's point is well taken: We shouldn't continue framing this debate in terms of an applicant's ability to graduate. As Dean of Admissions Christoph Guttentag notes, that's only at issue in a minority of cases.

Rather, we need to set a much higher standard, one that thinks about student-athletes' rightful place in the academic and cultural landscape of this University.

To this end, consider that recruited athletes are not only accepted at a different time and by a different standard than the rest of us; some of them are housed, scheduled and even fed apart from their peers.

Is it any surprise, then, that the Lacrosse ad hoc Review Committee noted that the "strict discipline of training and play enforces community" and "social cohesion" among varsity athletes?

And in the aftermath of the rape accusations, we've all heard that the "negative aspects of. cohesion is a serious problem that requires resolution."

So as we define our "resolution" to that "serious problem," I hope we'll consider the violence done to our campus culture and to our reputation by these admissions preferences; they are an affront to our academic mission, and they privilege factors entirely unrelated to a student's ability to succeed.

Just as importantly, I hope that we can come to understand what a recent Chronicle editorial called the "conflict that exists because Duke is both a top-10 academic and Division-I athletic school" for what it really is: a deep social and intellectual divide catalyzed by policies that privilege non-academic credentials above academic ones.

Kristin Butler is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every Friday.