Like all schools under the NCAA’s keen gaze, UNC takes special care to emphasize the first term in “student athlete.”
And it should, as it’s giving many of its approximately 800 student athletes a subsidized education to play sports.
It’s no secret, though, that many are not fully prepared for the time requirements of balancing work and sports, the academic rigor of UNC, or both.
That is why the University employs tutors to help student athletes with a litany of issues, ranging from the academic to the emotional, and requires student athletes to attend tutoring sessions.
Like any relationship, tutors can’t help athletes as much if the athletes don’t know them, dislike them or are simply scared of accidentally speaking with them outside supervised sessions.
That makes UNC’s new ban on nearly all communication between student athletes and tutors counterproductive.
Under the new rules, they’re prohibited from any sort of electronic communication, like texting, online messaging or emailing. They may only communicate in the Academic Support Center, which closes at 10 p.m.
This is an overreaction to the actions of rogue tutor/mentor Jennifer Wiley, who provided a handful of players impermissible academic and financial benefits.
But instead of preventing further NCAA violations, these rules will just hurt student athletes. Many students do work at odd times or in their rooms. Student athletes are no different.
So when an athlete needs to Facebook chat his or her tutor (who is also up writing a paper) at midnight with questions about how to operate JSTOR, that athlete will now be violating University rules, all for seeking out a better education — or at least a better GPA.
