College is expensive. From room and board and unbelievable textbook prices to an extensive wardrobe of Big Green gear and multiple late-night delivery charges from EBAs, the dollars can start adding up for any Dartmouth student.
In order to help alleviate some of these financial woes, many students look for jobs during the summer months, with students on campus during sophomore summer often turning to the College itself as an employer.
But for the student-athletes participating in Dartmouth's varsity sports teams, the road to summer employment is paved a little differently than it is for the non-student-athlete.
The College itself does not have any special protocol for on-campus employers when it comes to hiring student-athletes. Sarah Berger, the coordinator of the Fitness Center in Alumni Gymnasium, has about 30 students working for her during the summer term, 11 of which are varsity student-athletes.
Berger said that getting a job at the Fitness Center requires an application and an interview. For her, being a varsity athlete has no bearing on her decision from an administrative standpoint.
"I don't have any NCAA type of regulations hanging over my head about hiring people," Berger said, adding, "It's not at all a factor on our end"
Instead, the biggest thing for Berger when it comes to hiring athletes is making sure the individual will have sufficient time to fit his shifts into his schedule.
"If they're an athlete, I just make sure they have the time, because the requirements of their schedule are so intense," she said.
While the NCAA may not have any special restriction on employers, the NCAA does have one specific piece of documentation for the athletes that could affect a choice of summer jobs and varsity eligibility.
To avoid problems with athletes receiving excess amounts of money or other compensation from employers, the NCAA requires all varsity athletes to fill out a form to identify athletes who work for alumni or boosters of athletic programs and to identify the nature of that relationship.
Drew Galbraith, Dartmouth's associate director of athletics for compliance and administration, said that this form was largely targeted at higher-profile schools with larger student bodies.
At these institutions, there is a higher risk that fanatical boosters or over-zealous alumni may hire and pay athletes over the standard billing rate based on their "publicity, reputation, fame or personal following he or she has obtained because of athletics ability," according to the language of the form given to Dartmouth student-athletes.
Galbraith referred specifically to an incident at the University of Oklahoma in the summer of 2006, when former quarterback Rhett Bomar and guard J.D. Quinn were dismissed from the team for working at a local car dealership that provided cars to Sooner coaches and other member of the athletic department and received "payment over an extended period of time in excess of time actually worked," according to the NCAA.
The form, which the compliance office in the Dartmouth College Athletic Department calls the student-athlete employment statement, is a one-page document with several questions pertaining to expected earning and the athlete's relationship with his or her employer.
All athletes, even if they are not working during the summer, must fill out the form. Additionally, even those sports that are not NCAA recognized, such as men's crew, are asked to complete the statement.
"We certainly don't view them as anything less than a full varsity sport, so we try to hold all athletes to the exact same standard," Galbraith said.
Most notably, the form asks the athlete to identify his projected employer, the athlete's job title, the salary rate, the job's connection to a work-study program, individuals who assisted the athlete in getting the projected job and those individuals' known connection to Dartmouth athletics.
At the end of the summer, the athlete must report his or her salary rate and the numbers of hours worked per week.
Even with Dartmouth's famously strong alumni connections, Galbraith said he has not had a problem with student-athlete employment with the NCAA in the past decade.
The regulation is geared more toward off-campus jobs, and Galbraith said that Dartmouth alumni and current student-athletes are almost always engaged in an "altruistic" working relationship where the athlete receives the money that he or she deserves based on working hours and salary rates.
Galbraith said that many schools follow the NCAA's rules and that there are only a few officially reported problems with the employment procedures every year, although he has heard off-hand reports of violations by athletes at other Ivy League schools in past years.
"It's pretty well regulated and people do a pretty good job of following this," Galbraith said.
He added, "It's more of a bookkeeping thing for the NCAA."
Aside from the employment form, the DCAD does not have any other in-house restrictions on student-athlete employment. Galbraith said that in fact the DCAD is in close contact with other offices on campus in coordinating student employment, and coaches are helpful resources in finding jobs that fit into their athletes' schedules.
"One of the challenges with being an athlete is they have so many things going on with their lives," Galbraith said. "It's a challenge to find the time to get a job."
