Hanover is a strange place. Our town doesn't have any fast food restaurants, but most of our delivery restaurants (and anything fried from EBAs) are just as unhealthy. We don't have any parking spaces, but we have more parking cops then all of greater Boston.
We know Dartmouth isn't perfect. It's cold and isolated, but the school is so special that people ignore its flaws and embrace all the College has to offer. The fact that people actually leave places like California and Florida to go to school here proves this point.
Yet despite Dartmouth's allure, I feel that the College misses out on a huge population of potential students. By not offering athletic scholarships, Dartmouth, as well as the rest of the Ivy League, loses out on a pool of extremely talented young adults who would improve themselves as well as the institution they choose to attend. Ethan Wang discussed this same topic earlier this week, with an emphasis on the benefits to the College ("A Return to Scholarships," Feb. 29). I am more interested in the benefits scholarships would provide to the athletes themselves.
Last term, I wrote that NCAA athletes should not get paid to play their sport. I agree that athletes at large schools such as the University of Florida and the University of Southern California are exploited they generate an incredible amount of revenue, but do not get to see any of the profits. I argued that keeping the sport "amateur" increases the passion in each game. When you're playing for pride instead of money, you tend to exert more effort because you won't get any sort of monetary compensation if you lose.
While my opinion on paying players remains unchanged, I firmly believe that schools, if possible, should reward their athletes by reducing, and in some cases, eliminating, tuition fees. Athletes sacrifice their bodies and time in order to bring pride to the thousands (and sometimes millions) of alumni who often travel across the country to support their alma mater. Athletes deserve a little help financially.
Before 1980, Ivy League sports were among the best in the nation. Bill Bradley and the Princeton Tigers made it to the NCAA men's basketball Final Four in 1965. Six first-round NBA draft picks came from the Ivy League in the 1970s. Reggie Williams '76, one of the best linebackers of his generation, is a proud Dartmouth alum.
Although Dartmouth remains a national powerhouse in skiing and squash, our big-ticket sports (football, basketball and baseball) aren't competitive on a national level, and a national championship is out of the question for nearly every Ivy League athlete.
The originators of the no-scholarship rule wanted athletic contests to be fair. Is it fair that my football teammates and I work just as hard (or harder) than players from the University of New Hampshire but only they get most of their tuition covered by scholarships? Is it fair that NCAA rules allow for Division-I schools to grant 18 female scholarships, yet Abbey D'Agostino '14, the third-place finisher in the 2011 NCAA Cross Country Championships, is not one of these recipients? Is it fair that we have several football players that are good enough to get NFL tryouts but still pay more for school then a benchwarmer at the University of Texas?
Week after week, Dartmouth student-athletes outperform students from scholarship schools. It's only fair to reward them for their efforts. Modern day critics claim that athletic scholarships will decrease the academic quality of esteemed universities.
If the Ivy League schools gave scholarships, they would never poach a football player who was considering the Ohio State University. The Ivy League would most likely steal recruits away from your Dukes and Stanfords. If students are smart enough to get into Stanford, getting accepted at Dartmouth or Princeton shouldn't be too much of a stretch. And if the Ivy League retains its current academic requirements, rewarding scholarships won't detract from the educational value of the school.
There is nothing wrong with having good athletics. Good athletics give schools exposure through TV deals and news reports. Think about it when Dartmouth athletics appear on national TV, the school gets paid to advertise itself. Great athletic teams generate money for the school as well as expand the number of people who learn about what the institution can offer. It's a win-win situation, and it's time for the Ancient Eight to leave the stone age and embrace the modern college sports landscape.
