There’s something on my mind that’s been bothering
me since I’ve been on this campus, and its been upsetting me
enough lately to the point where I feel compelled to share my
thoughts with you.
I can’t tell you how many times since I’ve been here
that I’ve heard fellow students and friends of mine on this
campus complain about athletes and their schoolwork.
I’ve heard it all. “Athletes are cheaters.”
“They take the easiest classes.” “They get
answers from tutors.” “They don’t care at all
about academics.”
Why do so many students who are not athletes make these
unsubstantiated allegations about their fellow Bruins? What is the
source of resentment that some students seem to have against
athletes?
The resentment probably stems from the fact that many athletes
did not sport the academic portfolios that other students needed to
get into a competitive school such as UCLA. As a result, some of
those other students make explicit accusations as a way of making
an implicit appeal against the student-athlete’s presence on
campus.
I think people have generally come to accept the fact that
athletes, who get into UCLA based mostly on their athletic ability
as opposed to their academic potential, are here to stay. This is
why you don’t hear students that disagree with the notion of
athletes on campus openly protesting the athlete’s
presence.
Instead, they have to be sneaky about it. When a cycle of
vicious rumors start to spread, a certain amount of credibility
naturally comes along with it.
People who wouldn’t take the time to properly investigate
the situation on their own just take the rumors for granted and
they continue to grow in popularity. Nobody seems to be bothered if
they are true or not.
It’s a shame because the rumors about athletes’
laziness in the classroom, by in large, couldn’t be further
from the truth.
Take the players on the women’s volleyball team for
instance. Besides needing to deal with an intense game schedule
that includes mid-week road trips, the team practices every morning
around 7 a.m., does weight training and conditioning separately
during the day and goes to mandatory tutoring sessions on top of
the studying and classes members have to attend.
“It’s very tough to manage time,” junior
middle blocker Nana Meriwether said. “Playing volleyball is
like having a full-time job and going to class is like a part-time
job. We miss out on a lot of things that regular students get to
do.”
“I think that (students who criticize athletes)
don’t understand the amount of hours we put into our sports
and into study hall and tutoring,” said junior outside hitter
Colby Lyman, who was an honorable mention to the All-Pac-10
Academic Team last season. “I have to wake up at six in the
morning and by the afternoon, I just want to go to bed.”
Every sport has to deal with similar hard schedules and every
athlete has the challenge of mixing classes with athletics.
“After practice you don’t feel like reading or doing
a paper or anything,” sophomore wide receiver Marcus Everett
said. “But the athletes that manage to get that done, it
makes them better people.”
I realize some student-athletes may weasel their way around the
system ““ many other students have likely found their own ways
around it as well.
But when people turn student-athletes ““ a group of
students that consists mostly of hard-workers trying to succeed in
class and brighten their futures ““ and make them into a group
that is full of lazy cheaters, it is just flat-out wrong and I am
personally sick of hearing it.
E-mail your comments to Azar at
bazar@media.ucla.edu.