By Ryan Scott
D3hoops.com

Student protests erupted at Franklin and Marshall earlier this month following the posting of a series of pictures featuring F&M student-athletes in offensive racial stereotype Halloween costumes. One protest involved a sit-in — local media reported 300 participants — on the court that, in the end, prevented the men’s basketball home opener again York (Pa.) from being played.

The school has condemned the photos and placed the students involved in the standard disciplinary process. In addition, the school has announced further changes to better address the concerns of protesters and others around race and diversity on campus. The photos were a flashpoint for protesters already upset over other race and diversity issues on campus.

Dozens of members of the Franklin & Marshall campus community sit in prior to F&M's scheduled home opener against York (Pa.), forcing the game's postponement. Screengrab from @yorkballers on Twitter

It’s well outside my ability and resources to do a full column on race relations on Division III campuses, but this incident does bring to light one issue very relevant to every team we cover: What exactly is the place and role of student-athletes at a Division III school?

One of the hallmarks of the division is the desire and attempt to allow student athletes to be students. Regulations around benefits, practice requirements, and financial aid aim to treat athletics no different than any other student participating in extracurricular activities.

It’s quite apparent, though, that even Division III athletes have a higher profile on many campuses than the average student. In addition, they wear the name of the school on their uniforms which implies a representative responsibility other students aren’t required to bear.

One of the complaints at F&M is that the athletes in question are being allowed to continue playing their sports during the investigation and disciplinary process. While they are subject to the same policies and procedures as other students, the claim implies that their special status as members of school athletic teams requires more accountability.

Augustana men’s basketball coach Grey Giovanine lays it out plainly: “I tell our players, ‘if you want to be a regular student, you should not be participating in intercollegiate athletics,’ and I mean in any of our sports, because you’re going to have an additional, significant commitment.”

Much of this comes down to campus culture, and how well student athletes are integrated into the larger student body. I attended a Division III institution and saw first-hand how some teams were central to student life and others operated in their own separate sphere. Further, these connections could change from year to year depending on any number of factors.

“We try to recruit from the same pool [of students] the enrollment department seeks out,” says Giovanine, “You’ll see we have a couple players from Colorado on our roster now. There are a hundred students on campus from Colorado. Colorado is a state which Augustana began to recruit when they opened up a direct flight from Denver to Moline. We don’t want outliers. I don’t think it’s fair to them; it’s not a healthy situation.”

If the general student body doesn’t know the student-athletes, if they are seen to get special treatment or they keep to themselves for whatever reason, tensions are only natural.

“I’m well known on campus; people know my name and who I am,” says Penn State-Altoona senior center, Cam Gardner-Nicholson. “But if they don’t know me, they don’t know all the hard work that goes into being an athlete and maintaining our academic responsibilities. You see the show, the glamour, but you don’t see the whole picture.”

Gardner-Nicholson is 6-9 so he’s going to stand out wherever he is, but he’s also quite pleased that PSU-Altoona does such a great job integrating athletes into campus culture. “Here there is no real difference; we’re just regular students. Being on National SAAC, though, it opens your eyes to see how many different issues student athletes are facing across the country.”

The Student Athlete Advisory Committees exist at the campus, conference, and national levels to involve student athletes in the decisions, legislation, and conversations that directly affect them and their college experience. With close to 450 member institutions, it’s very difficult to take into account all the very different and unique contexts.

Elite schools with long traditions and highly selective admissions standards are often criticized for the homogeneity of their student bodies. Athletics has been one means for those campuses to diversify and broaden their reach; it’s also been an avenue for students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to such schools, or even know of them, to get in.

In other cases, coaches have incentive to win and this prioritize athletic ability over campus fit. Schools with lower profiles and budgets may not have the resources to seek out and recruit good student athletes who fit well in the campus culture.

Still other schools are expanding athletics and launching junior varsity programs because they boost overall enrollment. In some Division III schools, up to 60% of enrolled students are participating in NCAA athletics. When you’re struggling to keep the doors open and cover operating expenses, any capable student will do.

Then, of course, comes the difficult task of determining how athletes fit in campus, what their role is, and how to support them properly while also not creating a separation that can lead to problems.

I’ve not seen anyone cast aspersions on Franklin & Marshall. Obviously no one condones the actions of those students, but most anyone in higher education recognizes how hard it is to manage a community of young people from diverse racial, economic, and cultural backgrounds. When you add the extra pressures of athletics, it becomes more difficult yet.

“One of the things we’ve tried to do on our campus,” says Gardner-Nicholson, “is focus on mental health and wellbeing. We’re always in high stress environments – going from class to practice to games. We try to provide stress relievers, outlets for conversation.”

It may not be fair to say student athletes have it harder because of their playing commitments; students of all kinds have different levels of adversity to face. However, student-athletes, even on Division III campuses, have unique challenges and represent a fairly large percentage of the student body.

The F&M incident illustrates that there’s also an added level of responsibility as well. Many on their campus don’t believe the standard student conduct accountability is sufficient for such prominent students. Franklin & Marshall clarified how student-athletes are held accountable. In a statement, it said: “The Athletic Department and the Office of Students Affairs work together to both set team rules and determine punishment and procedure if any rule is broken. In addition to the College's Student Code of Conduct, each team has a stricter set of rules that hold student-athletes to a higher standard. If any rule is broken, the Athletic Department works with the Office of Student Affairs to determine the appropriate course of action.”

In fact, it’s pretty typical for coaches to hold players more accountable than the average student.

“Listen,” says Giovanine, “I didn’t play our starting center in the home opener against the defending national champion. He’s in absolute perfect standing with the college, but our expectations are higher and I didn’t feel like he’d met them.”

If schools were 100% faithful to the absolute spirit of the Division III philosophy there’d really be no recruiting. They’d let enrollment and admissions get students in the door and coaches would figure out which ones could play basketball. That’s about the only way you could have student-athletes indistinguishable from their non-playing peers.

That’s not reality, though – and once even those kids put on a jersey they assume different roles on campus. The NCAA is always navigating how that role changes and how to respond.

It will get even more difficult over the next 14 months. Each division was tasked with determining how they will address student athletes potentially earning money from sponsorships, endorsements, and image rights. It won’t be a matter of millions of dollars in Division III like it is in Division I, but I have to imagine some enterprising restaurant will see value in advertising themselves as the starting point guard’s favorite pizza joint.

As the people who decide such things decide, they would do well to listen to Gardner-Nicholson (and since he’s on the SAAC, they’ll have to) when he says: “We know whatever we want to happen won’t happen immediately, so we think about what we can change three or four years down the line. What do we need to do to better things for the future?”

I think that’s the question being asked at F&M and I hope it’s the question on everyone’s mind across Division III as they contemplate the ever-changing role and responsibility of student-athletes on the modern college campus.