Deciding Where to Draw the Line

Should academics and athletics be like church and state?

Although that stark separation sounds rational--especially when it comes to reducing the potential for conflict of interest--it may be naively idealistic.

The recent events that prompted a two-month internal investigation by USC into its tutoring program for athletes, Student-Athletic Academic Services (SAAS), have raised questions about SAAS’ future and focused attention on similar programs at other schools.

USC’s examination, brought on by allegations by Christopher Cairney and Noel Looney--both members of the SAAS staff--of impropriety, is trying to determine whether tutors have done the work athletes should have been doing.

The potential for such abuse is a substantial concern nationwide.

“It’s something everybody worries about,” said Terry Holland, Virginia’s athletic director. “The more people you have involved, there’s more potential for someone to step out of bounds.”

Jo Baker, director of the Athletic Study Center at California Berkeley, said, “It’s the same line for any student: supplementing the material, not supplanting it; providing guidance without providing answers. You know when you’ve crossed [the line].”

The growth of academic services for athletes has been meteoric. When the National Assn. of Academic Advisors for Athletics (N4A) was established in 1975, there were fewer than 10 full-time advisors nationally. Now, the organization says it has more than 500 members representing institutions, among them academic advisors and counselors, compliance and eligibility officers and athletic department administrators.

USC employs about 100 part-time tutors, many of them graduate students and upperclassmen.

Colleges have thousands of tutors nationwide.

“Our ethics have to be above and beyond reproach,” said Ron Brown of the University of Pittsburgh, president of N4A. “As we seek to better our reputations on campus, we have to be able to go to the academic side and be seen as consummate professionals.

“It’s a little bit different than 15 years ago, when retired coaches and former coaches were doing this just to be involved. We take our profession very seriously.”

If the tutorial organization has grown, so, too, has the importance of tutoring. A successful tutoring program can serve as a recruiting tool.

“These things started out very casually,” Holland said. “But they’ve become an important part of what programs do--not just graduating, but getting people into graduate school.”

Potential conflicts of interest are minimized by internal mechanisms at some universities. For example:

* UCLA: The Athletic Tutorial Unit, established in 1984, is under the College of Letters and Sciences, not the athletic department. It is funded by the athletic department however.

* Virginia: The academic services program for athletes reports not only to the athletic department but to the provost’s office as well. And the salaries are shared by those two departments.

* California: The Athletic Study Center is not in the athletic department nor does Baker report to it. Even so, Baker calls the service a partnership, saying, “We work with [the athletic department] rather than for them.”

At USC, the money for SAAS is provided by the athletic department. As the investigating committee completes its report this week, recommendations for change are expected to be made. And it isn’t out of the question that one recommendation will be for SAAS to report elsewhere, not to the athletic department.

As it stands, SAAS and the athletic department are closely aligned. After Fred Stroock, former president of N4A, left SAAS for a position in USC’s athletic department in June, some of his duties were temporarily assumed by Daryl Gross, associate athletic director.

One parent of a football player, upset that someone in the athletic department controlled an academic program, called the development “a joke.”

Gross’ name, however, does not appear in the 17-page handbook for SAAS tutors, mentors and supervisors supplied to The Times by university counsel Todd Dickey, a member of the investigating committee. One page of the guidebook deals with issues involving academic integrity--explaining plagiarism, illegitimate collaboration and use of a paper from one class for another class.

The issue of whether a tutor may type papers for athletes, which came up during the investigation, is not raised in the guidebook.

At the University of Pittsburgh, a handout for employees in the Academic Support Service for Student Athletes says papers may not be typed for athletes during work hours. Although it is not encouraged, it is nevertheless allowed after working hours.

Under NCAA regulations, athletes receiving that service must be charged the same fee other students who have their own tutorial program are paying.

After-hours typing for athletes by tutors is not allowed at UCLA, even if a payment is made, according to Associate Athletic Director Betsy G. Stephenson.

“We would view that as a conflict of interest,” she said.

The schools surveyed, including USC, have extensive training sessions for tutors, who are made aware of the ethical guidelines. UCLA tutors are required to attend two sessions, one for 4 1/2 hours and the other for three. At Cal, there are sessions once a week for an entire semester after an initial two-hour training session.

“Everybody walking in the door doesn’t understand how to work in a tutoring position,” said Pittsburgh’s Brown. “You have to coach the kids [the athletes] as well as [the tutors] to know what is within the limitations of NCAA, university and academic policies.

“If you don’t do that, you’re leaving yourself wide open. You have to put it in writing, so it’s in black and white, because you could have to take action. It could be that a tutor has to be reported to academic authorities or terminated. For student-athletes, there are suspensions or academic penalties or NCAA penalties. Those things can happen. We find it helpful to have a handbook.”

All the manuals, training programs and lofty ideals, however, don’t mean anything without support from those involved in the process.

Cynthia Cardosi, formerly an academic advisor at USC, said she left because of “ethical concerns” and was upset about policy changes regarding academics. She was interviewed by the committee as well.

Among the current and former tutors interviewed by The Times, the failure of athletes to show up for tutoring was mentioned as a problem.

“Some students came to the first session and never came back again, so it was obvious there was no bond,” said one former tutor, who requested anonymity. “They’d get to know your voice. ‘No, he’s not home.’ [Assistant SAAS director] Janice [Henry] had [the reported no-shows] changed to another tutor. I don’t know what happened after that.”

Cairney, who has been on paid administrative leave, detailed his concerns about the department in a memo. In that memo, one tutor is said to have witnessed an athlete assembling his paper with help from several tutors, which eventually resulting in completed work. When contacted, the tutor in question declined comment, pointing out that the school controlled funding for her graduate studies.

A former tutor, Rebecca Robinson, said she had witnessed no wrongdoing when she worked for SAAS.

“[But] I can see how [problems could] happen,” she said. “[Athletes] did their best to get you to do their work. It’s the easy way out. They’ll ask, ‘What’s the answer?’ Or they keep asking the same question over and over [fishing for a free answer]. They’re exhausted from their tight schedule. For the most part, I tried to [present] the concepts, rather than do the work.”

Robinson said peer pressure could also play a factor in a tutor’s wanting to do too much.

“I was a graduate student, but a lot of the tutors are undergrads,” she said. “I could see it being much worse for them. You could have mutual friends.”

Cal’s Baker hopes to avoid potential pitfalls by eliminating a particular personality type during the screening process.

“Caretaker personality--people who want to make the world a better place,” she said. “[We] prefer to steer away from that.”

Other obstacles can be avoided with reporting to both academic and athletic divisions, said Baker, calling dual reporting the wave of the future.

But a complete separation between academics and athletics isn’t necessarily the solution.

“When you take [tutors] in my program, these are the people who work closely with the athletic department,” Baker said. “They are the very people who could effect change.”