Opinion: BC Athletes' Perks Benefit All Students

Opinions

BC Athletes’ perks benefit all students One writer defends the supposed “perks” varsity athletes recieve

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5:30 a.m. phone alarm rings to tell me it’s time to wake up. It is still dark outside and my neighbors have been in bed no more than two hours. My roommate is already half-dressed. I rummage in my piles of clothing to find my gear. I’m dressed by 5:45 a.m. Every motion this early in the morning is made with a shiver and seemingly exaggerated slowness: a shiver of tiredness and weariness at the knowledge of a long day ahead of me. By now it’s 5:55 a.m. I’ll be late. No time for breakfast or to refill my water bottle. I grab my bag and make the trek to Conte Forum. Practice starts promptly at 6 a.m.

Two and half hours of sweat later, while some of my fellow teammates have gone to

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class, I’m trying to stay awake and finish my homework. I’m already one PowerAde in and it’s only 9 a.m. I have three classes today, with my last class ending at 9 p.m. I need time to shower, eat and go to a meeting throughout the day. Homework will be addressed during mealtimes or squeezed between classes. I don’t have a minute to breathe.

I’m a club athlete on the synchronized skating team. Twice a week I get up, just a few hours after the last seniors have finished drinking, to practice. But honestly, compared to many other athletes, I have it pretty easy.

Contrary to popular belief, being an athlete doesn’t equate to being lazy, and the misconception that athletes receive unfair perks is untrue.

As a club athlete, I don’t have the ultimate prestige varsity athletes receive or the same advantages they are given. But I also don’t have to be as regimented or shoulder the responsibilities that they do. Imagine having a day like mine every day, and then triple the amount of hours; that is the life of a varsity athlete.

My purpose here is not to illicit pity but to simply debunk this all-too-prevalent assumption that athletes get too many benefits the rest of the student population does not get.

First, while the majority of campus is out socializing with only the fear of getting a

By Marion Halftermeyer / Copy Editor

bad picture on Facebook, varsity athletes are reminded that not only do they represent their team, but also BC as a whole.

Whatever they do in the public sphere and their private social lives reflects upon the name they bear on the front of their jerseys. They are forced to abide by rules— the men’s hockey team is banned from MA’s and a sophomore women’s soccer player was suspended from the team for tweeting about Penn State in a negative way. They don’t have time to make friends outside their teams, nor join clubs, and they need to be careful when they go out.

Everything athletes do can be — and most likely will be — used as negative publicity.

Not only do they sacrifice the social community that seems to define college for many students, they’ve been doing it for most of their lives to be the dedicated and highly regimented athletes that they are.

On leading a double life One may argue that a varsity athlete chose to become a varsity athlete and therefore cannot complain about the foreseeable hardships of being said athlete.

This is very true.

However, what is often forgotten in this argument is that these individuals not only choose to be varsity athletes, but they also choose to be full-time students. In fact, their dedication to their sport could be equated to having a full-time job while be-

March 2013

ing a full-time student.

You see, while the average student is free to do whatever he or she may please to do once classes are finished for the day—whether it be homework, socializing, extra-curricular activities or a parttime job—a varsity athlete’s day is far from over. Almost every part of the day is dedicated to practice which includes intense workouts with trainers that watch them like hawks.

Imagine not only being forced to work out even if you don’t feel up to it, but also having someone standing over your shoulder counting out the reps you do per minute. Torture? No, this is the life of a varsity athlete.

not saying that all athletes eat five meals a day, but I am saying that they require just a little more energy than the rest of the student body that isn’t working out for a minimum of three hours a day. Just imagine what a 200-pound offensive lineman needs to eat to maintain his stature and work out as much as he does. In reality, it’d be unfair if the athletes weren’t given access to more food than their fellow nonathlete peers.

On academics With the little time that the athletes have left over from a day in classes and at practice, they have to do their homework, like every other full-time student. However, unlike every other full-time student, ath-

Each varsity team is assigned, along with a faculty advisor, an academic counselor who monitors and overseas each student’s academic progress.

The perk? It’s like having a personal tutor. The downside? The realization that this personal tutor is needed if you want to achieve the delicate balance between being a student and an athlete. It’s not a perk in the eyes of a student-athlete; it’s a necessity. For those who do need it and make use of it, well, they deserve it.

The final complaint I hear is that the athletic department lets athletes skip class whenever they want. This is a misconception; athletes do not choose to skip class whenever they please. Sometimes they

As I walk out of Conte Forum at 9 a.m., the women’s crew team has been running around the concourse (and running up and down the stand stairs) for an hour, the men’s basketball team has just started running on treadmills and biking, and another women’s team is lifting with trainers.

On food The extra dining money is particularly controversial. Unfortunately, the way our bodies work, the more energy we burn the more energy we need to consume to make up for that lost energy. Because athletes work out so much, they spend more energy than the typical non-varsity student does, so as it goes they need to make up for that lost energy by eating more.

They would run out of dining bucks two months into the school year if they had the same plan as a non-varsity student. I’m

letes must meet a GPA minimum.

Not only do they have twice as many responsibilities as the average student does, and twice as long of a day, they are also deprived of the right to slack off when they feel like it—a privilege the non-varsity athlete student often does not realize.

Because of this GPA minimum, the athletic department has given varsity athletes the necessary help to achieve this standard through a center called Learning Resources for Student-Athletes whose mission is “to provide the academic and personal support services to all varsity studentathletes.”

It’s essentially the Connor’s Family Learning Center (a resource center for non-athletes that provides tutoring and help for students with learning disabilities), but reserved only for varsity-athletes.

have to miss class in order to fulfill another set of requirements: their duty to represent BC in competitive events.

The only reason an athlete ‘gets’ to miss class is because he or she is away for a competitive event, or training for one, during that missed class time. That athlete is not lollygagging on Netflix while you are slaving away in class; he or she is out making your school have a competitive and wellknown name.

Varsity athletes work hard for the perks they get and those perks do not even begin to compensate for the sacrifices these students make. Truth is, you should be thanking them not chastising them. These socalled perks are actually for every student’s benefit, as we all attend a more prestigious university because of their performance on the field and dedication in the classroom.

Photos by bkstr.com, Cynthia Blue/Flickr, and Terre et Cote Basques/Flickr

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