Special Student Admissions Fuels SDSU Sports Turmoil

They battened down the hatches last week at San Diego State.

Telephone calls from reporters went unanswered. Queries were shunted to the president, who happened to be heading out of town. One university administrator refused to talk--then demanded he not be quoted refusing to talk.

“Sports can get you a lot of good publicity and a lot of bad publicity,” Ernst Griffin, chairman of the geography department, observed from the sidelines. “We’ve been experiencing a lot of bad publicity for athletics. I don’t think any negative publicity does the university any good.”

Once again, San Diego State University’s athletic department is in turmoil.

President Thomas B. Day’s fourth athletic director is out on her ear and the basketball team appears to be in disarray. Now, faculty critics complain that Day’s drive to make SDSU an athletic power is tarnishing the school’s academic image.

“I think at a place like San Diego State, criticisms like ‘It’s a jock school’ or ‘It’s a party school’ really annoy academics,” said Griffin, a moderate in the cross-campus controversy, with friends on both sides.

“It’s just one of those things that is a burr under the saddle,” he said. “I think a lot of folks that are opposed to athletics are upset because the folks out there in the community pay attention to the place more for its athletic teams than for good academics.”

This time, the controversy strikes “the academic side” of the school close to home.

According to reports, a good chunk of basketball coach Smokey Gaines’ new recruits are unsure whether they will even be admitted to SDSU because their high school grades don’t meet the school’s academic standards for admission.

What’s more, Gaines since his arrival in 1979 has reportedly built his teams on “special admissions”--students admitted for their athletic ability in spite of unsatisfactory academic standing. It is unclear whether any of his recruits have ever graduated.

“There’s a matter of academic pride,” said E.N. Genovese, a professor of classics and a vocal critic of university athletics. “Are we a university or not? If you’re a university, you expect the people going to a university to behave like students. These people aren’t behaving like students.”

Griffin, a former football player, put the matter differently:

“I think the basic problem, at least as I interpret it, is: can you have a competitive program--in basketball, football, track, whatever--in which you can bring in competitive students? To me, it seems the answer is yes, you can. And if you can’t, then you shouldn’t have the program.”

Special admissions have existed for decades in the 19-school California State University system. Under the program, students who don’t meet CSU’s academic requirements may be admitted if they show “potential” and excel in other ways.

Half of all special admissions go to students who have lacked educational opportunities, and half go to “general exceptions.” The latter half includes some older students, late bloomers and people with special abilities, like oboists and athletes.

“The basic philosophy behind it is that there are many young people who have a potential for college work who might be excluded if one used the standard criteria,” said William Vandament, vice chancellor for academic affairs for the CSU system.

“There may also be very talented people in special areas who might also, primarily by virtue of concentrating on developing their talents, not show the potential on standard measures,” Vandament said.

Statewide, athletes filled 12% of all special admissions slots in the 1983-84 academic year. The percentages ranged from zero percent at San Bernardino to highs of 27% at Fullerton, 23% at San Luis Obispo, and 20% at Long Beach and San Jose.

SDSU fell below the median that year with 9%, Vandament said.

Athletes made up 78 out of SDSU’s 348 general exceptions for 1981-82, and 56 of the 421 for 1984-85, SDSU figures show. Asked what percentage of the basketball and football teams were “specials,” athletic director Robert Rinehart said he didn’t know.

Nor would the university provide numbers on athletes’ graduation rates.

However, a recent SDSU study found that only 36% of the special admissions students tracked remained in school after three years. After two years, more than half had been unable to maintain the 2.0 grade point average required for graduation.

A similar five-year study statewide found that less than 25% of the special admissions remained in school after five years. Of that total, less than one-third had received a degree, and two-thirds were still enrolled.

Asked about reports that Gaines had stocked his teams with special admissions, few of whom had graduated, Day claimed he had no statistics on that. But, he said, “If there were a team where that were the pattern, that would worry me.”

He said he had repeatedly discussed special admissions with coaches. However, he said, “It’s a contradiction in terms to expect to have standard, regular things for special exceptions. So it’s very difficult to write down on a piece of paper some regular standards that you as a recruiting coach can use.”

Others drew a different lesson from the basketball news.

“Something like this confirms the suspicions that faculty for years have had since San Diego State started to go big-time,” Genovese said. “That is, that we would have to make a lot of sacrifices academically in order to maintain this type of a program.”

Back in the 1970s, SDSU’s football teams were winning steadily, drawing big crowds and bringing in money. So the university opted to go big-time, abandoning the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. to join Division 1.

The justification, offered by Day and others, was that sports fame reflects well upon a university’s image. It is good for the university and the community at large. It attracts interest and money, which spreads through academics as well as athletics.

Unfortunately, the football team began losing. Attendance at home games plummeted, and ticket revenues and fund-raising fell off. Eventually, the athletic department went into debt. Day came to its aid.

First, the administration increased the athletic department’s take out of the university’s student-supported “instructionally related activities fund,” now above $750,000. Faculty critics objected, saying money that should have gone to academics was going to athletics.

Later, Day transferred over $200,000 in unused state money and arranged for a $200,000 bank loan to the sports department. Last spring, a faculty committee again complained to Day, asking him to set up a five-year plan to cut the deficit.

The latest flap came as yet another unpleasant surprise--at a time when several faculty members say they were hoping the academic side of the university was going big-time itself.

“We’re a school on the make, academically,” Griffin said. “We’ve got a lot of good, solid programs. So we’re really striving academically to get up the pecking order. When that sort of stuff happens, you’d like the university to be recognized solely on the academics. But the world doesn’t work that way.”

William H. Phillips, a physical education professor who is vice president of the statewide California Faculty Assn., the professors’ union, blamed the latest problems on an overemphasis on winning.

He suggested special admissions were being abused. Perhaps students admitted specially for athletics should not compete in sports until they prove they are capable of competing academically, he said.

Genovese said he would like to see athletics divorced from the university, perhaps run by a separate foundation. He also argued that borderline students should not be admitted: “It’s better to have a university that is doing poorly in athletics where the athletes are doing well in academics.”

Griffin said he believed SDSU could find winning athletes that would also be able to compete academically--a point he said the current football team illustrates. The issue, he said, might be how and where coaches recruit.

“What he should have been doing is going out and finding kids that could have been admitted under standard admissions,” Griffin said of Gaines. “It’s like falling in love--if you want to fall in love with a rich guy, you go out with rich people. If you want to fall in love with a poor guy, you go out with poor people.”

Gaines, meanwhile, was not returning reporters’ telephone calls. His office said it had been “instructed” to refer all calls to Day. Several top academic administrators and faculty members declined to talk, as did some usually vocal athletic department supporters.

However, Sal Freitas, a director of the Aztec Athletic Foundation, said he, too, was worried about the university’s image--in the eyes of supporters of university athletics, potential donors and the community.

“I really think it brings a black eye when these things happen, when they put their dirty laundry out to dry,” Freitas said. “They should have been able to handle this inside. It sets the program back.”

In the administration building, Day stood his ground.

Patiently, he explained that it is always legitimate to question whether a non-academic program is receiving too much money and attention. But “Anyone can come in and second guess,” Day said.

“I take a bath every spring on this,” he said. “It’s a very simple problem: we have a budget problem because our average attendance has gone from 40,000 to 20,000. If we start having winning seasons, it will go to 60,000. Then we’ll have a surplus. That’s all it takes.”

Asked when that might be, Day said, “Everyone tells me this is the year.”

If not?

Day said only that he would “think about it at midseason.”

As for his critics, Day said they differ with him on matters of philosophy. They don’t agree with him on the role of athletics--just as some people don’t believe the Reserve Officers Training Corps should be on campus.

“I honor the beliefs of these people,” Day said amiably. “The only difference is they’re not president.”