The D On Student-Athletes

From The Daily Dartmouth Editorial Board:

Although these statistics may indicate that Dartmouth is merely average among its peers, the College’s relatively small size means that low academic standards among athletes have a larger effect on the credentials of the student body as a whole. Dartmouth has a comparable number of varsity teams to Penn but has less than half the number of undergraduates. If the 20 percent of our student body composed of varsity athletes is characterized by questionable academic qualifications relative to our peer institutions, then it is fair to say that the academic caliber of each incoming class is being compromised to a larger extent at Dartmouth than at its Ivy peers.

Ouch.

And this . . .

We fully acknowledge and appreciate that recruited athletes contribute significantly to the richness and diversity of the Dartmouth community. Support for athletic programs should remain a priority for the administration. However, fostering academic success should be our primary goal, and the admissions office should seek foremost to ensure that every incoming student has strong academic credentials. . . . The preservation of comparatively low academic standards for recruited athletes — combined with increasingly talented non-athletes — only exacerbates the gap between these students and their peers.

Green Alert Take: I kept looking for the word antithetical. Newbies might Google that word and Dartmouth football to learn why.