Only slightly less intimidating than the horse’s head. Photo illustration by Gus Wezerek / North by Northwestern.
Head football coach Pat Fitzgerald has developed a formula that involves three simple rules for academic success at Northwestern. Rule number one?
Go to class.
Rule number two?
Go to class.
Rule number three?
Go to class!
While everyone knows that’s not all you need to do for good grades at Northwestern, it’s a simple principle that student-athletes across the country sometimes choose not to follow. In one case, it’s become such a problem for the University of Kansas’s basketball team that associate athletic director Paul Buskirk hired a retired police officer and several other senior citizens to perform class checks on their men’s basketball players.
“That really horrifies and disgusts me,” said Mary Beth Hawkinson, the associate director of academic services for student athletes at Northwestern. “If we had to do that here, I’d say we were completely failing in our mission.”
On the contrary, success would be more appropriate in describing Northwestern. Last fall, the university produced 90 Academic All-Big Ten honorees. Because Northwestern doesn’t have a classroom-check policy, here are a few (slightly extreme) suggestions for the university if athlete class-attendance ever became a problem:
Threaten to lock a live wildcat in a truant student’s bed or dorm room: If a wildcat is in a student-athlete’s room, they might not have any better place to go other than class. While the student-athlete is in class, the enforcer could go in and retrieve the wildcat, leaving any property damage as a reminder of what might happen the next time the offender decides to take the day off. Better yet, while he or she is in class, leaving the wildcat chained outside the doors would cause any attempt on the student-athlete’s part to leave to be met with ferocious growls often only heard at football or basketball games.
Send out emails with large pictures of coach Fitzgerald’s glare: Hands down, coach Fitzgerald is one of the most intimidating people at Northwestern. Having to think about skipping class while gazing at a picture of his stone-cold stare would not be easy. This tactic would work best as an email alert, designed to be sent out right before the majority of student-athletes leave their practices for class (or not). In addition, professors willing to comply could hang large banners of the same image in their classrooms, causing fear of retribution among any athletes who might try to leave class early.
Refuse to do the laundry of any athlete who refuses to go to class: No athlete wants to wash his or her athletic gear after a hard day’s practice, let alone find it waiting unwashed for him or her a day later. If their laundry depended on it, student-athletes would never skip class. Better yet, if an athlete sneaks out of class early, take the amount of time left in the class out of the wash and/or dry cycles for his or her clothes. If the athlete isn’t willing to put in the time to go to class, then why should their support staff do the same for them?
While the staff at academic services doesn’t class-check or carry out any of these consequences, there are still ways to make sure student-athletes are doing what they need to do in school. According to Hawkinson, advisers will use midterm grade reports to determine whether a student-athlete is attending class or not, as well as refuse financial aid for summer school if an athlete is skipping class.
Still, most student-athletes at Northwestern attend class every day and don’t have a lot of trouble with school, Hawkinson said. “Any student-athlete who decides to come to Northwestern has a good idea of what we’re trying to achieve here by helping you with that transition into adulthood,” Hawkinson said. “We’re not going to do classroom checks because it’s so antithetical to what this university stands for.”