A Power Struggle Gets Ugly at Kansas State

May 20 | Posted by mrossol | Losing Freedom

If its not about money, then what? And why aren’t other ‘institutions of higher learning’ speaking up?
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Leticia Romero Just Wants to Transfer, but It Isn’t So Easy
5/20/2014 WSJ

With the NCAA under legal attack, now facing increased pressure to allow its student-athletes a broader set of rights, critics of its policies are focusing on a new case that, they say, illustrates how little power college athletes have in controlling their own destinies.

In March, Spanish-born basketball player Leticia Romero finished her freshman season at Kansas State as the Wildcats’ leader in points, assists and rebounds. But after an 11-19 season, the school fired the team’s coaching staff and Romero decided to transfer, preferring to take her three years of remaining college eligibility elsewhere.

Transferring is a common practice in college sports, especially when a coach is fired or takes another job. More than 400 men’s basketball players have decided to transfer since the regular season ended in March, according to ESPN, and the NCAA says about 40% of Division-I men’s basketball players leave the schools where they initially signed by the end of their sophomore years.

But when Romero notified Kansas State of her desire to transfer, the school denied her request, refusing to release her from her scholarship. The decision was upheld by a university appeals committee in April.

Now her options are limited. Romero, an 18-year-old from Las Palmas, Spain, in the U.S. on an international student’s visa, says she can’t afford to pay for college without an athletic scholarship, but she can’t accept a scholarship from another school next year without Kansas State’s release. She is not currently listed on Kansas State’s roster and says she has no intention of playing for the Wildcats next year.

“We don’t have the same rights as the coaches,” Romero said in an interview Monday. “It’s not fair.”

NCAA rules say that Kansas State can release Romero from her scholarship while still preventing her from transferring to certain schools. When she decided to transfer, Romero says, she gave the school’s compliance office a list of about 100 schools with high-level basketball teams she was interested in contacting. Last week, she was surprised to learn that Kansas State had in fact granted some schools permission to contact her—but none from her initial list.

School officials have declined to discuss their reasons for denying Romero’s request, citing federal privacy laws, and Romero says the school hasn’t told her why it has impeded her transfer.

“I have no idea,” she said. “That’s the thing that’s frustrating me most.”

In the Kansas State student-athlete handbook, the university reserves the right to not grant a release “except for the most compelling of circumstances which place an undue burden on the student athlete.” Kansas State athletic director John Currie said in a series of April 22 tweets that he was prevented from discussing individual student issues but added: “Generally speaking, on RARE occasions that we have denied a student-athlete transfer release, it has been because of concerns about outside tampering, undue influence by third parties or procedures not being followed in an honest and forthright manner.”

Kansas State declined to comment further Monday through a school spokesman.

On Monday, Romero’s attorney, Donald Jackson, contacted Kansas State president Kirk Schulz and urged him to reconsider the decision, writing that she wouldn’t “accept anything less than a full release…that will allow her to transfer to the school of her choice.”

“What they’re doing goes against every principle of college athletics and higher education,” said Jackson.

Schulz, a member of the NCAA’s board of directors, is also part of an NCAA committee tasked with reforming the embattled organization. Schulz said at a news conference last month that the committee’s goal was to improve the experience of college athletes. Schulz didn’t respond to a request for comment through a school spokesman Monday.

Some of the NCAA’s most vocal critics have called attention to Romero’s case. ESPN analyst Jay Bilas has used his platform on Twitter, where he has more than 689,000 followers, to demand that Kansas State reconsider its decision. “I think they’ve made a huge mistake,” Bilas said in an interview Monday. “It’s needless, and it’s wrong.”

To some observers, Romero’s case has appeared as another crack in the NCAA’s once-impervious facade, an example of the limits placed on the rights of college athletes. One such athlete, former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon, filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA in 2009 alleging that the association conspired with its broadcasting partners to fix the price of a college athlete’s name and likeness at zero. The NCAA says it doesn’t attempt to profit from athletes’ likenesses. That case is scheduled for a June 9 trial.

The issue of greater athlete self-determination has been at the forefront of college sports since March, when a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board gave Northwestern’s scholarship football players the right to unionize, ruling that the players were employees first and students second. The school appealed the decision to the national NLRB, and the outcome of the players’ vote on April 25 remains sealed until the NLRB’s decision.

As a public university, Kansas State is exempt from federal labor laws, meaning its athletes wouldn’t be eligible to unionize like Northwestern’s football players. But Romero said she believes that fairer rules and better organization would help college athletes to navigate the transfer and appeal processes.

Romero remains hopeful that Kansas State will reconsider its decision and give her permission to transfer to a school on her initial list. She still hasn’t decided her future plans.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty, and I want this to end,” she said. “But I really don’t know what do next.”

A Power Struggle Gets Ugly at Kansas State – WSJ.com.

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