This is my final post in a series about the importance of ethics in public education reform.
Conveniently, I received a note from a reader of my blog post that was republished in the AJC about the situation with the UGA football program. Head football coach Mark Richt chose not to discipline 4 student athletes who were arrested in a check fraud scheme involving stipends received from the athletic department. They dressed in full pads for practice the next day, and no discipline was ever announced. UGA's discipline policy states that such discipline for misdemeanors is "at the discretion of the coach." I was wondering if we would ever see resolution on this matter.
Yesterday, a story came out that one of these four student-athletes, safety Tray Matthews, was dismissed from the team because of additional, more recent infractions. However, we do not know what these other infractions were. Making matters worse, the player immediately tweets "Auburn or Louisville will be my home." Why would he say such a thing? (An aside: we still don't know if the other three students were disciplined at all).
Let me refresh everyone's memory who may not be familiar with this issue. Auburn, and even more importantly, Louisville, seem to be more than willing to immediately admit 4 star recruits who were cast aside by Georgia solely for disciplinary issues, regardless of their criminal nature. You see, the former Defensive Coordinator for UGA is now in the same position at Louisville, and works for none other than our nation's ethical compass, Bobby Petrino. Just recently, Louisville immediately scooped up disgraced UGA defensive back Josh Harvey-Clemons, who was dismissed by Coach Richt for drug-related incidents.
So what does this all mean? It means that there is a moral hazard on college sports because there is not a consistent disciplinary policy across programs. Another story recently came out that talked about Georgia's efforts to push for a uniform drug policy in the SEC. Unfortunately, the efforts appear "dead" because at a recent SEC meeting, the issue wasn't even brought to the table and discussed. And so Georgia's efforts to take the moral high ground will continue to place it at a significant disadvantage, at least on the field, until such time as there is sufficient backlash to force the issue to be reconsidered.
This topic goes way beyond sports if you read my previous posts. In a recent blog on Ed Week, the author makes the claim that "ethics are caught, rather than taught." I think it's a combination of both, and it's not only taught by educators, but more importantly, parents and other family members. This goes far beyond whether a student-athlete should be punished for criminal behavior and be allowed to play, and whether schools should have consistent policies so that students aren't rewarded for making such mistakes. If we want our students to be successful in life, they need to know right from wrong. They need to know that "integrity is doing the right thing when no one else is looking." So before we get all wound up about common core standards, I say again, "how about common ethics first?"