free
WEDNESDAY
march 9, 2016 high 67°, low 50°
t h e i n de p e n de n t s t u de n t n e w s pa p e r of s y r a c u s e , n e w yor k |
N • Sweet emotion
Dacher Keltner, a psychologist who helped develop Pixar’s “Inside Out” characters, presented the first University Lecture of the semester on Tuesday. Page 3
P • Suffragette city
SU professor Sally Roesch Wagner studies the history of the women’s suffrage movement through the eyes of the suffragists themselves. Page 9
dailyorange.com
S • Unfazed
Fifth-year senior Michael Gbinije isn’t paying attention to any outside distractions as his college career nears its end. SU takes on Pittsburgh on Wednesday at noon. Page 16
Loved ones remember Robinson SU senior had passions for cooking, music, travel By Michael Burke asst. news editor
illustration by devyn passaretti head illustrator
HIT THE BOOKS Officials talk holding SU accountable for student athletes’ academics
By Annie Palmer development editor
I
nside Manley Field House, student athletes weave in and out of computer labs, just across the hall from Director of Athletics Mark Coyle’s office and steps away from weight rooms, gym floors and fields. The building is like the Pentagon of Syracuse University’s Athletic Department — a headquarters for more than 100 daily tutor sessions, practices and administrative operations. It’s also a site that many members of the SU community continue to keep their eyes on. In March 2015, the NCAA released a 94-page report detailing numerous instances of misconduct into that department. A multiyear investigation uncovered drug policy violations, abuse of benefits and academic misconduct, among other infractions. In all, it caused the NCAA to deduce that SU did not have control over its athletics department. SU was handed sanctions that included a 5-year probation, scholarship reductions, vacation of wins and a 9-game suspension for men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim. At Manley Field House, there’s a tutor available for every student athlete, and officials are more committed to compliance with NCAA
bylaws than in years before. But back on Main Campus, some questions about SU Athletics’ relationship with administrators and faculty endure. Athletes’ days are jam-packed and demanding, said Steve Ishmael, wide receiver for SU’s football team. At the Stevenson Educational Center in Manley, tutors, administrators and academic coordinators help him with big picture things, like his schedule, and smaller details, like the proper place for a comma in his essay.
105
The number of tutors for student athletes Tommy Powell, assistant provost for student-athlete development, has added to the Stevenson Center since he came to SU in 2013
But there are limits to how much tutors can help Ishmael and the other student athletes. Over the course of its investigation, the NCAA discovered multiple cases of academic misconduct. A paper written by Fab Melo was submitted for a grade change with citations added by an administrator. In another instance, a tutor gave false accounts of how many hours three football players spent at an internship.
Tommy Powell, assistant provost for studentathlete development, redesigned SU’s academic services for student athletes when he came to SU in 2013. He increased the number of tutors from 35 to 140 and added more academic coordinators to the Stevenson Center, increasing the levels of oversight throughout the program. The process of ensuring compliance starts from the bottom-up. Tutors have to document sessions with student athletes, and coordinators review those forms to compile reports. Powell then looks over those reports for any issues and later meets with the vice chancellor and provost, who sends a report to the chancellor and the Board of Trustees. Powell uses the reports from coordinators, as well as other records, to track all studentathletes’ grade point averages, percentages of degree completion and other benchmarks set out by the NCAA. The benchmarks make up student-athletes’ academic progress rates, which determines whether athletes are on track for 5-year degree completion. Currently, all teams have at least 94 percent success rates, according to a Feb. 17 University Senate Committee on Instruction report. This metric does not account for graduation rates. “All that flows into making sure our student see student
athletes page 6
One morning when Justin Robinson was 7, he woke up his mom on her birthday to surprise her with breakfast he had made himself — breakfast that included a side of biscuits. There was only one problem: Yasmin Florence, his mother, knew they hadn’t had any biscuits in their Atlanta home. “So I asked him, ‘Where’d you get biscuits from?’ He said, ‘Mama, I made them.’ From scratch! And I couldn’t even do that,” Florence said. It was a reminder to Florence that Robinson, even at a young age, had a love for food and cooking. And that was only one of several passions that filled Robinson’s life before the Syracuse University senior died unexpectedly Sunday at his home. Robinson, whose friends described him as an always-cheerful person,
see robinson page 8
ncaa investigations
Syverud reflects on sanctions Chancellor talks NCAA investigations 1 year after sanctions were imposed By Brett Samuels senior staff writer
When Kent Syverud took over as chancellor of Syracuse University, he inherited an NCAA investigation looking into wrongdoings in the school’s athletics department. He was aware of the situation when he applied for the job, and spent time learning about the investigation before officially starting his position in January 2013. But it would be another two years before the process that began in 2007 finally drew to a close. “My main concern about the NCAA investigation was how long it took,” Syverud said in an interview on
see syverud page 6