Transfer Tools
February 7, 2014
On Oct. 15 I used this space to talk about “Transfer Trends”; and I took that topic on the road, including it in MHSAA Update meetings throughout the state. I described an “epidemic.”
As I have said and written before (including in this space on Sept. 27, 2011), our transfer regulation is an inadequate tool for the fight ahead of us. It has failed to slow the growth of athletic-motivated transfers even after adoption of a rule for that purpose in 1997. Too few schools have wanted the hassle of alleging and documenting that a transfer was primarily for athletic reasons. In 2012, the leadership of the basketball and wrestling coaches associations, observing that current rules permitted several high-profile transfers in their sports, asked for a much tougher transfer rule – one that would subject most transfer students to a full year of ineligibility. Recognizing its legal responsibility to enforce the most narrow proscriptions possible, the Representative Council responded with more precision.
The new athletic-related transfer rule adopted last May extends the period of ineligibility from one semester to two for those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the existing 15 exceptions to the transfer regulation and where the student has engaged in certain activities during the previous 12 months that link the student to the new school’s athletic program.
If a student played high school sports during the previous 12 months and did one of the activities that linked that student to the new school athletically, the new rule doubles the period of ineligibility. If, for example, this transfer student attended an open gym at the new school, played summer or non-school sports on a team coached by one of the coaches of the sport at the new school, or received instruction in strength or conditioning from a personal trainer who coaches at the new school, then the period of ineligibility would double.
In addition to narrowly tailoring the new rule to the most obvious and egregious examples of an athletic-motivated or -related transfer, the Representative Council also provided necessary notice. The rule has not been “sprung” on students who may have done things before the rule change that would have made them ineligible. Because the rule has a 12-month run-up to consider, the Council provided almost 15 months’ notice. The rule takes full effect Aug. 1, 2014.
This is another example of defining a problem and designing the policy with precision. It’s both most educationally sound and judicially defensible.
International Affairs
January 21, 2014
On Sept. 10, 2013, I wrote in this space what I later spoke at MHSAA Update Meetings across Michigan: that we had to assure that the increasing numbers of international students who are arriving in Michigan do so without undue influence and without upsetting the competitive balance between MHSAA member schools in interscholastic athletics. Both matters concern me even more today than last fall.
A 1996 federal law allows international students to attend nonpublic schools for any number of years and to do so at reduced tuition, but the law limits international students’ attendance at public schools to one year and requires they make full payment of all fees and expenses. This is creating an unlevel playing field in school sports.
These aren’t J-1 visa foreign exchange students cleared and placed for a single academic year by programs that have been approved by the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel. These are students on F-1 visas, which increased from 6,541 in 2007 to 65,452 in 2012, arriving in dozens of different ways and remaining for two, three or four years. These are not "blind" placements; they are arranged.
By this means, some small private schools have been balancing their budgets by increasing their enrollments by 10 to 20 percent and even more with an influx of international students, while still remaining under the Class D or Division 4 maximum for MHSAA tournament classification.
And making matters much worse, a few private schools of all sizes are receiving especially talented or tall students through arrangements made by parents of players and/or others associated with their school and/or AAU and college programs.
When we learn, for example, that people with basketball connections are arranging for students to come to Michigan, when they are directing these students to schools where these adults have connections, when in some cases these people are paying portions of the tuition and/or providing for living arrangements for these students, we have undue influence, plain and simple. These students lose eligibility; the adults involved must be disassociated with the schools; and the schools are penalized if they haven’t handled things as they should have.
But this is just putting a patch on the bigger problem – which is placing the same limits on international student attendance, regardless of the type of visa they have, or the type of school in which they enroll.
By next August, this association must have a rule that provides immediate eligibility for one year for all international students (whether J-1 or F-1) who are placed blindly in schools through CSIET-listed programs; and if they remain beyond that one year, then they must sit out one year. All other international students, except those who relocate with their family unit, should have no eligibility at the varsity level at any time.