You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
WASHINGTON -- A National Collegiate Athletic Association committee charged with finding ways to address campus violence and prevention as it relates to athletes has a clearer idea of how it might do so after a two-day think tank here wrapped up Thursday. While the committee won't formulate any recommendations until its meeting at the end of this month (at the soonest), and won't present those until the Division I Board of Directors meets in January, the NCAA staff, athletics administrators and university officials at the think tank discussed the importance of cross-campus collaboration in violence prevention, and the need to identify best practices and institutional models that are effective in preventing victimization.
Reports of athletes involved in "acts of violence" (and other cases that went unreported in the media) prompted the NCAA to address this issue, said Deborah Wilson, chair of the NCAA Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct and associate athletic director at George Mason University. But no specific cases triggered the initiative, she said.
"This is a huge problem; it's not just an athletic problem, it's really a societal problem, and it's coming onto our campuses and into our athletics departments," Wilson said in an interview Friday. "We want to be very mindful, be respectful and very caring about the true costs to the victims of these incidents. This is not an issue that athletics can address by itself."
