FSU teacher speaks about some problems

[bama57]

I've had dealings with the handlers. My biggest issue was with a gentle giant of a lineman who was new to college, and to reading, and had trouble making it to the morning class. On the few occasions he made it to class (late) and didn't fall dead asleep, his earnest writing, both in style and structure, was that of an elementary school student. He never turned a paper in on time, but when I contacted the handlers to warn them of his status, a pile of final drafts would suddenly materialize, full of fairly complex, organized thoughts and diction—thoughts that hadn't made it into earlier drafts I'd seen. I was bombarded with regular long emails from handlers explaining how I should arrange extra meetings with the player and extend deadlines for him. But he couldn't overcome his absences, and when I informed them through a mentor that he wouldn't pass and it was too late to drop the class, I was asked if I could give him an "incomplete," even though he didn't qualify for one. I said no.

This was a problem: My lineman was already on academic probation for poor performance in his first semester. Should I flunk him, he would lose his eligibility. At the end of the term, when I went online to enter my students' grades, his name didn't appear on the roster. He had been administratively disappeared from the rolls—a medical withdrawal, I heard, though I wondered what malady rendered him unable to attend class but capable of playing 40 or 50 snaps every Saturday.

Sometimes, it was the handlers' non-responsiveness that disturbed me. Like when a lumbering receiver appeared at my open tutoring hours to receive help with his paper, a series of rough ramblings connecting entire lifted passages from a marketing textbook, several Wikipedia pages, and an online biography of Nancy Reagan.

A few minutes into my explanation of why plagiarism wasn't kosher, the receiver's attention seemed elsewhere. He asked if there was a bathroom nearby; he excused himself. He returned about five minutes later, and his demeanor had changed considerably. His legs were quivering, his arms shuddered, and though it was clear he was making an effort, he couldn't focus on my laptop and the work we'd started. "Hot in here," he complained, sweating and stripping off his warm-up top in the middle of a cool basement space where my fellow tutors and I were still wearing winter coats. With 15 minutes left in our session, he rose suddenly, anxious to go to the library and finish the paper, he said.

Through a supervisor, I contacted the academic handlers about the receiver, but never heard a response. This was early last December, less than a week before the police began investigating a sexual assault that allegedly involved Jameis Winston.

If I kept a schedule like these kids do, I'd probably consider popping a lot of greenies. I don't know what they do over there across campus, in a gleaming behemoth of a new training facility, bankrolled by the booster club that's now developing a series of strip malls and condos and drinkeries for alumni on the once-artsy industrial flatlands outside the football stadium. ("Collegetown," they're calling it.) Whatever our players do takes up so much physical and psychic energy that it's amazing they don't ever kill anyone, much less that they make it to class. But most of them are fine. There are dozens of successful, placid ones on the roster every year.

One of Derek's better-adjusted athletes said it wasn't the practices or the physical abuse that bothered him, but how the coaches force-fed him and his teammates. "They watch me clean the plate," the player told Derek. "'You let that settle and then go lift.'" That's in addition to the supervised supplement-swallowing, the pills and powders of who the hell knows what. "He looks down at me, this monster man, this beast, and now he's got kid eyes," Derek tells me, "and he says to me: 'Mister Derek, sometimes I'm not hungry anymore.'"

That wounded Seminole is now a successful NFL player
Click here for link

[Jamos]

Wow, can this be true because it is sickening to read.

[pmull]

It is beginning to look like FSU and Penn State have more in common than just letting a coach hang around too long.

[ALTideUp]

For what it's worth, I have failed football players at UA and have never seen, heard or felt anything approaching coercion, intimidation, or cheating.

[N.AL-Tider]

For what it's worth, I have failed football players at UA and have never seen, heard or felt anything approaching coercion, intimidation, or cheating.

Is that your "official" response?   

Just kidding...

[pmull]

For what it's worth, I have failed football players at UA and have never seen, heard or felt anything approaching coercion, intimidation, or cheating.

Well let me be the first. What the He** are you doing?

Just kidding. That is the way it should be. They are given all the resources they need to be successful in the classroom. If they can not make their grades they do not deserve to stay in school.

[2Stater]

For what it's worth, I have failed football players at UA and have never seen, heard or felt anything approaching coercion, intimidation, or cheating.

That's very good to hear. From someone on the outside looking in, I just wonder how widespread this sort of thing is, as in how many Universities are doing it this way?

[Jamos]

For what it's worth, I have failed football players at UA and have never seen, heard or felt anything approaching coercion, intimidation, or cheating.

It would be very hard for me to believe anything like that ever happened at Bama. Thanks for your input.

[N.AL-Tider]

Wasn't there something about a teacher at Tenrsea being asked to change some grades for players back about the time that Bama got in trouble for the Albert Means case?

[double nickel]

For what it's worth, I have failed football players at UA and have never seen, heard or felt anything approaching coercion, intimidation, or cheating.

How dare you require standards?   

[Jamos]

Wasn't there something about a teacher at Tenrsea being asked to change some grades for players back about the time that Bama got in trouble for the Albert Means case?

Oh yes, she repeatedly tried to expose this during the Fulmer era.

[bama57]

Linda Bensel-Meyers, I think she now teaches at the University of Denver?

[roll tide roll]

Wasn't there something about a teacher at Tenrsea being asked to change some grades for players back about the time that Bama got in trouble for the Albert Means case?

It involved T Martin and some others.  
Teacher admitted it and said it happened.  
Possibly, on 60 minutes.  Cannot remember.

There was a rug that was in the room and all of the information was conveniently swept under it.

Sorry for the double post bama57.  I looked for similar threads before posting and did not see yours.

The article is pretty damning.

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