From the shooting death of Washington Redskins’ safety Sean Taylor to the alleged assault of three North Carolina football players, athletes have made headlines after becoming victims of crimes.
At N.C. State, the Athletics department provides its athletes with opportunities to learn about safety.
According to Tonya Washington, assistant athletics director for student-athlete development/community relations, said she was concerned when social Web sites, including Facebook, began to gain popularity.
“Student-athletes being a little more high profile, I just try to educate them [saying] let’s not try to put our personal information on there,” Washington said. “We’ve created a policy that our coaches hand out to our students and now we do a formal education session on Facebook and social networking sites for freshmen.”
Washington said they also have programs that deal with all kinds of things that happen on a college campus. There are also other types of programs, including sexual assault, domestic violence and gambling.
Athletics also provides its students with other resources. Classes are available for incoming freshmen athletes. Philip Moses, director of the academic support program for student-athletes, said the class is helpful for the student-athletes.
“Mainly it’s about making the transition from high school to college with this gigantic piece of athletics hanging out there,” Moses said. “And through that, we talk a lot about understanding who they are — that they carry some responsibility, some ambassadorship with this.”
Moses said people can often tell the difference between who plays what sport, even though it doesn’t necessarily make them more of a target, just more noticeable.
“Especially when we look at our high-profile sports — it’s easy to see who’s a football guy, who’s a basketball guy — when they’re 6-foot-9 and all these other things,” Moses said.
“The gymnasts, who walk across the campus all day long, we don’t know who they are. And that a lot of times, you have to keep your guard up. You have to keep your guard especially if someone wants to give you something. There’s usually a reason.”
Both Moses and Washington said they do talk about situations in the news.
“We do alcohol education, which we all know the consequences sometimes of our actions with alcohol,” Washington said. “I think the UNC thing was an example of drinking and what happens sometimes as a result. So we try to educate them on social responsibility.”
But Moses said a lot of what happens is because of one’s lack of responsibility.
“What happens at midnight, at 2 a.m. and things like that — that you have to make all the right choices,” Moses said.
“I think a lot of times, some people have issues with student-athletes and I think a lot of times that’s based on misperception of what they’ve earned, what they’re given and things like that. Just things that rub people the wrong way. Whether or not they get called out or not, how they have to deal with that.”
Athletics director Lee Fowler said State doesn’t have much of a safety issue with athletes. He said there are safety measures with coaches when the team goes on the road.
“We talk to the coaches and they talk to their players about things on campus — whether there’s been an armed robbery on campus or stuff like that,” Fowler said. “In the 30 years that I’ve been an athletic director, it doesn’t seem to me there’s been any more danger to our student-athletes than our regular students.”
However, Fowler said he is still aware that student-athletes must be cautious.
“But when you’re dealing with 30,000 people and a free campus, you just have to be careful. I don’t think that they are zeroed out because they are student-athletes,” he said. “But they, like everyone else, have to be careful.”