NCAA president Mark Emmert said Tuesday the NCAA will stay away from involving itself with incidents of domestic violence and sexual assault on college campuses. Instead, Emmert says the schools should handle these incidents individually.
“If a student-athlete engages in bad behavior, they have to be subject to the same standards of conduct as everyone else,” Emmert said, per the Associated Press. “The most important thing to the NCAA membership has always been that students aren’t treated in any privileged or disproportionate fashion.”
The NCAA released a new handbook in August that details its recommended ways of handling instances of sexual abuse and domestic violence to serve as a guideline of sorts for athletic departments.
The association has also been apart of an initiative with the White House called “It’s On Us.” The campaign, which launched last week, “is designed to get young men and women to take responsibility for themselves and their behavior.”
While these issues have plagued the NFL in recent weeks, these incidents aren’t foreign to college campuses either. The question Emmert wants to address is whether or not a student-athlete should be held to a different standard than the average person.
“I don’t know that we need to hold (student-athletes) to a higher standard,” Emmert said. “They are in many cases highly visible people and they have to know that there are certain responsibilities, and they need to be handled accordingly.”
Emmert said that, for the most part, schools take the right measures in dealing with these serious situations appropriately. Part of that includes measuring the public’s perception of the university.
“Most universities understand that’s a reflection of the university. Universities have a lot more at stake in holding students accountable for their behavior,” Emmert said. “I wouldn’t say it’s done right all the time but it is done right most of the time.
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Sam Cooper is a contributor for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
From Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo Sports - NCAA prez Mark Emmert says domestic violence incidents should be handled by universities
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