BASKETBALL'S BIGGEST LOSERS
Basketball's biggest losers Dwight Slaughter majored in criminology during his four years at California State University, Los Angeles (CSLA). But he took no criminology courses. He played on the...
...He was credited with a score of 900, though "when I took it, I could only get a score of 450...
...In his senior year, each athlete was notified that he would be required to pay back part of the financial aid package, which was, he learned, a government loan...
...He had twice led his team to league and sectional basketball championships...
...The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which governs school athletic programs, stipulates that scholarships to athletes such as Slaughter be limited to the costs of room, board, and tuition...
...Slaughter had his choice of colleges after he was selected as a high school Ail-American during his final year at Verbum Dei High School, a small Catholic school in the heart of the Watts district in Los Angeles...
...He wrote this dispatch for Pacific News Service...
...The coach made me an offer I couldn't refuse," he says...
...According to sports sociologist Harry Edwards, more than 90 per cent of black athletes never graduate and 20 to 25 per cent of those at four-year colleges are functionally illiterate...
...Their complaint, filed last December in Los Angeles Municipal Court, also charges other abuses, including under-the-table payments, use of stand-ins to take their exams, waiving grade requirements and admission standards, misuse of financial aid checks, lack of course plans, misrepresentation of financial aid opportunities, and scheduling of illegal practice sessions...
...But being made to pay financially for it was the final insult...
...He played on the university basketball team instead...
...Within the past five years, several schools have been placed on probation by the NCAA for recruitment rule violations, usually involving black athletes...
...Tests were taken care of...
...That "offer," as he understood it, included promises of tutors, counselors, a complete educational package leading to a degree in criminology, and a full four-year scholarship...
...Randy Echols, who initiated the suit with the aid of the Western Center on Law and Poverty, notes there were basketball and football players on the Dean's List with 3.5 and higher grade point averages...
...Today, he, along with seven other black athletes, is suing CSLA, charging the university with "fraud and deceit" in the administration of the school's student loan and scholarship programs...
...The other seven athletes who are Slaughter's co-plaintiffs in the suit tell similar stories...
...In 1972, Slaughter accepted a scholarship offer to CSLA...
...The courses he took during the next four years, on the advice of his coach, consisted of such toughies as beginning baseball, badminton, rugby, golf, backpacking, and water polo...
...Blacks have been a particularly susceptible target because of their backgrounds of poverty and poor education in ghetto schools...
...However, the state of California confiscated the state income tax refunds of four of the athletes pending repayment, and the university "red flagged" their transcripts, meaning that the athletes would not be allowed to transfer to another college until their debts were repaid...
...Their multi-million dollar suit, the first of its kind in the country, points to exploitation and frustrations of many black athletes on campuses across the country...
...The coaches," Echols says, had "always made it clear that these were 'scholarships' and that all we had to worry about was playing good ball...
...The schools include California State University at Long Beach, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Oklahoma University, Southwest Louisiana University, the University of Reno, and Michigan State University...
...These were guys," Echols says bitterly, "who in some cases would be classified as functionally illiterate...
...The coaches would just say to do what I tell you and leave the education to me," he explains...
...EarlOfari (Earl Ofari is public-affairs analyst for radio station KPFK, Los A ngeles, and the author of "The Myth of Black Capitalism...
...When Slaughter got to CSLA, he found that a special set of rules seemed to apply to him and some of his teammates...
...We lose out both ways," she observes, "since the athletes didn't get their promised education, and other students whose place they took never reached the college doors...
...Not receiving an education or a degree was bad enough, say the CSLA plaintiffs...
...A student was paid to stand in for him at the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), given to entering freshmen, Slaughter says...
...The athletes' charges indicate there was a "ripoff," as she calls it, of the school's Minority Admission Program...
...Four years later, Slaughter discovered that he was not about to get a degree...
...It is this point that brought attorney Michelle Washington of the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles into the case and led her to draw up the suit...
...The officials at the school admitted each of the athletes to the campus under this program, thus depriving other ghetto youngsters of a chance at an education," she says, noting that the program, which waives minimum grade requirements, was used to bring in the black athletes because most of them could not meet admission standards otherwise...
...Michael Ingram, a co-plaintiff who was a teammate of both Echols and Slaughter, says he rarely went to classes and often did not even know who his instructors were...
Vol. 43 • April 1979 • No. 4
