Strike Three, Shame On Me

No one knew where I went to college until the basketball players started stealing condoms and dealing drugs.

I am not exaggerating. I have lived in Boston for five years, and only twenty percent of those I run into have actually heard of Binghamton University, the State University of New York branch I graduated from. That is, until the university hired men’s basketball coach Kevin Broadus, and his prize recruits started finding themselves in the back of police cars.

The first two times the Binghamton athletic program fell astray this past year, I didn’t wince, chalked it up to coincidence, pointed out to those who brought it up that other Division I schools had much worse discipline and academic problems. The New York Times profiled my alma mater, claiming that it had compromised academic achievement, was actively recruiting students from “diploma mills” and was taking chances on players other schools had given up on. I defended the school against the Times report in a blog post, claiming that the Times had cast the magnifying glass unfairly, and that the rapid growth of the Athletic program had brought a spirit and identity to campus that had not existed prior.

Then Wednesday night, several media outlets reported that Binghamton guard Tiki Mayben had been accused of being in possession of and distributing cocaine. His hometown police in Troy, NY arrested him of such after a three month investigation. Mayben pled not guilty on Thursday.

“I did all I could,” the New York Times reported Broadus as saying about the situation.

My initial reaction was that I had done all I could, that I could no longer turn a blind eye to the troubling situations at my alma mater. I could no longer carry the perspective that if larger, more successful Division I schools have similar problems, then Binghamton must be doing something right. I just could not, morally, support this basketball team anymore. The ribbing and commentary of those whose teams were either keeping their players well-disciplined, or just covering everything up much better, was going to get old quick.

As much as athletics can be a motivating and unifying factor on campuses that have previously lacked an identity, there is a threshold. A school just can not sell their soul to the devil just to have a good athletic program. Sometimes there is a good reason why a student has been dismissed previously from an institution. A school probably should not give a student-athlete his or her sixty-fifth chance, proclaiming that this good deed is being done because they truly deserve it, not because of the real reason – because he or she is a great basketball player that will make the rest of your mid-major conference look like 10 year olds.

After reflecting on the situation, however, I become a tad more tolerant. These disobedient basketball players are three student-athletes of maybe 300 in the entire school – in any sample of young adults, a small percentage is going to run into trouble, be they athletes or not. I also understand, more so than some due to my full-time work, the political factors that have led to this point. Broadus, the maligned coach at the center of recruiting all of these disruptive student athletes, came from Georgetown University with high recommendations. When making large athletic program decisions at mid-majors, the academic status of other schools are considered just as much as the athletic status, and Georgetown is a school Binghamton looks up to in both fields. Georgetown is where Binghamton wants to be, and is always striving to be – of course they saw no significant problems with bringing Broadus on board just about three years ago. If Georgetown – a school ranked 57 spots ahead of them in the US News and World Report College Rankings, as well as a school known for basketball prowess – had no problems with Broadus, than he couldn’t be that bad. Right?

Late Thursday evening, however, it seemed that Binghamton – with enough poor publicity to last the next sixty-three years – had actually had enough. It publicized that it had suspended Maybin from the basketball team, and mentioned the judicial sanctions he might face via the school’s judicial affairs office in said release. And it sounded like my alma mater was now going to look at Broadus’s decision-making much more critically. “We appreciate that Coach Broadus has given second chances to athletes,” Binghamton President Lois DeFleur stated Thursday, “but our program cannot take these risks.”

When my father used to drive me to Binghamton at the beginning of a semester, he would approach the gray, depressed city and wonder why the city or the school – both of which he was quite fond of – wouldn’t just take some risks to get their name out there and reenergize both the campus and city communities. A few years later, Binghamton took his advice – and, well, it did get their name out there.