There are plenty of parents and students who are looking for the game-day experience when they are scouting out schools with their college-bound kids, but we won't be among them.
Big-time Division I sports are an economic engine for a school. Boosters give money and remain connected; alumni encourage their children to apply. But time and again, schools have seemed willing to sell out their lofty educational and ethical principles in blind fealty to winning games -- football games, in particular, as we've seen at Baylor, Florida State, Penn State, Missouri and so many more.
My husband is a teacher and our daughters are years away from commissioning their most profound thoughts to college essays, and we are already trying to identify schools that aren't making this Faustian bargain with football. In doing so, our hope is that our kids will encounter an environment more in line with the shining ideals set out in Latin mottos and school mission statements if campus life doesn't revolve around football.
In other parts of the world, sports teams and educational institutions are separate things. In our country, we decided in the late 1800s that a physical education through sports was a more holistic approach to life. But that ideal has been corrupted by the buckets of money reeled in by bowl games and tournament appearances, not to mention the inequity that robs players of compensation and healthy years in the work force.
Is that a system I want to support with my tuition dollars and application fees? Do other parents really want their kids to attend an institution that pays the strength and conditioning coach $500,000 a year?
Add to that the list of schools under investigation by the Department of Education for the mishandling of sexual assault allegations -- too often because of some connection to a sports program -- and choosing an institution becomes a true quandary. We have an idea of which schools haven't gotten it, but how do we know which schools have?
Of course, big-time football doesn't guarantee a toxic culture any more than the lack of it guarantees the opposite. And my awareness of these issues is heightened given my job, for which I read court filings and speak to survivors who detail the humiliating backlash an entire college community can provide when a sports figure is named in a case. I've read the Pepper Hamilton summary and then read last week about Baylor boosters floating the idea of bringing back football coach Art Briles in a year.
That's the kind of attitude that gets fostered in an environment that cares more about wins than about campus safety.
And what about campus safety? Anecdotally at least, it's a concern that hasn't seemed to reach most of the applicant population. Will Goodman, an independent college counselor based in Westchester, New York, said he is rarely asked about these issues, but he wishes he was.
"So many parents are not ready to have that conversation with their kids, and they should be," Goodman said.
I remember how meticulously we selected an interactive music program for our 9-month-old. Later, how we debated when to let her explore the woods behind the backyard by herself, how far could she ride her bike, and we looked away when she climbed to the top of the tree in the front yard. We've run an informal risk-reward assessment for everything from the potentially deadly corners of the coffee table to how many chocolate chip cookies turns a birthday party into an obesity epidemic, and how much cumulative screen time will cause her brain to leak out of her ears.
This generation of parents is obsessed with safety in a way their own parents weren't -- video monitors for baby rooms and, later, the constant tether of a cell phone. Yet when it comes to picking a college, most haven't caught up with what it might mean to judge the relative safety of different campus environments.
"It's the most under-discussed part of applying to college," Goodman said.
Part of the difficulty is that it's unbearable to think of the possibility that a son or daughter could be assaulted, or that a campus wouldn't support them in their time of need. How do you talk to your child about that, amid the fun of evaluating dorm choices and possible majors?
Instead, we might think about the brand or campus, how the college's name will sound on our lips, whether it will evoke the right kind of envy among fellow parents or reconnect us with old friends we bonded with during tailgates.
Goodman said a "rah-rah" atmosphere at a campus where pre-gaming can start at 9 a.m. can be an unspoken lure for many students. Fun is important, and lord knows my college years were full of it.
Granted, I didn't go to a football school, although I did go to high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, so I know the kind of temporary insanity that descends upon a town on Saturdays. I always took a perverse pleasure in knowing how my graduate institution, Columbia University, underperformed in football to the point of comedy. To me, a horrible football team signaled that the school's priorities were in the right place.
But that's not the case anymore. Columbia has had its own public debate about the way the institution responds to allegations of sexual assault on campus. Harvard and Princeton have also dealt with high-profile problems.
So, where to start when looking at schools?
Asking questions of guidance counselors and admissions officers is one avenue. And parents, this is probably on you. Imagine a 17-year-old mustering up the courage in one of those group discussions to raise a hand and ask, "How many students were raped last year?" But if someone asks, it's a signal to the school that the culture on campus is part of selection criteria.
This isn't about dragging an unwilling senior away from his or her school of choice, but it is about discussing why they're choosing it. Our daughters will make their own choices when the time comes. We will try to guide them as best we can, find out about each school that interests them, help them acquire the skills that will be useful -- and then we will let them go.
But we will not avoid the difficult questions we need to ask.