哈佛作弊事件让常春藤联盟反思高校体育模式
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Six months ago, the Harvard men’s basketball team was a source of uncommon athletic pride on campus. The team was ranked among the nation’s top 25 for the first time, and when it earned the program’s first berth to the N.C.A.A. tournament in 66 years, students and players spilled into Harvard Square chanting and celebrating.
马萨诸塞州剑桥市——六个月前,哈佛男子篮球队给这所大学带来了少有的体育荣耀感。他们首次进入全美25强,时隔66年再次杀入美国大学生篮球联赛(NCAA)全国锦标赛,这让学生和队员们涌进哈佛广场,不住地欢呼雀跃。
The next day, Harvard’s staid campus of red-brick buildings was hardly one big pep rally, but from the Harvard bookstore, which printed commemorative basketball T-shirts, to the college’s president, who called the team “a real community building force,” the university seemed to bask in an atypical glow of sporting achievement.
虽然很难在红砖构建的严肃的校园中感受到备战氛围,但第二天整个校园似乎充满了体育成就感,从烫印篮球纪念T恤的哈佛书店,到把哈佛男篮称为“真正社区建设力量”的校长都是如此。
But last week, days after published reports implicated the co-captains of the basketball team in a widespread academic cheating scandal that may involve dozens of varsity athletes, the mood at Harvard had shifted.
但上周哈佛的气氛发生了变化,原因是几天前公布的报告表明,哈佛男篮的两名队长卷进了考试作弊事件,这次丑闻牵连众多,可能涉及哈佛数十名运动员学生。
“I have foreign roommates who come from university systems where there is no role for athletics,” Patrick Lane, a senior, said as he stood in Harvard Yard. “So when they see athletes cutting corners like this, their response is to say, ‘Good riddance.’
大四学生帕特里克·莱恩(Patrick Lane)来自马萨诸塞州贝弗利,他在哈佛园(Harvard Yard)中表达了自己的看法:“我有几名外国室友,他们国家的大学不收运动员。所以看到我们的运动员学生做这种抄近道的事后,他们的反应是‘幸好我们那里没招体育生’。”
“And they are not the only students troubled. Some athletes are here working hard, but others avoid academic challenges. You know you won’t find them in a deductive logic course, but you will find them in a much less taxing sociology course. They sometimes exist apart, and collectively gravitate to the same majors, like sociology or government. It’s known.”
“而且他们并不是唯一感到困扰的学生。有些运动员在哈佛很努力,另一些却不愿在学习中迎难而上。我们知道不会在逻辑推理课上看到他们,你会发现他们去上社会学课程,这要轻松得多。有时候他们各走各的,但他们选的专业都一样,都是社会学或政治学。这些大家都知道。”
Trevor Nash, a Harvard sophomore from the Atlanta area, said the initial reaction on campus was shock that as many as 125 students in a 279-person class with a reputation for favorable grading and a light workload — Government 1310: Introduction to Congress — were being investigated for cheating on a take-home final exam last semester.
来自乔治亚州亚特兰大地区的大二学生特雷弗·纳什(Trevor Nash)称,校园里最初的反应是震惊——上这门课的有279名学生,其中因期末课外考试作弊而受到调查的多达125人;他们作弊的科目是编号1310的政治学课程《国会概论》(Introduction to Congress),这门课以打分高、课业负担小而闻名。
“That’s such a big number,” Nash said. “The athletics part has just made it bigger. People are frustrated knowing that when Harvard comes up now, this is what people will talk about.”
纳什说:“这次作弊的人这么多。运动员学生牵涉其中,只会让事情闹得更大。现在只要一提到哈佛,人们就会说起这件事,想到这一点大家都很沮丧。”
The news could reignite a contentious decades-old debate about athletes and academic integrity in the Ivy League. Eleven years ago, the publication of the book “The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values,” by the former Princeton president William Bowen and James Shulman of the Mellon Foundation, used a vast database on the academic credentials, grades and majors of 90,000 students from 30 elite universities and colleges to depict an athletic culture that significantly influenced campus ethos.
几十年来,常春藤联盟(Ivy League)高校将运动和学业合为一体一直备受争议,而这次事件可能重新激起这方面的讨论。11年前,普林斯顿大学前校长威廉·鲍恩(William Bowen)和梅隆基金会(Mellon Foundation)的詹姆斯·舒尔曼(James Shulman)共同撰写了《生活游戏:高校体育和教育价值》(The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values)一书,这本著作通过引用分析30所精英院校9万名学生的学历数据、分数和专业,阐述了体育文化对校园思潮的巨大影响。
Among the book’s messages was that today’s athletes at elite institutions enter college less academically prepared and with decidedly different goals and values than their classmates. While there was an organized and scholarly backlash, several top universities changed policies to monitor the academic choices of athletes and prohibited athletes from doing things like living together in what amounted to athletic dorms.
这本书传递出的信息之一是,和同班同学相比,运动员学生进入精英院校时在学业方面的准备不够充分,目标和价值观也截然不同。虽然遭到了反对,而且这种反对声浪既有组织性,也有理有据,但有几所顶级大学还是调整了政策,对运动员学生的学业选择加以督导,并限制他们做某些事,比如生活在一起从而把大学宿舍变成运动员宿舍。
The outcome of the current Harvard investigation is unknown, but serious transgressions linked to Crimson athletes have not gone unnoticed.
对此事的调查结果如何还不得而知,但哈佛从未纵容过跟男篮队员有关的严重违规行为。
“I had this notion that Harvard and the Ivies were different, but I guess they’re not,” said Gerald Gurney, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and until last year the president of the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics. “I know they have high standards, but we also know coaches and advisers find creative ways to place athletes in certain courses and majors that protect them.”
俄克拉荷马大学(University of Oklahoma)教授杰拉德·格尼(Gerald Gurney)说:“我原本以为哈佛以及常春藤联盟高校和我们不同,但现在我想情况并非如此。我知道他们有很高的标准,但我们也知道,为了让运动员学习的课程和专业成为他们的保护伞,教练和导师们各有奇招。”格尼曾是美国全国运动员学业导师协会(National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics)的会长,去年才卸任。
He added: “It’s good that they’re looking into it at Harvard, but when athletes, and that includes their athletes, have to commit more than 40 hours a week to their sport, it’s a formula for disaster.”
他还指出:“哈佛关注这个问题当然很好,但运动员,包括哈佛的运动员每周都要训练40多个小时,这已经为灾难埋下伏笔。”
Said Shulman, “The Game of Life” co-author: “The competitive pressures the Ivies face are similar to those that big-time sports schools face. The legend is that the Ivies don’t have any issues about sports, but that clearly is not true. They compete intensely for students, they compete to bring in more alumni donations and they compete for reputation. So, of course, intense competition leads to trade-offs.”
《生活游戏》的合著者舒尔曼认为:“常春藤联盟高校面临的竞争压力和一流运动学校类似。传说常春藤盟校在体育方面不存在任何争论,但这显然并不属实。它们在竞相争夺生源,在争夺校友捐赠,也在争夺名望。那么,激烈的竞争必然会让它们有所取舍。”
In the only interview she has granted about the cheating scandal, Harvard President Drew Faust last week told The Associated Press that athletes should not be singled out for blame.
哈佛校长德鲁·福斯特(Drew Faust)上周对美联社(The Associated Press)记者表示,不应该把运动员单独挑出来进行指责。这是她就作弊事件接受的唯一一次采访。
“It is not about one student group,” Faust said. “It’s not confined to any one student group.”
福斯特说:“这不是关于某个学生群体的事,它并不仅限于哪一个学生群体。”
When Harvard was asked for additional comment Tuesday, Jay M. Harris, dean of undergraduate education, issued a statement that said, in part: “Without integrity, there can be no genuine achievement, either at Harvard or anywhere else. We have held, and will continue to hold, every Harvard College student to that same high standard.”
上周二其他记者前来采访时,哈佛本科部教务长杰伊·M·哈里斯(Jay M. Harris)发表了一份声明,其中一段说道:“不管是在哈佛还是其他任何地方,不诚实就不可能取得真正的成就。我们一直用统一的高标准来要求哈佛的每个学生,而且还会一直这样做。”
Harvard’s senior basketball co-captains, Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry, have taken leaves of absences for the 2012-13 year, according to two Harvard officials briefed on the situation. The officials would not speak publicly about the case because of privacy laws. Casey, who was a preseason favorite for Ivy League player of the year, and Curry left Harvard days after a university administrator sent an e-mail message advising fall athletes who might be involved in the cheating scandal to consider taking a leave in order to preserve their eligibility.
根据两名校方官员的情况简介,哈佛男篮两名队长、大四学生凯尔·凯西(Kyle Casey)和布兰丁·柯里(Brandyn Curry)已经在2012-2013学年休学。按照隐私法的规定,这两名官员不会公开谈论此事。凯西是长春藤联盟季前赛的大热球员。他和柯里已经离开哈佛。在他们离校几天前,校方行政人员曾发送电子邮件建议可能卷入作弊事件的秋季学期运动员学生考虑休学,以便保留在哈佛就读的资格。
Casey and Curry could be allowed to return for the 2013-14 year after what is essentially a one-year suspension, the most severe of the proposed penalties in the investigation. Had the players remained at Harvard and then been disciplined in the same manner, they would be prohibited from playing on the team and would have forfeited their final year of N.C.A.A. eligibility.
哈佛可能允许凯西和柯里在2013-2014学年回校,而此前的一年则相当于停学,这是本次调查提出的最严厉处罚方式。如果让他们继续留在哈佛并处以同样的处分,两人就会被禁赛,从而无法在大学的最后一年参加美国大学生篮球联赛。
Other students from the class in question, including non-athletes who made up the majority in the class, have taken leaves as well.
上同一门课程的同学,包括在班里占多数的非运动员学生,也都开始休学。
At the same time, some students are choosing to fight the charges, which include either collaborating on answers or plagiarizing them outright. The cheating inquiry could take months to complete.
与此同时,有些学生面对合作答题或剽窃的指控选择据理力争。相关调查可能需要数月才能完成。
The course at the heart of the scandal was widely known as a class that required little effort to earn good grades, according to Harvard students interviewed late last week. That made it attractive to athletes with hefty travel and practice commitments. But several students who took the class last semester said the course was actually unusually difficult.
据上周晚些时候接受采访的哈佛学生介绍,本次作弊事件所涉课程以容易获得高分而出名。这对于要频繁外出参与校外活动的运动员学生来说显得格外有吸引力。但上学期选了这门课的几名学生说,它实际上非常难。
“It was one of the hardest courses I’ve had here,” said a student, a junior, who was in the course but is not being investigated. He did not want to give his name because he said the university had instructed students in the class not to comment publicly during the investigation.
其中一名上了这门课但未受到调查的大三学生说:“这是我在哈佛上过的最难的课程之一。”他不愿意透露姓名,原因是校方已要求该班学生不要在调查期间公开发表评论。
“The take-home exam was given over a weekend,” said the student, a former athlete at Harvard. “And it took all of that; it pretty well ruined my weekend. There were many written essays to many questions. Often, when a professor gets a reputation for being easy, he’ll ramp things up in the next year. I think that’s what may have happened. Some people thought they could coast and instead they got in over their heads and had to look for a way out at the end.”
这名学生也曾是哈佛的运动员,他说:“这次课外考试在周末进行。我把全部时间都用在了答题上,周末基本上毁了。里面有很多论述题,要写大段文章。通常,如果哪位教授因为出题容易而出了名,第二年他就会提高难度。我想这次可能就是这样。有些人认为可以走捷径,结果反而栽了跟头,最后就只能自己找出路。”
The professor of the class, Matthew B. Platt, did not return phone calls or e-mail messages seeking comment.
任课教师马修·B·普拉特(Matthew B. Platt)教授没有回电话,也没有通过回复电子邮件来发表评论。
Several students said last week that instructions for what was considered inappropriate sharing of information among classmates were unclear and contradictory. An already evident byproduct of the situation has been a paragraph-long “Statement on Collaboration” affixed to syllabuses for the 2012 fall semester courses.
前一周有几名学生指出,在同学不恰当地共享信息这个问题上,相关规定并不明确而且自相矛盾。2012年秋季学期教学大纲后面所附的一大段《合作行为声明》显然就是这种情况所产生的附带结果。
Harvard’s football coach, Tim Murphy, said: “Harvard kids aren’t good kids; they’re great kids. But they don’t walk on water. And I think it’s important as parents and educators that we have to reinforce that crucial life lesson, that inappropriate behavior won’t be tolerated. Because down the road, later in life, those consequences can be terminal. They can cost you a marriage. They can cost you a career.”
哈佛橄榄球队教练蒂姆·墨菲(Tim Murphy)表示:“哈佛的孩子们不是好,而是棒极了。但他们不是圣人。我认为作为父母和教育工作者,必须强化这样一个至关重要的生活经验,那就是不恰当行为绝不应得到姑息,这一点很重要。因为在他们随后的人生道路上,这样做的后果可能是致命的。它可能会毁了你的婚姻,也可能会毁了你的事业。”