By Maurissa Munoz and Jacy Terry
There is an ongoing effort to clear up Eastern New Mexico University’s NCAA violations, which surfaced in October 2012.
Although the issue has not been fully resolved, university administrators have not forgot it. ENMU administration is actively working to take the high road and make things right, said ENMU Athletic Director Jeff Geiser.
ENMU has submitted a draft of the infraction report to the NCAA.
In the report, ENMU has admitted the errors that were made, took responsibility for the errors, and presented steps to ensure these violations do not happen again.
“Our main goal right now is to try to get this thing behind us,” said ENMU President Steven Gamble, in a general faculty meeting Monday afternoon.
Gamble and Geiser both emphasized that ENMU self-reported these errors and honestly took responsibility for the mistakes.
Gamble compared the ENMU infractions favorably to other NCAA violations, especially the ongoing reports of violations and corruption at Oklahoma State University. On Monday, Gamble said that ENMU’s violations are “not sleazy” and that ENMU is “not hiding anything.”
One change ENMU is implementing to ensure that similar NCAA violations do not occur in the future is adding more workers to share the load of the responsibility of making sure athletics are in good standing with the NCAA. For example, ENMU now has a new compliance officer.
When regulations surfaced, ENMU sought help from West Texas A&M’s Linda Elliot, according to Geiser. One of Elliot’s suggestions was to hire an assistant registrar coordinator, whose job would be to monitor bylaw 14 of the NCAA manual concerning eligibility. ENMU has taken this step.
ENMU also has added an Athletics Compliance Committee, which meets biweekly. This committee is a standing committee, meaning it is permanent. The purpose of the committee is to review and provide oversight to the University’s athletic compliance program.
Gamble said that ENMU should have had a committee such as this a long time ago.
A number of issues are discussed during the committee meetings. The committee works on the infraction report that was sent to the NCAA, as well as the NCAA compliance manual. Spring sports are also being vetted to make sure every athlete is in compliance and eligible.
The NCAA and ENMU are in continual communication working to get the issue resolved.
ENMU is taking other proactive steps to keep in good standing with the NCAA, such as working to inform the campus as a whole of what regulations need to be followed. One such step is the brochure “NCAA Progress Toward Degree Compliance and Academic Eligibility Certification,” which was handed to faculty advisors Monday.