While crimes of all sorts continue to pester campus communities on a daily basis, every day many go overlooked and unrecognized in large part due to their lack of public appeal.
However, crimes rarely ever avoided are those involving the representatives and faces of the university, namely student-athletes.
For years, Wisconsin athletes have launched themselves into the scrutiny of the public eye with \off the field"" run-ins with the law. From misdemeanor theft to felony drug possession, more than 25 Badger athletes in the past 10 years alone have been charged with criminal violations for a variety of reasons.
While the legal system undoubtedly gets called into play, so do the subsequent actions of the university in reprimanding its players.
In that line, while many cases end up being fairly open and shut, with very obvious penalties, many are far from that, creating a whirl of controversy amidst the student community.
Until this past August, Wisconsin, like many universities around the United States, put the act of punishing in the hands of the head coaches and athletic department personnel. However, the UW changed its punishing process and developed a specific set of guidelines outlining acceptable and prohibited behavior for all of its student-athletes.
""Most Wisconsin student-athletes will never be involved in a situation in which the policy comes to bear,"" Alvarez said in August 2003. ""The policy will guide us as a department when we are faced with student-athletes who find themselves in difficult situations.""
Coinciding with the time when UW football Head Coach Barry Alvarez was announced as successor to Wisconsin's athletic director, many observe the policy change as an important and intregal part in controlling the extent to which head coaches determine suspensions and missed playing time for their players.
""Because coach Alvarez has become the athletic director, there clearly was a need to have something in place so individuals couldn't say, 'Well, hey, he has a conflict of interest in how he handles situations or his players,'"" UW Deputy Athletic Director Jamie Pollard said in an interview with Sports Illustrated in September 2003. ""But we've been debating the discipline issue on our campus for the last year or two. A lot of that was born out of our faculty members seeing what is going on around the country, and everyone wanting to make sure that it doesn't happen here.""
Largely aimed at establishing consistency in punishments, the policy is viewed in many regards as a positive step in curbing misconduct and treating all offenders in a similar manner.
Since being implemented prior to the fall semester, the policy has been tested by several prominent athletes, including two football players and one basketball player.
Freshman wide receiver Ernest Mason, sophomore guard Boo Wade and sophomore running back Dwayne Smith, in that order, are the first to test the modifications the Athletic Department has made in its relations with its athletes' legal mishaps.
With the most serious student-athlete misconduct on the UW campus in recent years arising within the last 30 days with Smith's second-degree sexual assault charges, the university continues to follow suit in a national trend of college athletes breaking the law.
And locally, just when the hype surrounding the Wade case appeared to dissolve, another UW athlete crossed the line, reigniting the student concern of athletes being let off too easy when charged with serious crimes. While many in the national sports community commend Wisconsin and Alvarez's efforts in cleaning up the program, many also still question the future athletic director's overall influence on the policy and what changes have actually been made to an overwhelming student concern of leniency when player suspensions continue to be overturned.
