Do some children belong in press seating? How about a donor on the sideline? Should your student assistant be dating a star football player? What do you do when the local police coming calling for photos?
Those are just a few of the ethical questions to be discussed when Mike Korcek’s “Ethics in the Profession” panel takes center stage Monday morning at the 2004 CoSIDA Workshop in Calgary June 26-30.
Korcek (Northern Illinois), chair of the CoSIDA Ethics Committee, and fellow committee member Greg Wright (Millersville) have assembled an all-star panel of veterans in the college sports information profession to discuss a variety of ethical issues confronting members of the profession almost daily.
The panel includes retired Michigan State SID Nick Vista and active sports information directors Ed Carpenter and Shelly Poe, from Boston University and West Virginia, respectively.
Panel members will discuss a variety of issues presented during the year to the Ethics Committee, then open the session to comments and questions from the audience.
“We won’t have all the answers,” says Korcek. “What we hope to do is stimulate discussions among the audience and panel members. Often, there is no right answer, but with our veteran panel and with the help of audience members who have experienced many of the issues we’ll discuss, we hope to arrive at some common suggestions.”
To begin the session, Korcek’s panel will address these issues that were presented to the committee during the past year:
· Student-athlete nominees for conference, regional, and national awards and the police blotter
· Cooperating with law enforcement types
· Administrative news leaks and the SID (who is not “in the loop”)
· Student SID workers who also work in the student media
· Student-athletes who date someone in the media (student media)
· Young(er) SID and the older head coach or AD
· Student-athlete grades and injuries, how much can we say?
· Children at press row or in the press box?
· Are SIDs part of the coach’s “scouting” staff?
· Digital photos, where do we draw the line?
· Interpersonal communication between schools, SIDs, and the media Ethics and statistics
“This is not about the good guys and the bad guys,” offers Korcek. “There is a lot of gray area in some of these issues. Our panel wants to educate and remind CoSIDA members about such ethical dilemmas. This might be about creating awareness to such issues in the midst of our busy, crowded, falling-off-the-plate schedules. We want to be spontaneous, thought-provoking, intelligent, entertaining, incisive, pro and con on the same issue if possible, without preaching or impugning any particular SID, SID shop, institution, or individual entity.”
“We certainly have a great panel with many years of experience in our profession and this certainly is an opportunity to pass some of that wisdom onto our younger members,” he continued. “We also urge the membership attending the panel to offer suggestions, based on their experiences.”