I understand it is difficult to be a student athlete at a university today. Athletes alone practice year-round, giving up their weekends and holidays. They are required to miss class for games and meets. This perilous existence warrants their scholarship compensations. Why should anyone criticize them, lest we all become hypocrites? Aren’t they like all the rest of us average students, who have our parents pay tuition?

Recently, however, there has been some discussion among students about whether student-athletes deserve early registration too. I am writing to voice my support for their cause. I know when I attended Iowa State, I was an average non-athlete student. My daily collegiate events, then, are shared identically by all you average college students today. Like you all, I am a white male from a small Iowa farm town, who studied Liberal Arts Studies. When I started college I was absolutely sure of my final major.

I am sure all non-athletic students can relate to an outlined day in my college life. With only a limited availability of university-sponsored opportunities available for non-athletes and not needing to work a job, I always had time to complete my homework.

Isn’t it easy to keep up with the workload? What else is there for average simpletons like us to do? I am glad my college life was not complicated, and I stand in awe at the challenging and arduous lives of student-athletes who made so many sacrifices for me. Don’t you?

Guy Solitus

Alumnus