Is it a news flash to everyone that athletes get special treatment from time to time? Why is the general public always so shocked to find there is more to college athletics than the idealistic spirit of competition?

I’ll level with you if you’re still stuck in the ’50s and do not understand why nobody’s basketball shorts seem to fit anymore. College athletics is a big, booming business.

It takes a hell of a lot of money to run a successful program these days. You’ve got to have the top-of-the-line training facilities, skyboxes and the best hookers for your recruits. OK, maybe that last one was wrong — you’ve only got to get the best hookers for the in-state recruits because if you lose an in-stater your coach looks more impotent that Walter Mathau.

With all this money running through sports programs, athletes realize they are the horses pulling the gravy train. Many think perhaps they deserve more gratitude than a free education and the chance to be worshiped and adored by legions of fans.

How can we expect people to perform equally as students and athletes when their athletic performances make millions of dollars a year for their schools?

When athletes are armed with a feeling that they are above the law, you end up with situations like the one at the University of Minnesota.

Up in the land of ten thousand lakes, it is becoming obvious that the U of M is the school of ten thousand breaks if you happen to be on the football team or the men’s’ basketball team.

A while back, the Star Tribune broke the sensational story that the athletic department basically authorized a faculty member to write English papers for Gopher athletes. The scandal was embarrassing for the university and brought the corruption of collegiate athletics into the media spotlight.

But the spotlight just got wider. According to the Star Tribune last Friday, the athletic department at Minnesota intervened in at least six cases of sexual harassment and assault involving football players and men’s’ basketball players between 1993 and 1997.

One of the more shocking instances of intervention is an alleged report that the Vice-President of Student Development and Athletics tried to get a female tutor to change her claim that a football player masturbated in front of her.

That is too sick to comprehend. There is something very wrong with school administration covering for a football player who decided to whack his wang in front of his free university-provided tutor.

I can deal with athletes getting their papers written for them. They didn’t have time to work on a project because they just happened to be in Hawaii playing ball for a week; I can dig. But pulling out your Johnson for no apparent reason and then hiding behind administration is ridiculous.

I believe athletes deserve some perks that are on the dark side of shady. Scoring cushy booster jobs, getting parking tickets revoked and having a bit more help in the classroom than tutoring, these are all things I can excuse. Athletes have earned the right to get action all the time and to walk around like they own the whole friggin’ planet. But they don’t have the right to treat other people like dog feces. They don’t have the right to be pricks because they can play a silly game at a Division One level.

And school administrators certainly shouldn’t be endorsing these felonious acts by sweeping a rape here and a domestic assault there under the rug.

Scandals are like cockroaches, for every one you see, there are a hundred more waiting to tick people off. You’d have to be naive to think that this kind of thing doesn’t happen at other universities around the country, perhaps even Iowa State, although I’d prefer not to even think about that.

So how do you stop something like this from occurring? That’s a tough question that can’t really be answered with any certainty. But I’m pretty sure I know what direction I’d go if I woke up tomorrow and happened to be in charge of the NCAA.

Legalize the small stuff. Give athletes a little money for God’s sake; it’s not like the pockets of athletic departments at major universities are laced with cobwebs. Be up front with the athletes and with yourselves. They won’t be able to sneak around like a drunk teenager coming home on Saturday night if we make them be honest from the start.

Don’t make athletes go to class if they don’t want to. It’s impossible to shove an education down anyone’s throat if they don’t have their mouths wide open. Let it be known quiet hours don’t apply to dudes with mean jumpers.

If there is more honesty in the whole situation, an open relationship between the public and school administration will develop. Not that I’m holding my breath; I’m usually too busy watching these guys play on TV to really worry about it.

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David Roepke is a junior in journalism and mass communication. He is head news editor of the Daily.