I think you should discuss, in more depth, how life as a student athlete differs from being a “normal” student through a video. I thought the videos of the student athletes very interesting, and it would be even more interesting to ask other students at Gonzaga who are not considered student-athletes but are on club teams and even students who do not participate in athletics. I think the presentation covered the dilemma of the gap between division I student-athletes in comparison to those students just attending school for the academics, and it would be a helpful addition to include students who are athletes but do not hold the title of student-athletes. I think the media of a film/video would be good because it puts a face to those three different groups of individuals and makes it more personable. It also helps a lot because Gonzaga campus is something that we recognize really well, and it would be easy to relate to the audience really well because of that. The medium of film/video incorporates visuals and audio (obviously), but I think that since we are students on campus it would be really easy to find some good things to incorporate into a film. I think this should be geared towards fellow Gonzaga students to raise more awareness of the situation, and maybe propose a way of changing the way college sports affects academics. This is also really important since our basketball team has raised more awareness of our school – some questions are how much of the money we are paying for tuition go to sports? As our basketball team does better and better, we begin to wonder whether how incoming students view the school – if they only see it for its basketball. In general, I think there is a lot to talk about this issue as we are all affected by it in one way or another.
Coral Ng