The first draft of the proposed NCAA constitution was sent Monday to member schools and conferences. Three student-athletes left their digital fingerprints all over it.
Kendall Spencer, Madeleine McKenna and Megan Koch — guests on the most recent Social Series episode — serve as the student-athlete representatives on the Constitution Committee for Divisions I, II and III, respectively. Their input and that of many their 500,000-plus peers can be seen throughout the condensed draft constitution, on which the membership will share feedback at the Nov. 15 Special Convention. Specifically, their perspectives were key to student-athlete representation on divisional leadership bodies and the Board of Governors being included in the draft, as well as new language emphasizing the importance of mental health and a renewed commitment to diversity, inclusion and gender equity.
"We are not only having these conversations, we are actually writing the words that are going into the (draft) constitution," said Koch, a current cross country and track and field runner at Colorado College who's studying molecular biology.
Getting the student-athlete voice to this point, Spencer said, has been a steady progression in recent years. As the oldest of the student-athlete representatives, he would know. A track and field athlete at New Mexico, Spencer became the first student-athlete representative on the Division I Board of Directors in 2015 as part of the division's new governance structure. Division II in 2015 added two student-athlete representatives to its Management Council, while Division III has had student-athletes serve on its Management Council since 1997.
For Spencer, the biggest change from the most recent expansion of student-athlete representation boils down to one word.
"It's about trust," said Spencer, who recently graduated from Georgetown's law school. "One of the biggest things we've really seen is when you get student-athletes in the room, they're going to be prepared. I think now that administrators are starting to see that, it's becoming a process that people are not only trusting a lot more but they're beginning to actually embrace, and that's incredibly powerful. I don't think we would be where we are today without that sort of transformation.
"I applaud the membership as a whole for trusting us with this."
Since the Constitution Committee's formation in August, its three student-athlete representatives have been actively trusted in its charge to identify the core principles that define college sports and propose a new governance model that allows for quicker change without sacrificing broader values, which must be reaffirmed or redefined. They've reached far beyond their own experiences, too.
Each representative conducted several virtual "town halls" to offer all student-athletes from their respective divisions a chance to provide feedback to bring to the Constitution Committee. Additionally, more than 1,300 student-athlete leaders on a campus, conference or national Student-Athlete Advisory Committee responded to an NCAA-led survey that helped inform them and the committee as a whole.
"The NCAA recognized that this new draft we're working on will not work for student-athletes if we're not taking student-athlete voice and student-athlete opinion and student-athlete expertise, honestly, into consideration," said McKenna, a former volleyball player at California University of Pennsylvania who's currently in graduate school at Syracuse.
The town halls and survey feedback also hardened the student-athlete representatives' resolve on certain topics. Mental health, for instance, is not mentioned in the current version of the constitution that was adopted in the 1990s. The current sections on gender equity and inclusion are broad.
"In my mind, that's not enough," Koch said. "At the end of the day, many athletes are not going to settle for good enough; we're going to strive to be better. That's what we're currently doing. We're trying to make the NCAA and the collegiate experience for student-athletes better."
McKenna noted while there has been plenty of healthy debate within the Constitution Committee on certain topics, administrators were "completely on board" with the student-athlete priorities.
"It was clear that they recognized that the same things we cared about, they cared about, too, and they cared about making some of those things happen that we brought to the table," said McKenna, who graduated with a degree in psychology in May.
While the draft constitution provides more governance authority to each of the divisions, it does include student-athlete representation as a policy requirement for their respective leadership bodies. Currently, there are no student-athlete representatives on the Board of Governors or Division II and III Presidents Councils.
"The three of us together have hundreds of thousands of student-athletes who are behind us that we are the voice for," Koch said. "We need to make sure this constitution, if it's serving the future of student-athletes, secures the student-athlete voice at these tables."
