Last night’s Faculty Senate meeting focused on the discussion of athletic policy reforms — not just at Stanford, but at all Division I-A NCAA schools.

Tom Wasow, linguistics professor and representative to the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA), presented a report on COIA’s most recent proposals for athletic reform. COIA is a group uniting the faculty senates of Division I-A schools to provide a “cohesive faculty voice on athletics reform at the national level,” according to the group’s Web site.

The alliance of faculty senates convened at Stanford last May to produce a list of 28 proposals for change in intercollegiate athletics, particularly within the legislation of the NCAA. According to Wasow, Stanford already serves as a model for the reforms suggested.

“We are an outlier,” Wasow said. “There’s no other school that is this demanding on its students.”

In particular, Wasow added, recommendations regarding consistent admissions policies among athletes and non-athletes are not an issue at Stanford.

“Our athletes are at the highest level both athletically and academically,” Wasow said. “I tell my colleagues that I can’t tell which of my students are athletes and which are not, and they’re surprised by that.”

However, he continued, some of COIA’s recommendations remain pertinent to Stanford. Currently, the University has no process for comparing enrollment data between student athletes and non-athletes. COIA recommends that this type of evaluation be made in order to preserve academic integrity. The faculty met the recommendation with general approval.

“I worked on this kind of comparison report years ago with [Chair of the Senate's Planning and Policy Board David] Kennedy, and I think it would be good to do again,” said Biological Sciences Prof. Robert Simoni, noting the commission findings showed that Cardinal athletes were on par with other Stanford students.

“The news was that there was no news,” Simoni added.

In order to implement the changes, senate members referred the item to the Senate’s Committee on Committees, which will orchestrate a relationship between the Committee on Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation (CAPER) and the Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policy (C-USP). CAPER reports to President John Hennessy, but would, if granted, have an ex-officio member on C-USP to address the issues raised by COIA and ultimately enact the pertinent recommendations.

Also at last night’s meeting, Hennessy announced that a task force has been created to discuss increasing the incoming freshman class size. English Prof. Ramon Saldivar and Board of Trustees member Jim Canales were both named to the task force. Hennessy jokingly commented that the group will be searching for “wisdom.”

“They are going to bring an insightful perspective on the change,” Hennessy said, particularly in regard to “both the cost of [increasing the size of the freshman class] and the timing.”