The Caltech Beavers baseball field is quiet Friday. The school was given a reprimand and penalties for fielding athletes who were academically ineligible, the NCAA announced Thursday. (Walt Mancini / Staff Photographer)
Photo gallery: Caltech given reprimand and penalties by NCAAPASADENA - Caltech acknowledged a "lack of institutional control" Friday following NCAA sports sanctions over ineligible athletes, though few people on campus seemed aware anything was amiss.
"A thorough audit affirmed that there had been no intentional wrongdoing, but some student-athletes were inadvertently allowed to play while ineligible," athletic director Betsy Mitchell said in a statement posted to the Caltech athletics website late Friday.
The university itself reported the violations, and reports of the sanctions emerged Thursday.
Between 2007 and June 2011, students played on teams while also taking advantage of Caltech's "class shopping," which allows them to sample classes to determine if they can handle the course load.
Those students aren't considered full-time, however, violating NCAA rules.
One student at Caltech on Friday criticized the NCAA for setting up an "extraordinarily odd" system that's more applicable to major sports-oriented universities.
"There's this big split between people who are effectively professional athletes, who are being exploited by the NCAA, which is effectively a cartel, and people who are actually student-athletes like
the ones at Caltech," math-major Jay Daigle said.The sanctions, he said, show that NCAA policies don't work well for anyone.
"My reaction, as being applied to Caltech, is to just sort of snicker and laugh about it," he said. "I do think it points to a fundamental dysfunction in the system as well."
Caltech, a Division III school, is well-known for its athletic futility.
The baseball team has lost 237 straight games. The water polo team last year snapped a losing streak that had lasted nine years.
The Beavers basketball team went 310 conference games without a win, a 26-year streak that began in the mid-1980s and finally ended on Feb. 22, 2011.
That victory will stand, and isn't part of the wins and records that will be vacated by the school as part of the sanctions.
"This is painful because each of those wins and records was earned through hard work and fair play by our student-athletes," Mitchell said in her statement.
The penalties, many of them self-imposed by the university, include no postseason play next season, three years of probation and one year of no campus recruiting.
A faculty member working out at Caltech's gym said students historically have taken a lackadaisical approach to the paperwork required to participate in sanctioned sports.
"When I was a student here, if we didn't pay our bills on time and things like that, they didn't care, they cleaned it up by the time we graduated," said alumnus Mika Nystrom, who has a Ph.D in computer science. "In the NCAA, if you're not registered in the first three weeks, apparently that's a problem."
Nystrom said he doesn't believe sanctions will have any major effect on athletics in the coming years.
Mitchell echoed that sentiment, saying the college would continue providing a balanced approach to athletics and academics.
"It is fun and it can be intense," Mitchell said of Caltech's sports in an email. "After all, our students dedicate themselves to their endeavors - whether they are in the lab, in the library or on the playing field."
Wire services contributed to this report
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