4 Responses to Causal–Wazoo

1. davidbdale says:

   March 23, 2019 at 9:28 am

   Let’s get started, Wazoo!

   Athletes are not getting paid because they are already receiving compensation in terms of a scholarship. These scholarships are great for academic prioritized students. They give the student free tuition and board for at least one year. We do not have to give these underprivileged [do you mean over-privileged?] and ungrateful athletes anything. They are amateurs and are not to be making any money unless they are professionals.

   These claims are made, obviously, in the voice of college administrators and athletic directors who favor using the scholarships as PAYMENT IN FULL. This rhetorical device (of adopting someone else’s voice) might serve you well if you use it throughout your essay, presenting as fairly as you can the point of view of someone with a vested interest in the status quo.

   As an alternative approach, also perfectly manageable, you might want to clearly identify the argument as SOMEONE ELSE’S. It’ll work, but only if your reader knows when you’ve started, and when you’ve stopped, writing in someone else’s voice.

   We [have no interest in sharing the money we make from our athletic programs], so [our athletes] will continue to work for free as long as we are alive. [Thousands of students] would kill to have a scholarship like this. We know athletes come here to play football and basketball rather than for our academics, so we try to keep them happy [by giving them playing time]. [But only if they help us win. When they stop performing, we cut them, they lose their scholarships, and our relationship ends.] As long as we keep them blind to the amount of money we make off of them, [and feed their dream of playing professionally after college] there will never be any problems.

   I’ve made some edits to your own language, Wazoo, adding details and claims to make the OFFER and the terms of the AGREEMENT clearer than they were in your draft. My suggestion for your overall end-of-semester paper is that something like this language you’re using could be used as a sort of SPECIMEN REBUTTAL argument that includes its own refutation.

   Let me make that clearer. In your own voice, you would lay out the argument for paying athletes as a fair and more honest way of acknowledging their special relationship with the college. When you have made your persuasive case, and your readers and nodding, “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense,” you can ask the obvious question: “How did we get to this unfair system we have today?” That’s a causal question. What is the cause of this unfairness? Your answer could look a lot like the language you’re working on here, and you’d introduce it as an illustration of a prevailing attitude that favors the status quo. You could characterize it as “How I imagine athletic directors talk to one another in their clubhouses.”

   Do you find this helpful, Wazoo? I’d like your feedback, please.

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2. wazoo1234 says:

   March 24, 2019 at 4:54 pm

   This is great, I think we are on the same page here. One question: would a title like Inside the minds of NCAAs most elite executives or something like that, im just throwing stuff out there but i want to make sure this wouldnt be an acedmic integrity issue because im saying “i know what they think”

   but thanks for the feedback and helping me get started. Appreciate it

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3. davidbdale says:

   March 26, 2019 at 11:44 am

   Wazoo, you’re going to need to introduce this rant with a sentence of disclaimer, to indicate clearly to readers that it’s not your own point of view.This is essential BOTH for this standalone Causal Argument AND when the speech is included in your overall Research Paper. Something like:

   To understand how corrupt the NCAA Athletic Scholarship system is, and why it is unlikely to reform itself, let’s imagine the point of view of the Athletic Director of a Division I NCAA college.

   Ordinarily, I would BAN ALL USE OF THE SECOND PERSON from your arguments, but in this particular instance, when you’re mimicking the speech of another party, it’s appropriate for you to let him speak in his own voice and address his listeners/readers/colleages as “you.”

   That said, you need to decide WHO HIS NARROW AUDIENCE is, and consistently address them in the same way. He’s speaking to the general public, or to a roomful of other NCAA Athletic Directors, or some group other than those two, Decide and revise accordingly. (Who is YOU when he says YOU?)

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4. davidbdale says:

   March 26, 2019 at 11:51 am

   You’ve captured a lot of the complexity of the Student/Athlete dilemma here, Wazoo, but you’re also repetitious and not always consistent. As an example, your speaker seems to express the idea that those who receive scholarships are adequately rewarded with a college education, which he identifies as the biggest prize that can be awarded. Lost in that statement is the distinction between a college EDUCATION and a college DEGREE.

   Smart readers will be thinking: HEY, your athletes aren’t getting an education! But your speaker doesn’t have to respond to that criticism the way you’ve structured this argument because he never hears it. The “conversation” is one-sided.

   Not only will this disappoint readers who want their objections considered, it deprives your argument of nuance.

   This speaker’s arrogance and disdain for the players is obvious. So . . . why should he pretend that he thinks they’re getting educated? And why should he have to ignore the fact that few scholarship athletes keeps their scholarships through four years and successfully graduate? If he’s REALLY cynical, and if he’s addressing an audience of likewise cynical ADs, then he can confront these facts with impunity and make your case more strongly.

   Does that sound like a good strategy for revising?
   I need your feedback on the feedback process, Wazoo, to keep this conversation going.

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