At yesterday's University Faculty Senate meeting, senators approved a motion to join the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA).

Martin Pietrucha, chair of the Senate Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics seemed pleased that senators voted to join the committee.

"If we are part of the process, we can be part of the solution," he said.

COIA was formed in 2002 "to promote serious and comprehensive reform of intercollegiate sports, so as to preserve and enhance the contributions athletics can make to academic life by addressing longstanding problems in college sports that undermine those contributions," according to the Senate's report.

Major initiatives being discussed in COIA are academic integrity, athlete welfare, governance, finances, and over-commercialization.

COIA aims to provide reform to pressing issues such as recruiting, scholarships, season length and incentives for good performance or winning.

John Selzer, a College of the Liberal Arts faculty senator, said he "applauded the COIA initiative."

He said that being a part of COIA could help initiate reform on performance enhancing drugs and performance and behavior incentives.

Pietrucha said about 30 schools have joined so far, including seven in the last two weeks. More than half of the Big Ten Conference has joined.

COIA's Framework for Comprehensive Athletics Reform and Executive Summary can be found at http://www.math.umd.edu/%7Ejmc/COIA/Framework-Sum.html.

At the meeting, in response to a faculty senator's question, Penn State President Graham Spanier also said he'd like to see a Dickinson School of Law "dual campus" with classes offered at University Park and Carlisle.