Although it may not draw the attention of the student body in the way that some groups on campus do, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) plays an integral role in the Tufts community.
"We're a communication link between the school and the board, between the school and the NCAA, and between the athletes, and the rest of the students and community," said sophomore Lauren Kaplan, a SAAC representative from the women's fencing team.
A brainchild of the NCAA, the SAAC was adopted in 1989 and was designed to give the NCAA feedback on how its rules and regulations affect student athletes across the country so that the organization could best tailor its policies to the needs of its constituents. NCAA guidelines stipulate that, regardless of division, all schools participating in collegiate sports must have a SAAC on campus.
The Tufts SAAC meets once a month and is composed of two representatives from each varsity team. Apart from Assistant Athletic Director Branwen Smith-King, who serves as chairwoman, it is a non-hierarchical organization.
SAAC representatives are divided into subcommittees with their partner squads. For example, women's fencing is paired with women's basketball and men's crew. The representatives are intended as liaisons between their individual teams and wider NCAA regulations who notify their teammates about new NCAA rules for health checkups. There is also a larger NESCAC SAAC that has two representatives from each conference member.
Part of the SAAC's task is to discuss issues that impact student athletes nationwide. At the Feb. 12 meeting, the use of cell phone text-messaging as a recruitment technique - something the NCAA has discussed banning because of the potential for incoming costs that total approximately 10 cents a message for student-athletes - was put on the table.
"Parents were getting upset, and the NCAA told SAAC to talk about it," Kaplan said. "We had to discuss if we felt harassed with text-messaging when we were in high school and then talk about possible rules on how to coaches should interact with recruits."
"Everybody thought it was a pretty extreme recruiting method, though none of us had experienced it, probably because text messaging wasn't as big as it is now [when we were being recruited]," junior softball player and SAAC representative Megan Cusick added.
The consensus viewpoint of the SAAC is then passed up the chain of command until it reaches the governing body of the NCAA.
"We tell Branwen what we feel about the issue, and it's her job to report to NESCAC," Kaplan said. "The NESCAC is a conference in the NCAA so they then report to NCAA."
On campus, the SAAC also organizes fan activities. The group recently organized a hockey fan bus to Malden and hung decorations in Cousens Gym to celebrate the women's basketball first round NESCAC clash against Middlebury.
"Our immediate goal was to have a lot of fan support," Cusick said. "[The decorations] were an ad hoc committee which was led by [junior] Steph Viola on the volleyball team. It was an idea she had to show support, so she spoke up and then people volunteered to help out."
The SAAC has also reached out to the wider community, organizing tutoring for students at local Somerville schools. In a month, each team is supposed to send two members to Amherst to work on a Habitat for Humanity project with other SAAC members.
Despite the SAAC's admirable initiatives, the group is sometimes plagued with attendance issues.
"Technically there should be one representative from each team, but oftentimes you'll only get a few members," Kaplan said. "On Feb. 12, there were only six people there. Normally it's only in-season teams that show up."
Although some see a smaller turnout than would be desired, Cusick feels the SAAC is effective.
"I think all the teams do a good job of sending someone to represent their team," she said. "All of the issues that we discuss are relevant to Tufts athletics."
