By Stephen Smoot
This article comes not to bury the WVSSAC but, at least initially, to praise it.
The West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission is an organization that quietly does a lot of good. Those who work in it will not get rich from their labors, but put in endless hours of time and effort for the love of sport, for the benefit of student-athletics, and for the perpetuation of some of West Virginia’s best community traditions.
They work with the best of intentions. That all said, the best of intentions often lead somewhere other than the best of results. Like a center in football or a game official, 99 percent of the time one knows they have done a good job if one never hears their name.
Unfortunately, this fall the name of the WVSSAC is in too many ears as they provide an object lesson in at least two important laws.
These laws do not appear in the federal or state code, but come from something more fundamental. They serve as guidelines that encourage objectivity and common sense.
First comes the lesson of rule of law. Aristotle first formulated the oft repeated phrase “a government of laws, not of men,” but rule of law means something more than that. The American Bar Association defines the phrase as “A system based on fair, publicized, broadly understood, and stable laws” and “a fair, robust, and accessible legal process in which rights and responsibilities based in law are evenly enforced.”
American law enshrined this concept in the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The WVSSAC made the point before Judge Carter Williams in a hearing in Romney last Tuesday morning that they are not a government organization – although they do, in fact and by necessity, operate hand in hand with state education officials. That said, they are a governing body of interscholastic sports and other activities.
The same principles, therefore, should apply. The less clear, the less understandable, and the less objective a law, a regulation, a rule, and/or the process that creates them is, the farther it strays from the concepts of both rule of law and good governance.
For decades, the WVSSAC has established that enrollment only determines in which classification a school is placed. The cutoff line always created a small set of those schools that benefited greatly, such as Bridgeport High School who for many years sat atop of the Class AA in terms of both student population and athletic success. Others, such as Ripley High School in Class AAA, enjoyed success in football, baseball, and wrestling for many years in the 80s and 90s, but even under legendary head football coach Frank Marino could rarely in the postseason push their way past the “big boys” in their class, such as Brooke High School.
A more significant concern, which the WVSSAC tried to address with its new classification rules, lies in the Catholic and other private schools’ (all in Class A) ability to recruit far beyond their geographical areas for student-athletes. While Notre Dame High School in Clarksburg, for example, fares as well as other single A programs, Wheeling Central and Charleston Catholic often enjoy success over and above that of similarly populated schools.
It must be reiterated that the WVSSAC had the best of intentions when changing the classification guidelines to reflect 80 percent enrollment, 10 percent location, and 10 percent socioeconomic factors.
It also must be stated that the WVSSAC is not fully responsible for the changes. A Board of Control, composed of state high school principals, voted overwhelmingly for these changes. The WVSSAC, unfortunately, remains the face of the problem even though authority of rule-making is divided and – frankly – a process of seemingly Byzantine complexity.
That said, when asked repeatedly by Judge Williams why the WVSSAC embraced what he called “subjectivity” in the process, their counsel did not answer with concrete reasons. School officials privately, however, have stated that the private school issue represented an important factor.
This leads to the second legal lesson provided by the WVSSAC, that of the law of unintended consequences. The British political philosopher John Locke is heralded as an intellectual Founding Father who strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and others. In 1692, he argued against a well-intentioned proposed Act of Parliament that would reduce the maximum allowed lending interest from six to four percent. Locke explained that this would create more illicit lending with the ultimate costs borne by those trying to follow the law or locked out of obtaining credit by the law, especially those the law was meant to protect.
In 1936, the American sociologist Robert Merton identified five ways that hastily or wrongly conceived laws or rules could undermine the original goal of the action. In “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposeful Social Action,” he listed five principal reasons why new rules or laws on one hand, or complete inaction on the other, often create more trouble than the original issue they were meant to address.
Those are ignorance, error, immediate interest which ignores potential related long term problems, basic values that may prevent action in certain ways despite the likelihood of the action producing unanticipated and/or negative results, and the unwillingness to act at all out of fear of unintended consequences.
The problem in the WVSSAC case appears to be addressing one problem, without considering how the solution in the long term might produce more problems that dwarf the original issue. This brings up another, somewhat fatalistic, “law” articulated by United States Air Force Lieutenant Edward Murphy, who said after a massive test failure that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
Murphy’s Law is a mite too pessimistic for practical application, but when making changes, one should always ask “what is the absolute worst that can happen if this change is made,” then act or prepare accordingly. This can keep an individual or organization on the path of making needed changes while avoiding complete inaction out of the fear of acting at all.
In other words, the WVSSAC was correct to try and solve the problem it faced. They, as government is often wont to do, simply did it with an inordinately complex solution that introduced too many variables.
Many blame the schools that protested their reclassification for creating the mess, but this is short-sighted. Schools have a duty to advocate the best that they can for their students. It is not their fault that a way too subjective rule change opened the door for them to make successful legal arguments against the system.
Classification of high school programs will always create a small handful of those who will receive strong advantages or disadvantages. It will never make everyone happy and that should also be considered. The impossible perfect should never be set as the enemy of the “as good as it can get.”
Failure is the best teacher if those involved open their minds to learn lessons from it. The failure of the fall sports postseason and its ripple effects in winter sports should provide a lesson not just for the WVSSAC and its purview, but of government, administration, and leadership in general.
Follow the laws of common sense, keep a sense of restraint when considering new actions, and this will rarely steer one wrong.