Between the Lines: Diversity and NCAA Division I Athletic Department Mission Statements

Abstract

Given the increasing number of student–athletes of color participating in college sports [Lapchick, R., Hoff, B., & Kaiser, C. (2010). The 2010 racial and gender report card: College sport. Orlando, FL: The Institute for Diversity in Ethics in Sport], the athletics department is rarely viewed as needing to address diversity (Unzueta & Binning, 2009); yet, diversity goes beyond numbers. With the importance of written documents to expressing a value for diversity, this study examined how NCAA Division I athletic department mission statements address diversity and how those messages compare to the university missions. Chesler and Crowfoot's (1989, Racism in higher education: An organizational analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Research on Social Organization, University of Michigan) organizational analysis of racism framework was adapted to consider diversity in a broader sense, and 40 department and university mission statements were examined. The iterative content analysis produced five overarching themes for form of inclusion: explicit, implicit, policy, indirect, and absence. Further analysis was done on the extent of inclusion, population focus, and level of accessibility. Findings show that while the majority of mission statements address diversity, the nature and extent of that inclusion varies greatly by document type as well as across institutions, affecting the clarity of the messages conveyed.