I agree with Mike when he said:
 
(quick note...I don't want to see this get into a cascade of "yeah,
player A was suspended at my school too," etc. because I don't think
we need to re-hash that stuff.  We all make mistakes, and players are
students too and struggle like many students do.  It's just that
during those times *I* struggled, there wasn't a MIKEM-L for folks
across the country to find out. :-)  It's news to simply report it
as a reason why a player is missing a game, but it should be left then
and there IMO.)
 
which was the reason that I earlier had written without being specific:
 
>>as a freshman.  I better not mention the other end of the spectrum
>>except to say that it was standard fair while I was an undergraduate
>>(1964-68) for half the team to go on academic probation after the first
>>semester.  This seems to have improved, somehow, over the intervening
>>years.
 
I recall reading in the introductory message for Hockey-L that we
should not attack individual players or schools.  One sees enough of
this on rec.sport.hockey.
 
It probably has been stated before, but because hockey has Junior-A as
an alternative to College, College Hockey attracts people in general
who are also interested in academics to a larger degree than either
College Football or Basketball.  This does not mean, on the other hand,
that some hockey players don't have academic problems (as well as the
rest of the student body, as Mike stated).  It is up to the coach and
his assistants to see to it that the athletes keep up academically.  I
applaud both Buddy Powers and Mike Addessa on this regard because
during both of their regimes the dropout rate has appeared to have
become less than that for the general school population.  [I say
"appeared" because I do not know what the dropout rate is for the
general student population at RPI currently.]  One can really not ask
for more than this.
 
As I earlier stated this is not the way things were at RPI 20 or 30
years ago.