I was a college soccer player, and my senior year I tore my ACL in a conference semifinal. The school covered the surgery, but the rehab schedule, the lost summer internship, and the chronic knee pain at 30 were mine to keep. Employees get workers' compensation when they are hurt doing their job. College athletes get hurt doing exactly their job and then get told the scholarship was the compensation. The NLRB's general counsel said in a 2021 memo that scholarship athletes at private schools meet the legal definition of employees. The Dartmouth men's basketball team voted to unionize in March 2024. Employee status is not about turning campuses into pro franchises. It is about a 20-year-old with a spinal injury not begging for an MRI.
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