Success Stories

No university wants to be investigated by the NCAA for violating recruiting regulations. But schools continue to make the news by discovering that one of their staff has made non-permissible text messages and phone calls.

Athletic Department

No university wants to be investigated by the NCAA for violating recruiting regulations. But schools continue to make the news by discovering that one of their staff has made non-permissible text messages and phone calls. Illegal recruiting is a big issue and one that has traditionally been difficult to monitor and disprove.  

So how does a school police its own staff when it comes to text messages and phone calls from cell phones? GWAVA has the answer with Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server. 

Steve Corder, Assistant Athletic Director for NCAA Compliance for the University of Detroit Mercy, uses Retain to track all cell phone usage by its staff. UDM is a small, private university in northwest Detroit with about 5000-6000 students. They are a Division 1 athletic department participating in 19 sports. About 60 staff use a BlackBerry monitored by Retain. Retain archives email messages and phone data into a secure server without compromising personal privacy. 

Achieving the Goal of Compliance

Installing Retain and getting it running was easily done by the internal IT department at UDM. Since there is nothing to install on the BlackBerry phones, implementing Retain did not disrupt any work or cell phone use. Staff members were initially concerned about privacy, but the university instituted a strict privacy policy. And since Retain for BES protects its users from unwarranted allegations, the benefits outweighed any concerns.

Once a month, the IT department at UDM runs reports to verify that none of their staff has illegally contacted recruits. The reports are based on the recruits’ phone numbers. Steve says that they trust their staff to follow the rules, but it is also important to be able to easily verify and prove compliance. “We have taken proactive measures to prevent any hint of a problem. Hopefully, we will never have to use this data, but we are prepared to deal with any situation that may arise,” says Steve. 

Retain is a Slam Dunk 

Steve Corder feels that Retain is a must-have for any university involved in athletics. Most universities don’t discover improper recruiting until long after the fact when it’s too late to rectify the problem. Even then, it takes long hours – even months - to locate and wade through paper records to find any potential violations. With Retain, the data is easily searchable and can be categorized, cross-referenced and verified within minutes.

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