The University of Maine, which has been under scrutiny for NCAA rules violations and compliance inadequacies, has finally received a bit of good news from the NCAA.

The NCAA last Wednesday notified UMaine that its Committee on Infractions is expected to consider the university’s self-report on rules viis expected to consider the university’s self-report on rules violations during its June 1-3 meeting in Kansas City, Mo.

The NCAA letter of official inquiry is the next step in the enforcement procedure involving cases of violations. It is a formal notice to a school that the information obtained by the NCAA during its preliminary inquiry phase appears to be of sufficient substance and reliability to warrant an official inquiry of the UMaine athletic program.

The positive aspect, according to UMaine Director of Athletics Suzanne Tyler, is there were no new allegations made by the NCAA.

“This is good news. It means they essentially accepted the investigation,” Tyler said, referring to UMaine’s self-report, which was conducted by the Kansas law firm of Bond, Schoeneck & King and submitted in December to the NCAA.

“Otherwise, they’d say `we’re coming out and we didn’t like the way you interviewed X or Y’ or that they needed more information,” said Tyler, who hopes the Committee on Infractions will rule on the case prior to the start of the 1996-97 academic year in August.

The letter, written by S. David Berst, the NCAA’s executive director for enforcement and eligibility appeals, presents a list of questions to which the university must respond. The response must be filed by April 24.

As anticipated, the infractions reported to the NCAA by UMaine were characterized by Berst as meeting the definition of “major” violations. It defines those as violations which, by themselves or because of the total number, provide a team or school with extensive recruiting or competitive advantage.

Since receiving the letter of official inquiry March 20, the university has notified those staff members named in the allegations. The present task for the university is to answer the allegations in the format required by the NCAA and then submit its response to the organization.

“What we are doing is preparing a response that follows the outline they’ve provided in the official letter of inquiry,” said UMaine spokesman John Diamond. “It also provides us the opportunity to talk about all the corrective measures that we’ve taken.”

In its response, UMaine must indicate whether the information in the allegation is substantially correct and submit evidence to support its response. Because the inquiry deals primarily with information contained in the UMaine self-report, the university expects to have its formal response completed in the next couple of weeks.

In his letter, Berst requested that UMaine president Frederick Hutchinson, or a designated representative outside the athletics department, be among those who appear before the Committee on Infractions in June. Also requested to appear are: Tyler, head hockey coach Shawn Walsh, executive assistant to the president Robert Whalen, NCAA faculty representative George Jacobson, compliance director Tammy Light, interim head hockey coach Greg Cronin, and assistant hockey coach Grant Standbrook.

In December, the university announced the results of its exhaustive self-examination, which uncovered more than 40 violations of NCAA rules, many of which occurred within the Black Bears hockey program from 1990 to 1993. The most serious violations were committed by Walsh, who allegedly aduring a university-imposed suspension in 1993 and later attempted to interfere with the NCAA’s investigation.

The university responded to the self-report by handing out penalties, including suspending Walsh for a year without pay, banning the hockey team from the 1996 NCAA tournament, reducing scholarships for two seasons, and disciplinary action against assistant coaches Cronin and Standbrook.

Those penalties correlate to the NCAA’s minimum sanctions, which would be imposed by the Committee on Infractions in the event it agrees to accept the findings of the UMaine self-report. At its June hearing, the Committee on Infractions will determine whether those self-imposed penalties were sufficient to address the university’s violations and general lack of institutional control over its athletic programs.