the Year of Glad interview: admitting him would be "just using that boy"
Admitting a boy we see as simply an athletic asset would amount to just using that boy. We're under myriad scrutiny to make sure we're not using anybody.
Context
Academic Affairs names the theme's central anxiety out loud: the athletic body is an "asset," and an institution that admits the asset without the student is "using" him. The irony the scene runs on is that the E.T.A. side of the table has done exactly this for eleven years — Hal has been a ranked instrument since age seven — and the university's scruple is really about liability ("myriad scrutiny"), not about Hal. The body-as-asset doctrine gets its plainest statement here as the thing everyone claims to be avoiding.