The Almost Routine Normalcy of These Stories
It is all over the news this week about about an alleged rape concerning yet another athlete at a major NCAA Division I institution. Sadly these stories have become far too common and even more unfortunate that this story takes us back to Chapel Hill, N.C. and the campus of the University of North Carolina and its storied athletic program. Like they needed it considering the ubiquitous and ongoing academic fraud case.
Earlier this week a UNC student, Delaney Robinson, said in a public statement that she was raped the night of February 14, 2016 and rather than be treated with compassion and with acceptable investigative techniques, the campus police peppered her with insensitive questions and seemed more concerned about the accused athlete and his ability to continue playing football. Robinson claims that the athlete was told to “not sweat the rape allegations” by police investigators and she was inundated with questions about her sexual history, what she was wearing that night and if she was drinking-as if those are reasons for someone to be raped.
Even more incredulous if true, is Robinson alleges that the university has taken no action in the more than six months that have elapsed since she reported her accusations. According to Inside Higher Ed, Robinson is the third student in the last week to publicly call out an institution for botching a sexual assault investigation, with two students from the University of Richmond writing online essays accusing administrators there of mishandling their cases, as well.
Robinson’s statements are just allegations at this point despite her damning claims that someone will have to eventually answer to, but her claims are part of a disturbing and ongoing trend of documented and accused athlete violence across campuses in America. Many will argue, and I believe successfully, that this trend is indicative of a larger cultural problem, not just in intercollegiate athletics but throughout a male dominated sports culture.
In addition, there is an unmistakable ingrained process of protectionism of the athletic brand and the revolting propensity to blame the victim and divert responsibility so that the athlete and/or a program is damaged as little as possible. There have certainly been false claims of violence and sexual assault in the past, but research shows that is a very rare occurrence, and certainly not every claim is false.
For far too many institutions of higher learning in an almost desperate attempt to protect the athletic brand, coaches and certain athletes have knowingly enabled athlete sexual and other violence by providing pro bono legal assistance to alleged perpetrators which is not available to other students, including victims, obstructing investigations or judicial proceedings, encouraging and/or paying for women to sexually engage with recruits, providing public relations assistance, intimidating or blaming victims, imposing weak penalties inconsistent with the treatment of non-athletes and/or using their influence with campus and local police departments to reduce the possibility of formal criminal charges.
Sadly, I saw much of this behavior first hand as an intercollegiate coach and administrator for almost 15 years. Any allegation, no matter how horrible, was most always dealt with in a way to limit damage and protect the brand, coach and athlete. As amazing as all this sounds, I can tell you from personal experience that this culture exists on most campuses. It is a truism that athletes and every person accused deserves full due process, but so does a victim even if the charges are alleged. Rather than providing mafia like protections, obsfuscation and omerta, it is critical for the institution, athletic department, and high profile coaches and boosters to set a standard that this behavior is not accepted, nor get involved in trying to alter an outcome to the benefit of the athlete while forgetting the rights of the victim. It is time for institutions and the NCAA to take charge and deal with this subject. If the NCAA can limit championships in North Carolina (correctly I beleive) over bathroom access, they can surely come up with ways to address this problem. Thankfully there are groups out there that have provided potential templates for change.
A Path for the College Athletic Enterprise to Address Sexual Violence
There are ways to address and fix this problem and it is long overdue. In its September 13, 2016 Press Release “Calls for Strong Actions to Address Collegiate Athlete Sexual and Other Violence,” and appended position paperentitled Institutional Integrity Issues Related to College Athlete Sexual Assault and Other Forms of Serious Violence , The Drake Group (TDG), a national organization of faculty and others whose mission is to defend academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports, has presented an achievable template to address this festering problem. In the report TDG examined current issues related to collegiate sport sexual and other violence.
The report authored by several TDG members and outside experts including Kathy Redmond the director of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, concluded that (1) no uniform approach exists at any level of policy making to deal with the issue, (2) athlete sexual and other physical violence is condoned by an unacknowledged collegiate athlete subculture that neither educational sport leaders nor college presidents have addressed, and (3) institutions of higher education are frozen by self-interest, hence unlikely to address such violence unless immersed in a media or legal crisis, in which case they act alone. Neither the NCAA nor other national collegiate athletic governance associations have confronted this issue in a way that will deter such violent athlete behavior for the long term.
Athletic administrators, coaches, and college presidents must be held accountable when they enable talented athletes to evade discipline for committing acts of violence, create a culture of entitlement that results in athletes believing they can get away with such misconduct or, in some cases, create an unhealthy climate in which misogyny and sexism are rampant and the sexual conquest of women is celebrated. Athletes, especially the most talented prospective and enrolled athletes, must receive the message that violent behavior will not be tolerated. Institutions must impose consistent penalties that will deter such serious misconduct.
The Drake Group analyzed the violence issue and made ten recommendations including detailed proposals that would prohibit the recruiting and athletic eligibility of athletes committing acts of sexual or other violence. The recommendations include:
-Establish Title IX compliance as a condition of NCAA and other national collegiate athletic governance organization membership and require regularized institutional reviews of its athletics related sexual harassment and equal opportunity provisions.
-Prohibit athletic department employees from involvement in campus or external athlete sexual harassment or assault investigations and adjudication processes and require that athletes be treated like all other students .
– Institutions should not be permitted to recruit any high school students or two- or four-year college transfer students to participate in athletics who have been convicted of a sexually violent or other physically violent act or have been suspended from any educational institution for such an act.
– The nation’s top gender violence athlete educators should be convened to establish a national program to deliver gender violence programming to member institutions with participation in such programming required of all coaches, athletics staff, and athletes.
– National collegiate athletic governance organizations should establish an independent athlete ombudsman office to provide confidential assistance to athletes seeking advice on responding to team situations, and to answer questions about organization rules and other issues of concern to athletes.
– Member institutions should be prohibited from accepting alcohol advertising and sponsorships and from selling alcohol at athletics contests conducted by member institutions and conferences.
– Because of the relationship between violence and impaired reasoning or impulse control caused by a head injury, the NCAA and other national collegiate sports governing bodies should act to reduce the risk of repeated head trauma.
– National-collegiate-athletic-governance organizations should begin regularized collection of data on athlete violence and the athletics subculture, among other research initiatives.
– The NCAA should discard or revise its APR metric, which encourages the protection, retention, or transfer of sexual or other physically violent predators.
–Special “escorts” should be prohibited from participating in the entertainment of recruits during on-campus visits in light of the abuse of such practices, which abuse sexualizes the escorts.
These recommendations if enacted can protect both male and female athletes and begin an cultural change the NCAA does not seem willing to want to do. The NCAA has responded to the sexual violence issue and athlete violence issue in the past, but without much success and candidly any force. Essentially it is really more best practices. The NCAA Executive Committee issued an August, 2014 resolution that urged athletic programs to “assure that student-athletes are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by special treatment, to educate athletes and coaches on sexual violence, and to not direct by cooperate with any campus or off campus investigation. While it sounds good on paper, in practice nothing is really being done and the problematic protecting the Brand culture problem continues.
The NCAA has the same authority to enact a bylaw requiring all member institutions to conduct criminal background checks as a condition of an athlete’s participation in athletics. This is analogous with its current requirements on drug testing. Instead of having universities being reactive or protective concerning athlete violence, the NCAA can mandate as a voluntary organization that universities to take preemptive measures to combat the violence. Criminal background checks offer such a preemptive measure that the NCAA should consider when evaluating its role in helping decrease athlete violence. More than anything it is simply the right thing to do and a bold move to change a culture that desperately needs it.
B. David Ridpath, Ed.D. is the Kahandas Nandola Professor of Sports Business at Ohio University in the Department of Sports Administration in Athens, Ohio. Follow him on twitter @drridpath