Remember back in January when Rasheed Sulaimon was dismissed from the Duke basketball program without any explanation from the team? Well, according to the Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper in town, we're starting to find out exactly why this happened. Apparently he was accused of sexual assault of 2 female students. What makes this rather intriguing is that these accusations occurred in March of 2014. What makes this even more interesting is that these accusations made their way up to the offices of some high ranking officials and coaches within the Duke Athletic Department, who very much violated federal law by failing to report these allegations to the authorities. What makes this story venture into potential disaster for Duke are the coaches who had the accusations in hand on their desk and failed to act on them.
They are as follows:
- Assistant Coach Jon Scheyer
- Assistant Coach Nate James
- Associate Head Basketball Coach Jeff Capel
- Head Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Among high ranking officials within the University who knew:
- Deputy Director of Athletics and Operations Mike Cragg
- Director of Basketball Operations David Bradley
- Vice President and Director of Athletics Kevin White
- Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek
This is a story worth keeping your eye on.
Comments
Well this made my Monday more interesting. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for any new developments.
sources? this is pretty big news and im curious to see what follows, thoughts and prayers with those two girls whoever they are
The source is up there... The Duke Chronicle
I like how you edited the post to split thing sup by coach/administrator. Looks a lot less cluttered and easier to see who's involved.
whoops my bad totally missed it
at what point does NC State burn the state down?
I think you mean ECU. Good thing we play them for the next 50 years.
What would those coaches legally have had to act on? Neither student that was assaulted chose to come forward, both chose not to take the allegations to police or the school administration. They made their statements in what is supposed to be a confidential retreat. No reports that we know of were ever made to Student Conduct, which is the office responsible for conducting all sexual assault allegations. If there were reports made, we wouldnt be aware of their investigations unless someone that was interviewed came forward to the Chronicle, which it does not appear has happened.
You have to realize that even if any of those named above were made aware of the situation, unless action was required (ie, Sulaimon was found guilty by Student Conduct) none of the above would be allowed to discuss the situation with a student or newspaper due to confidentiality requirements.
What will be interesting to see is now that Sulaimon is no longer a student athlete and is only a student if either female chooses to come forward with their allegations now since the Chronicle article indicates that they did not do so earlier for fear of reprisal by the athletic department.
Yup. The records of what occurred, or not, after the issue was given to leadership would not be available. Ironically, it might even make it more difficult to dismiss the player for other reasons if the assault issue was investigated and nothing was found...it would look like they were looking for reasons to get rid of him.
Duke's leadership is aware of the issue, they have a mechanism in place for dealing with it, and the former player is still a student in good standing...that may say something about the strength of the accusations.
I don't know Title IX back to front, but this is from deadspin:
This article from the Chronicle (not Duke's Chronicle, but the Chronicle of Higher Education) helps:
From the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) Template on Mandatory Reporting:
I think the key pharase here is "if a victim reports" and "when a victim has given notice." According to the Duke Chronicle, neither victim reported the incident, but both announced the incident publicly. From this language, I think the Duke Athletic Association employees would be fine. Although, the "when the College, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known, about the assault or harassment" statement might make someone at Duke responsible for reporting to Title IX administrators.
This incident distinguishes from the PSU incident, when an employee walked in on a criminal act. In addition, the victims were not PSU students and thus don't fall under Title IX. The lack of reporting for the PSU incident would fall under PA State law (I think).
Joe Paterno : Penn State :: Mike Sha shev ski : Duke?
Tragic if event.
Just went through title 9 training and they most definitely have to report it regardless of whether the victim chooses to report it or not. Anyone who has knowledge of a incident is required to report it.
Did they go over a scenario when you hear it from 2nd and 3rd parties? Is everyone suppose to report it? That would be reporting it 50 times (or how many Duke employees heard of the incident), even when no one had any verification from the victim involved.
They explicitly told me (VT training, not sure if different in other places) that all responsible parties had to report anything that was credible. And VT defines all employees as responsible parties. It's absolutely a liability thing though. Pushes responsibility off of the University and onto individuals. Just trying to not get sued, it seems.
I went through VT training as well... There were a lot of moments when the examples made us look at each other and say 'wow', concerning the requirement to report. Its hard to believe Coach K will come out of this unscathed.
There is nothing in the article that suggests Duke didn't follow its protocol and that Student Conduct did not review the information.
Not saying they did, but there is no evidence that it was not handled properly.
I'm in complete agreement with you. The quote "made its way up" makes it sound like it went through about 50 people before it got to the coaches. Think about that statement as compared to Coach K, how many people would that have to go through before it got to him? And at that point is he supposed to report every rumor he hears from Joe's brother's ex-gf's sister who used to be in the same sorority as Sally, who heard a rumor from Denise that this happened. Until I hear a lot more details this story isn't much of a story.
If he kicked the dude off the team, it's probably not too much of a stretch to say he believe the rumors, to say the least.
Sounds to me like a bystander effect could easily happen in that case, which would be tragic if each of those 50 people thought the other 49 would report it and none of them did.
Wow. First their men's lacrosse and now this. Just wow.
except their men's lacrosse team was found not guilty of raping anyone...
Correct, and unfortunately the media didn't really acknowledge this other than maybe a bar crawl on ESPN. I only found out about the outcome myself due to a reddit post a few months ago.
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2l5ura/til_of_three_duke_...
Leg, with a quibble: Not just found not guilty, but unequivocally cleared of wrongdoing, and the prosecutor bringing the charges was disbarred.
I take all such claims with a grain of salt until the legal system has spoken.
and served prison time if I'm not mistaken. They hammered the prosecutor for that case.
She is serving jail time alright... Just not for the Duke thing... No, she straight up killed someone.
To everyone who clicks the link, that's not the prosecutor, but rather the presumed victim.
+1 for building on it, I don't know no fancy lawyer speak.
It would suck to see Krzyzewski's record tarnished by this. Love or hate Duke you have to admire what he has done as a coach and for both this program and the national team getting us back to Gold Medal status. Hopefully whatever happens the truth comes out and there is not a cover up and bungling of the investigation like at free shoes...
There will be no tarnishing of said record. This will fizzle out.
Well... I'm sure there were some who thought the same thing about JoPa. Might not be as extreme, but it's still sexual assault that the head man knew about (allegedly, I guess) and didn't report.
Considering the administrators up the food chain that were aware of the allegations, how do we know that it wasn't reported? Wouldn't notifying the AVP of student affairs constitute notifying the Student Conduct office?
I was going off of the Title IX quote above, which requires them to notify the authorities. I'm pretty sure the issue PSU ran into was that darn near everyone inside the university knew about it, but no one outside the university did.
But JoePa never took any steps to remove Sandusky, did he? I feel horrible for the girls who were affected by this (if the report is true), but at least Coach K made an executive decision to cut ties with the guy who was guilty. Speaks volumes that Sulaimon is the first kid to ever be sent packing by Coach K. My best guess is he's never had to deal with something this severe.
Eh, it's true to a certain extent. But you've gotta wonder if that's a legit punishment or just Coach K saying it isn't his problem anymore.
But here's the thing... Supposedly the coaches knew about this for nearly a year before action was taken... Not sure a part on the back is warranted if you wait 10 and a half months to act after you hear one of your players is being accused of sexual assault by multiple women...
There is nothing to suggest they didn't turn it over to Student Conduct as soon as they got it. Not saying they did but what Student Conduct has on record, even a file with a name on it, is not publicly available; nor are K's reasons for booting him off the team.
Per the article, Wasiolek said..
"When we have the name of an alleged respondent, we would want to talk with that individual as well. Depending on what information we get from either of those individuals, that will dictate how we proceed."
Even if an official complaint is not filed, Student Conduct still documents all conversations it has as part of an investigation of a potential sexual assault, Wasiolek said. The records are kept confidential under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Jackson said...
Duke takes immediate action when a student reports allegations of sexual misconduct or other violations of the student conduct code," the statement read. "This includes investigation and referral to the Student Conduct Office as appropriate. The University is prohibited by federal law from disclosing information about any individual student or the student judicial process."
My guess is there is a file on Sulaimon at Student Conduct. Otherwise both Jackson and Wasiolek will look like idiots.
I'd also say at a minimum Wansley violated FERPA, and if the anonymous affiliate was employed, they did as well. And nothing...zero...prevented either one of them or the 7 students from going direct drive to Student Conduct with an anonymous tip.
The coaching staff would not have anything to act on unless Student Conduct came back with a recommendation based on an investigation. If they kicked the kid off for rumors and Sulaimon ended up innocent, they would be potentially exposing Duke to an entirely different lawsuit.
Sulaimon had other documented conduct issues, including being suspended for a game last season, so its entirely plausible that the sexual assault case is not even in play for Sulaimon getting kicked off the team.
Its also possible that Student Conduct came back with some negative findings but while not enough to dismiss him as a student, made Coach K revoke his right to be an athlete. Regardless, Student Conduct is not going to publish their findings of any investigation, unless it leads to criminal charges and comes out as a matter of the legal case.
We have already seen how long it can take a University in a fully publicized case to pursue an investigation in the case of Jameis Winston, now throw in two potential victims that do not want to pursue an investigation, a litany of trying to connect the dots on who actually said or did what because its 3rd or 4th hand in many events. Also taking into account that where the students disclaimed it happened is supposed to be a confidential event, so the school is at risk of violating that protection. Its not hard to believe it might have been sent to Student Conduct right away and the investigation could easily have taken this long.
You also have to believe that whatever was brought to Coach K regarding Sulaimon had to be significant because this is the first time in over 35 years that Coach K dismissed a player outright from the team. Even with that though, he and his staff are probably legally restrained from discussing any of what did or did not happen.
Another case to look at because it has all the same no comment, no statement are the current allegations against former- Louisville guard Chris Jones. He has been charged criminally, but when he was dismissed from the team, they were not able to comment on the specifics. Now their timeline seems much cleaner than the Duke case, but they also appear to have cooperating victims that took the cases to the appropriate authorities in a timely manner. The coaching staff still is not legally allowed to discuss what happened.
Right, or wrong... This isn't going to keep legs. It will fizzle out.
I can't see an enterprise reference without thinking of this:
Man... I hate the criticisms of Enterprise. Was it a carbon copy of TOS and TNG? No, but it was good in its own right. Bakula gets a lot of undue criticism for the way he portrayed Archer. I think he did a pretty good job, to be honest.
I loved "Enterprise", and thought Archer was great. The Zindi plot was superb. The one I had issues with was Janeway. I haven't watched all the early shows to this day (tuned out), and only picked it back up when 7 of 9 came on board (they know how to get the ratings, amirite?), and found it to be excellent after that. Janeway finally grew on me.
Also have not watched any of Deep Space Nine yet, but it's on my list. The shows, IMO, are all way better than any of the movies, so I'm hopeful.
Thats just like DC Comics. They do really great TV shows but their movies are pretty awful as a group, as opposed to Marvel, who does incredible movies but I havent been impressed with their TV offerings so far.
I watched intermittently when Voyager originally aired and haven't gone back and watched it all the way through yet. I watched through Enterprise and DS9 a couple years ago and enjoyed both, though I thought that the final episode of DS9 was really anticlimactic, specifically the resolution of the Emmisary of the Prophets subplot. I also wasn't ever a big fan of their repeated use of the Mirror Universe in Enterprise and especially in DS9 (Original Series had 1 Mirror Universe episode, Enterprise 2, and DS9 5). What I liked most about Enterprise is that Archer wasn't restrained by the Prime Directive, so he didn't fall into the Lawful Neutral trap that Picard always ends up falling into and was instead able to do the right thing regardless of how it would interfere with other civilizations:
I'll probably eventually get around to watching Voyager all the way through (have probably seen 70ish% including the last episode between the original air and reruns), but after I finished watching DS9 I decided to watch through TNG and about half way though my wife and I finally got Cable and I haven't watched nearly as often since.
I enjoyed enterprise a lot more than voyager, that's for sure (captain janeway? Ugh). Can never forgive them for the last episode though. Just once I'd like to see a show like that that has a planned story arc and sticks to it. If the ratings are still good after 3 seasons, spin off a new series. Instead they just keep making episodes and then find some contrived way to end it when the plug gets pulled.
Anyway, DS9>TNG>ENT>VOY (based on how likely I am to enjoy a randomly chosen episode). Could never slog through TOS.