U. of Colorado president promises stricter oversight, but she fires no one in football-recruiting scandal
They were sharply criticized for failing to act on reports that football players and recruits had sexually abused women, but Gary Barnett, Richard A. Tharp, and Richard L. Byyny will keep their jobs at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Elizabeth Hoffman, the president of the University of Colorado system, announced last week that Boulder’s football coach, athletics director, and chancellor, respectively, would not suffer any personal penalties, and that the coach would return from administrative leave.
Supporters of Mr. Barnett greeted the news with relief, saying that nothing had been proved in court, and that the university could finally move on from a scandal that has generated national headlines since December. But representatives of women’s groups were outraged and members of an independent commission that investigated the charges were dismayed that their report had been cast aside.
“If this is how they choose to clean up the program,” said Peggy Lamm, co-chairwoman of the commission, “I think they need a better broom. Any fifth-grader knows you don’t use the same people who made the mess to then clean up the mess.”
Sex, Alcohol, and Drugs
Ms. Hoffman’s decision capped an extraordinary two weeks for Colorado sports. A week earlier, a commission of local lawyers and other citizens made final a report finding that players and possibly an assistant coach had used sex, alcohol, and drugs to entertain football recruits during visits to Boulder.
Over the past four years, nine women have told the police or gone public with complaints that they had been raped by Colorado football players or recruits. Three of the women have sued the university, charging that it tolerated a hostile atmosphere toward women, violating federal gender-equity laws.
Colorado’s attorney general, Ken Salazar, announced in May that after a three-month investigation, he could find no evidence to support pressing criminal charges against anyone. However, a grand jury is considering evidence that a former recruiting assistant procured prostitutes for recruits.
In its report, the panel said that “Byyny and Tharp failed to effectively communicate and develop solutions to identified recruiting problems. Byyny, Tharp, and Barnett provided insufficient supervision of recruits. Barnett behaved with insensitivity toward issues and sexual assault and sexual harassment and did not follow protocols in these areas.”
While Ms. Hoffman chose not to fire anyone, she did put the Boulder campus’s provost, Philip DiStefano, in charge of the athletics department, adding a layer between Mr. Tharp and Mr. Byyny. She also announced that a new committee of faculty and staff members and students would advise Mr. DiStefano on the department’s operations.
“Make no mistake, the organizational and structural changes we are announcing today are serious, sweeping, and will dramatically alter the relationship between the athletics department and the rest of the university,” Ms. Hoffman said at a news conference. “We believe the new structure and procedures are unprecedented among major universities.”
That wasn’t enough for some members of the commission, including Jean Dubofsky, a former justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. She wondered if the commission’s work had been for nothing. “Why did we go through all this if there weren’t going to be any changes?” she asked. “Some of us felt from the outset that we were just buying time for the regents and the university. That may have been all we did.”
In February Mr. Barnett was suspended with pay after making disparaging comments about Katie Hnida, who had played for the Buffaloes as a placekicker and said she had been raped by a Colorado player in 1999.
Defenders of the football program applauded Ms. Hoffman’s decision to reinstate the coach.
“It’s been a very long and emotional process for a number of people, including the parents of football players,” said Thomas Denning, who has held season tickets to Colorado football games for 14 years. “I believe in the integrity of Coach Barnett and have from the start. His reinstatement, if it is true, is the first step of many the university needs to take to begin to repair the damage that’s been done by this.”
Judy Duren, whose son Michael is a senior on the football team, said she was “absolutely thrilled” by Ms. Hoffman’s reported decision to keep Mr. Barnett. “Now let’s hope we can move forward, change the things they need to change in the program ... that have nothing to do with most of the kids, and get on with it,” she said.
For leaders of women’s groups, however, the status of women at Boulder has taken a severe hit. “This is outrageous,” said Regina Cowles, president of the Boulder chapter of the National Organization for Women.
She called for Mr. Barnett and Mr. Tharp to be fired, and she criticized the president for not doing so. “Betsy Hoffman does not possess the leadership skills necessary to do the right thing in this case,” Ms. Cowles said. “She has been co-opted by the Board of Regents, and their desire to whitewash this is confirmed by their actions.”
Heather Sturm, coordinator of the CU Rape and Gender Education Program, said the president’s decision sends a poor message to victims of sexual assault. “It doesn’t matter that Coach Barnett failed to follow sexual-harassment policies,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that he said inappropriate things about women. I’m sure that if I failed to do a very important part of my job that I would be asked to leave.”
The independent commission’s report noted that other Big 12 Conference universities “are located in communities that are more supportive of their football teams than Boulder is of the university’s program. The tension between academics and athletics is particularly keen at the University of Colorado.”
Only 43 percent of Buffalo football players who entered college between 1992 and 1996 graduated, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. That is 10 percentage points below the national average and puts Colorado eighth in the Big 12. The football team is on probation for violating recruiting rules, the third time the program has committed a major violation of NCAA rules since 1962.
To outsiders, the decision to retain the coach, athletics director, and chancellor was disappointing but not surprising.
“CU leadership, like most colleges and universities housing big-time sports programs, is in a serious state of denial concerning the integrity of their athletic programs,” said Bruce Svare, director of the National Institute for Sports Reform, in an e-mail message.
‘Leadership . . . Has Failed’
He noted that the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletes has called for presidents to be personally responsible for leading athletics programs. “Time and again however, as witnessed with the latest scandals at CU, it is that very leadership which has failed our institutions of higher learning,” he said.
Murray A. Sperber, a professor of English at Indiana University at Bloomington who has written four books about college sports, pointed out that some universities, like the public flagship campuses in Minnesota and Alabama, are perennially in trouble.
“As soon as the CU athletic establishment feels that the new rules put it at a disadvantage vis-à-vis Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas, the move to water them down will start,” he said in an e-mail message. “Quietly but inevitably.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Athletics Volume 50, Issue 39, Page A29