Why Is a Suspect in the Vanderbilt Rape Case Talking to Athletes About Sexual Assault?

On Monday, Louisiana State University’s athletics department sent an email to administrators inviting them to a talk for athletes on the issue of sexual assault. Eventually, the email landed in the inboxes of some faculty members, who were alarmed at the identity of one of the speakers.

Brandon E. Banks is one of four former Vanderbilt University football players who have been criminally charged for their roles in an alleged rape in a dorm room in June 2013. Two of those former players have been convicted of multiple counts of aggravated rape and other charges. Mr. Banks’s trial is scheduled to start in June.

Prosecutors say video and photo evidence shows Mr. Banks touching the victim’s vagina and taking photos of her. He has pleaded not guilty on five counts of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery. The Tennessean reported in November that his lawyer was continuing talks about a plea agreement in the case.

The presentation that had been scheduled for next Monday at LSU is designed to raise sexual-assault awareness among athletes, and talk about prevention and what to do as a bystander, its organizer says. It has been given at other universities, apparently without raising objections.

LSU’s email invitation billed the 75-minute seminar as “powerful” for featuring students who were involved in or affected by the Vanderbilt incident. “One of the presenters (Brandon Banks) is actually scheduled to be sentenced for his part in the crime in June 2017,” read the email invitation, which concluded by assuring athletes that the presentation would wrap up well before the tip off of the NCAA men’s basketball national championship game.

Michael Bonnette, communications director for LSU Athletics, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that the presentation had been scheduled to educate students about the complexities and challenging realities of the people who have been involved in sexual assault. “Based on feedback from other universities who have held this presentation, we believed it would be a valuable learning experience for our student athletes,” he wrote.

But by Wednesday evening, after faculty members and students raised concerns about Mr. Banks’s appearance, the event had been postponed indefinitely. For faculty members, what they perceived as a tone-deaf mistake by the athletics department also spoke to a larger issue of the division between the academic and athletic sides of the university.

In his email, Mr. Bonnette wrote that the department “wanted to be sensitive” to the issues raised by faculty members and students and had postponed the event “to ensure proper time was committed to addressing any and all those concerns.”

Mark C. Scruggs, Mr. Banks’s lawyer, wrote in an email that Mr. Banks was unavailable to comment for this article.

‘Not Her Hero’

The now-postponed talk framed Mr. Banks as someone who failed to speak up for the victim, said Tyrone White, a motivational speaker and former coach who organized speaking events that feature Mr. Banks and other former Vanderbilt students.

Mr. Banks’s part in the presentation “is to speak from the role of someone who was not her hero and now is suffering with the consequences in twofold way, realizing, hopefully realizing, the reality of the severity of which he impacted another’s life but also in the moment in terms of how he’s impacted his and his own family’s life,” said Mr. White, who travels the country speaking to sports teams of various ages at conferences.

Mr. Banks has spoken at at least five universities, including the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia, Mr. White said.

In an email, Claude Felton, senior associate athletic director at the University of Georgia, wrote that Mr. Banks had spoken there during a presentation in August 2016 for a student-athlete development program with Mr. White.

Jon Dever, an associate athletic director at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, said Mr. Banks had spoken at a Student-Athlete Enhancement program there last month. He said the presentation was “eye opening” and “emotional.”

The talk aims to give students a complete picture of how a team, campus, and communities can change because of the actions of just one night, Mr. White said. “What I find most often happens or has happened is that when players are able to look into the eyes and see someone that reminds them of them, not necessarily as a perpetrator but as a student athlete, the message goes a lot deeper, faster with them,” he said.

The presentation also features Lauren Miller, the victim’s former roommate and best friend, Mr. White said.

Mr. Banks isn’t paid a fee for the presentations and the talks aren’t meant to change what people think of him, Mr. White said. “This whole program in no way is designed to show Brandon in a favorable light outside of what happened, because that was horrific,” he said.

The controversy at LSU is the first time Mr. White has experienced an opposition to his presentation, he said.

No Faculty Involvement

The speaking engagement is unusual for many reasons. For one, why would Mr. Banks take part in a presentation on the issue of sexual assault within months of standing before a jury?

Mr. Scruggs, his lawyer, said in an interview that Mr. Banks asked him about the speaking engagements, and that he told the former player that it would be all right as long as he didn’t discuss the pending criminal case.

Professors at LSU were blunt in their disapproval.

“Why in the world would they go to an untutored, ungraduated athlete who is on the brink of standing trial for a felony?” said Kevin Cope, president of LSU’s Faculty Senate and a professor of English. “They need to continue preaching about ways to deal with the problem, but in a more fundamental fashion. You have to ask, Where does the problem originate?”

Michelle Massé, a professor of English and dean of the graduate school, said faculty members came to her with concerns about Mr. Banks’s talk. They acknowledged that the event probably had good intentions, she said, but worried that it lacked scholarly context. “Without an appropriate scholarly framing, this event could be so easily misconstrued or so damaging,” Ms. Massé said.

Graduate students were concerned too. Catherine Jacquet, an assistant professor of history and women’s and gender studies, said students had asked her if there was anything they could do to stop the event from taking place.

William W. Demastes, a professor of English and the faculty athletics representative on the Faculty Senate, said the athletics program typically hosts programs for student athletes independently, and arrangements are handled within the department.

Faculty members were concerned that they weren’t consulted, given that the campus has several scholars who specialize in this type of programing, said Jacqueline Bach, director of the women’s and gender studies program.

“I was unaware of the circumstances behind what the intention for the event was, who was the intended audience, and perhaps why being with an academic program that has several experts in the area weren’t first consulted or just included in the planning of the program,” Ms. Bach said.

Now, professors are hoping to use the controversy as a catalyst to encourage more collaboration between athletics and the faculty. Mr. Demastes said a group of faculty members from the women’s and gender studies program and other departments will meet with Miriam Segar, a senior associate athletics director, about life-skills programing events, and how academics can potentially get involved.

The idea is not to “shame athletics,” Ms. Jacquet said, but to “ask some of these difficult questions of how did this happen and what can we do so that in the future these major misses don’t happen.”

Mr. Bonnette said the athletics department is committed to working with different parts of the campus and looks forward to working with faculty members.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a breaking-news reporter. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.