The CardBoard
USA Today: College athletes more likely to be disciplined for sexual assault - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: USA Today: College athletes more likely to be disciplined for sexual assault (/thread-18760.html)


USA Today: College athletes more likely to be disciplined for sexual assault - StanFanFam13 - 12-22-2019

Earlier this month, USA Today published a four-part series looking at the issue of sexual assault in college athletics—and football programs in particular. It's quite long but definitely worth a read, and I'd love to know if you thoughtful CARDboarders have any takes on the issue as a whole and especially as it relates to Stanford.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/12/12/ncaa-athletes-more-likely-disciplined-sex-assault/4379153002/

Lots of disclaimers here: the response rate from schools was (predictably) low, and because so many sexual assaults go unreported, the articles are careful to represent only that a disproportionate number of athletes are disciplined for sexual assault as opposed to disproportionately committing sexual assault.

Still, there's lots of food for thought as well, particularly around issues of checking athletes' backgrounds and transfer situations. One of the more shocking and disheartening takeaways from the article was how many athletes found responsible for misconduct were able to exploit the transfer situation and subsequently continue mistreating women at a second school. Many of the specific schools and incidents profiled also illustrated an ambivalence at best and aversion at worst among coaches to doing due diligence on recruits, with many seeming to prioritize an athletic asset over the safety of other students. Those of you who are more familiar with NCAA rules may already have known about the junior college loophole, wherein an athlete who would normally be benched for a year for transferring after being suspended or expelled can reduce that time by making an intermediate transfer to a community college and briefly playing there. Others circumvent the issue by simply leaving before they can be disciplined. The NCAA as an organization comes under fire for its failure to enact policies addressing these issues (it convened a "study group" last year to consider the issue but disbanded the group without taking action).

In the absence of NCAA leadership, it seems that change must come at the conference level as well as from the actions of individual schools. The article highlights the actions of several conferences, including the Pac-12, adopting a serious misconduct policy that bans athletes from transferring into conference schools if their previous schools found them responsible for sexual assault or domestic violence. A good first step, but one that the article also points out is only effective so long as schools are serious about looking into the disciplinary history of potential players, which isn't always captured in a basic "transfer trace." (Apologies if y'all already knew all this; it was an education for me!)

In light of this, it's interesting to consider what more Stanford might do as an institution and as a member of a conference that seems to have at least some willingness to change (although it declined to adopt a more aggressive rule that would ban athletes who commit sexual violence from playing). The article gives favorable coverage to survivor Brenda Tracy and her organization, Set the Expectation, which Stanford Football has partnered with. And Stanford was spared the unfavorable coverage heaped on other universities (including Pac-12 schools like Oregon and Oregon State). One might imagine that Stanford's rigorous academic standards help avoid issues like the risk of dangerous transfers coming in through community college. Of course, that isn't to say that perpetrators can't be bright students and that we don't need to clean up our own house; look no farther than Brock Turner.

Part of how a university handles students—including athletes—found responsible of sexual assault is how they handle accusations of sexual misconduct and how they reach those findings of responsibility in the first place. The case of Bobby Okereke (discussed here in the NYT and here on the CARDboard) is one illustration. Okereke stayed on the field for Stanford and went on to the Colts after being found "not responsible" because only three members of a five-person panel found him responsible when school policy required a 4-1 vote. Stanford has since moved to a three-person panel with a unanimity requirement, which I understand the reasoning behind but still feel is a mistake.

Folks on here who have a deeper knowledge of the history and context surrounding Stanford athletics: how would you rate our programs' handling of these issues? What more can/should be done, at Stanford and more broadly? And what do we feel our obligation is as fans to be mindful of the off-field behaviors of the players that we cheer on it?