By David Gordon, associate editor
The external review of the UW-Eau Claire Athletics Department, which began in the wake of last fall’s racist Snapchat posts involving five Blugold football players, is on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic, UW-EC Chancellor Jim Schmidt told the CVPost on Wednesday.
The review can’t be completed until COVID safety rules allow at least a dozen focus group sessions to take place, Schmidt said in an email response to a question about the external review’s status. He wrote that he didn’t have the specific details available, “but this is my understanding of the review.
“The consultants were able to complete (the) quantitative portion of their research, but COVID-19 and the subsequent closure of the campus has delayed the significant qualitative portion that relies on more than a dozen focus group sessions,” Schmidt wrote.
Those sessions are scheduled for completion this fall and the consultants “will issue a report and make recommendations following their study,” he added.
Significant developments
Schmidt’s comments came amid several significant developments in regard to the players linked to the Snapchat post. They were suspended from the football team last fall but were allowed to continue in school then and for the spring semester.
They were quietly reinstated after a panel of faculty, staff and students found that they had not violated any provisions in the UW-System’s Administrative Code section on student non-academic misconduct.
That section lists 19 types of non-academic misconduct but includes nothing about racist or other types of hate speech or action.
On Tuesday evening, UW-EC released prepared statements by Schmidt and three other administrators on the reinstatement of the five players and related matters. This apparently came about because The Spectator — the university’s student newspaper – was getting ready to post a story detailing the results of its major effort to investigate the whole situation.
That story reported that a majority of UW-EC football players didn’t want their five former teammates reinstated. It also quoted a statement by Jonathan Malueg, a football co-captain, who said the team members were “standing for what is right, while the university is allowing racism to exist within our teams.”
In his statement to The Spectator, Malueg added: “As a football team we know that to get to the root we cannot allow these five individuals back onto our team.”
Schmidt has declined requests from the CVPost and other news media to go beyond the comments in his prepared statement or to comment on the story in The Spectator.
Another blow on Thursday afternoon
On Thursday afternoon, the university’s stance took another blow. The Rapid Action Task Force appointed by Schmidt in December to recommend immediate improvements in UW-EC’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) programs issued a statement opposing the reinstatement of the five players and strongly criticizing the lack of transparency in that process.
The reinstatement procedures “are not in keeping with the promises made in the wake of multiple racist incidents on campus, nor do they uphold repeated pledges to be transparent,” the statement said. It was signed by all 16 members of the task force, including two students who had graduated and signed after the statement was released.
On Tuesday, one of the statements sent to the news media came from Warren Anderson, UW-EC’s Vice-Chancellor for EDI and Student Affairs. It listed completion of the “comprehensive external review” of athletics as the top item in a list of actions that are underway to set the university on “the course for inclusive excellence.”
Anderson’s statement said the review will look at “the climate in Intercollegiate Athletics” at UW-EC as well as “Athletics’ policies, practices and procedures to ensure the most culturally competent student athletes.”
The UW-EC material, which also included statements by Athletics Director Dan Schumacher and football coach Wesley Beschorner, was emailed to news media about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday (Sept. 22). Some 40 minutes later, The Spectator posted online its report that a “strong majority” of UW-EC football players didn’t want their five former teammates reinstated.
The Spectator also noted Malueg’s comment that the Student-Athlete Handbook contains a policy statement on “Bias Incidents, Hate Acts, Hate Crimes, Discrimination, Harassment and Hazing.” That policy states that all punishment for conduct, “including suspension or dismissal, from a team, is at the discretion of the Head Coach and Director of Athletics,” and Malueg said the appeals process in this case “was carried out entirely by university administration, rather than the athletics department,” according to The Spectator.
Beschorner’s statement said that “the context of the ‘Snapchat Case’ is up for interpretation” but added that “the imagery and verbiage used in this incident were appalling.” He added that the five players will be allowed back on the team roster because they won their appeal, but urged them “to participate in restorative justice activities if they want to truly be part of our team.”
Some context
When news of the Snapchat posting first broke last November, the university administration repeatedly refused to identify the players involved even though a story in The Spectator had identified them and several campus sources indicated that their names were known to many students. It also kept secret any information about the discipline meted out then.
UW-EC officials cited advice from UW-System lawyers and the requirements of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as the basis for their stance. That position, which was criticized by the CVPost and others, hid – among other things – that one of the five players has a Latinx surname and at least one of the others is African-American.
The November Snapchat conversation included a photo of a burning cross and referred to a football team meeting in terms that compared it to a Ku Klux Klan meeting. It led to strong protests both on campus and in the community.
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