Northwestern College launched an impartial report on athletics accountability and tradition Thursday, which reviewed “the processes and accountability mechanisms in place on the College to detect, report and reply to potential misconduct in its athletics packages, together with hazing, bullying and discrimination of any variety.”
The report described the outcomes of the overview as “largely optimistic” but additionally famous room for enchancment. The overview was performed over the previous 11 months by the legislation agency Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and was led by former U.S. lawyer basic Loretta Lynch, in keeping with a Northwestern press launch. It comes virtually a yr after the college fired two coaches over allegations of hazing, bullying and harassment inside the athletics division. The hazing was uncovered by an exterior investigation and reportedly occurred on the college’s soccer group, the place upperclassmen compelled youthful teammates to bear sexualized and degrading rituals on the group’s Wisconsin coaching facility in addition to within the Northwestern locker room. At the least three former Northwestern scholar athletes filed lawsuits in opposition to the college consequently.
The legislation agency’s group reviewed the college’s and its athletics division’s “insurance policies and reporting procedures, coaching and training supplies, and student-athlete suggestions gathered by annual expertise surveys and exit interviews,” in keeping with the govt abstract of the report. The agency’s representatives spent a number of days on campus assembly with members of the Northwestern neighborhood and touring related services. They interviewed greater than 120 individuals, together with college students (athletes and nonathletes), athletics division management and employees, coaches and group employees, college directors, college members, and trustees, the abstract mentioned.
The report included a number of suggestions the reviewers mentioned “would enhance the flexibility of Northwestern’s current reporting and accountability mechanisms to detect threats to student-athlete well-being and would additional align Athletics tradition with the College’s broader mission.”
The suggestions embody enhancing relations between college and the athletics division, clarifying the mandate and duties of the Committee on Athletics and Recreation—which is comprised of school members—and enhancing responsiveness and accountability for reported misconduct inside the athletics division.
“Whereas our suggestions are targeted on the areas wherein we consider enchancment can and ought to be made, the outcomes of our overview have been largely optimistic,” the report says. “We now have noticed a dedication by the College and Athletics Division to the well- being of their scholar athletes. It’s unsurprising, in gentle of that dedication, that so lots of the student-athletes who participated in our overview expressed nice appreciation for the sources made obtainable to them at Northwestern, and customarily spoke extremely of their school athletic expertise there.”
