Coaches Must Now ‘Step the Heck Out’ of Sex-Assault Investigations of Players

Its first appearance at the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in more than 50 years wasn’t a good moment for Yale University’s team to be without its captain. But he wasn’t there.

Jack Montague was expelled last month after being accused of sexual assault. His expulsion highlights questions about how colleges handle such allegations against athletes and whether the process is impartial.

Yale hasn’t disclosed exactly what the former captain was accused of or found responsible for. But he has spoken out through his lawyer, sharing details of his relationship with a female classmate, saying the two had had consensual sex, and arguing he had been unfairly expelled. He plans to sue Yale.

The spotlight shines brighter on athletes than on other students, particularly regarding alleged sexual misconduct. But colleges haven’t always used their formal disciplinary process for players. Until 2008, for example, the University of Iowa has allowed its athletics department to take “informal action” on reports of sexual misconduct by athletes without first consulting campus investigators.

More recent incidents have involved allegations that institutions brushed off charges against athletes or let athletics officials control or influence an investigation. A female student at Hobart & William Smith Colleges said that in 2013 she was turned over a pool table and raped by football players — and that the institution cleared them of any wrongdoing. Florida State University’s star quarterback, Jameis Winston, was accused of rape in 2012 but found not responsible by the institution, which recently settled a lawsuit by the accuser, who claimed “deliberate indifference.”

Officials at both Florida State and Hobart & William Smith maintain they handled the cases appropriately. Institutions in such positions often say privacy law prevents them from filling in details that are missing from the public record and that may clarify their response.

But a lot has changed in just the last few years, say consultants who work with athletics departments, about how colleges manage allegations against athletes. Critics have denounced institutions for giving players special treatment to protect the athletics brand and revenue. No longer, though, do colleges let athletics departments handle misconduct charges themselves, a practice once common.

Ten years ago, when lacrosse players at Duke University were accused of rape, John F. Burness was the chief spokesman there. “One of the things I learned,” he says, “was that at Duke the coach was responsible for the behavior of his team 24/7.”

“We had disciplinary boards, but frequently it never got to that because it was just handled by the coach,” says Mr. Burness, who is now a visiting professor of the practice in Duke’s School of Public Policy. “Other people would have no idea that these things had occurred.”

With greater enforcement of the federal gender-equity law Title IX, sexual-misconduct charges against athletes have been removed from the purview of athletics departments. “Institutions have had to come to grips with the fact that these are institutional issues,” says Mr. Burness. “These are not athletic issues.”

Athletics ‘Oversight’

That is a change for coaches who were used to being involved, but shouldn’t be, says Dan Beebe, a risk-management consultant who works with university athletics departments. “It’s no longer in your realm,” he tells officials whose players face sexual-misconduct charges. “Step the heck out of it.”

Victim advocates and policy makers have made increasingly clear that universities must handle charges against all students — including athletes — uniformly. That typically means within the campus Title IX office.

In guidance to colleges in 2011 on how to handle students’ reports of sexual assault, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights explicitly said athletics departments should not be in charge of investigating cases involving athletes. “If a complaint of sexual violence involves a student athlete, the school must follow its standard procedures,” the office said. “Such complaints must not be addressed solely by athletics-department procedures.”

A report in July 2014 by Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, showed many athletics departments still involved in investigations. According to the senator’s survey, 22 percent of institutions had given their athletics departments “oversight” of sexual-assault cases involving athletes.

The following month, the National Collegiate Athletic Association approved a resolution that athletics departments should “cooperate with but not manage, direct, control, or interfere with college or university investigations into allegations of sexual violence.”

Despite Senator McCaskill’s report, it’s unclear what role athletics departments have played, says Robb Jones, senior vice president at United Educators, a risk-management company. Even appropriate involvement — for example, a coach’s referring a report to the Title IX coordinator — may have seemed like a form of oversight to campus officials completing the survey. That doesn’t necessarily mean the athletics department was responsible for investigating, says Mr. Jones.

In examining more than 300 reports of sexual assault at about 100 institutions from 2011 to 2013, United Educators found “no athletic departments overseeing an institution’s sexual-assault investigation when athletes were involved.”

The firm’s report also concluded that athletes accused of sexual misconduct were more likely to be found responsible than were other male students. More than 60 percent of cases involving athletes resulted in findings of responsibility, compared with 45 percent of all cases. Athletes found responsible were about as likely to be expelled, but a smaller share were suspended and a greater share were placed on probation relative to the general population.

While the report found that 15 percent of alleged perpetrators were athletes — roughly comparable to their representation on campuses, says Mr. Jones — athletes were disproportionately represented in certain circumstances, for example, in 40 percent of cases involving one victim and two or more perpetrators.

After Findings

Institutions’ moves to keep athletics departments out of investigations may be hard for coaches, who are used to talking to players about their personal lives and offering advice when students confront problems.

“The choices coaches face are either you turn your back on a player and say, I can’t get involved in these charges, or become the advocate,” says Peter F. Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at the Stetson University College of Law. “I don’t think either role works well.”

Changes in many campus practices mean that if coaches now hear something from or about one of their athletes involving a reported sexual assault, they must inform campus authorities. “A lot of athletes,” says Mr. Lake, “don’t trust their coaches and assistants with information anymore.”

Accused students who end up leaving or getting kicked out of their institutions have often transferred and played elsewhere. But two conferences, the Southeastern Conference and the Pac-12, are trying to limit those opportunities, ruling that athletes expelled for sexual or other misconduct cannot participate in sports at another institution.

At Yale, basketball players showed solidarity with their former captain last month by wearing T-shirts emblazoned with his nickname and jersey number — and the university’s name backwards. Victim advocates protested, saying the team was endorsing rape.

The players apologized, and the university told the student newspaper that neither the team’s coaches nor the athletics department had had anything to do with the shirts. The message seemed to reinforce the new wall between athletics and athletes when it comes to sexual assault.

Robin Wilson writes about campus culture, including sexual assault and sexual harassment. Contact her at robin.wilson@chronicle.com.