After visiting and just reading GopherHole for several years, I decided to register in order to make comments because of the posts of those active here regarding the ten suspended Gopher football players. Several things really bother me about what has been written about the subject:
1. First of all, I cannot think of a setting more poorly positioned for rational discussion of the very complex issues involved in these matters. The forum allows for anyone to say anything regardless of facts and laws, known or unknown. For example, if someone were to read the EEOC report carefully, one could easily see exactly each one of the ten individuals was and what was reported about their behavior. A. Winfield, for example, was a "hero" in this situation because he gave testimony that revealed several other players had lied about not being in the apartment and about not having harassed the female cheerleader by shouting remarks and blinking the lights while she was having sex.
2. Only four of the players were said to have engaged in sexual assault as defined by the student handbook. The instigator of the situation, Djam, was not found guilty of sexual assault but was kicked out of the university because he sent videos of himself and the recruit having sex with the cheerleader to his friends without her permission. Djam also enabled the recruit to be involved in the matter.
3. Four of the remaining five players were found to have engaged in sexual harassment of the cheerleader, mostly based on Winfield's testimony. The fifth was found guilty of lying to the EEOC investigators.
4. The state of Minnesota has laws governing sexual assault and the University of Minnesota has policies regarding sexual assault. The laws and policies are different, as are the procedures used to enforce them. Both approaches can fail miserably--see the Baylor University situation--but they only way to remedy errors is to work to change the systems. My daughter, a graduate of the U of M law school, has worked to get hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits tested all over the country. Many, many jurisdictions collect rape kits obtained in hospitals and never have the results tested. Is that justice?
5. We can argue constitutional issues regarding this case until we are blue in the face but only one body--the federal judiciary and, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court--can determine whether laws, policies and/or procedures are unconstitutional or not. To the best of my knowledge, very few cases calling activities under EEOC governing bodies have been determined by federal judges to be remotely unconstitutional.
6. Several weeks ago, an attorney who actively opposes EEOC matters wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post regarding the U of M situation. He said the facts of the case were terrible for advocates of EEOC reform. But what would he know? He isn't a Gopher football fan nor does he post at Gopherhole.
7. The attorney that represents nine of the players CONFIRMED in a recent radio interview that he was the one who released the report to the press. The great Tyrone Carter released the name of the cheerleader and later apologized for having done so. The damage was already done. And I wonder where Carter got the female's name?
8. How many who post here support the Black Lives Matter movement? I'm guessing very few. If a person wants to fight against injustice based on race, you might focus more on the issues BLM addresses than those within the U of M.
