GH Podcast: Abby Honold talks about sexual assault in college, athletics and high...

schools, what we can do to educate, and what's currently being done.

I had a very different podcast this week with Abby, who I've been following and have been a fan of since learning about her advocacy during the Reggie Lynch situation. She is someone I've been wanting to have on because she is truly and educator, and her style and the way she approaches things is truly remarkable. With so many issues with assault in sports, I wanted her to talk about that, the reasoning why, and what we can do about it. I'd really love any feedback on this podcast. It was certainly a tougher one to do for me, and excuse me for not using the correct verbiage...I know the basketball talk a little better, but wanted to educate myself too.

Listen here and/or subscribe to the GopherHole podcast on iTunes ->

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Thanks for the listen. I really appreciated her perspectives and bravery. Also hearing about her thoughts on teaching young boys about it was great.

GopherChaos said:

Thanks for the listen. I really appreciated her perspectives and bravery. Also hearing about her thoughts on teaching young boys about it was great.

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Thank you for listening. As a friend stated on my IG, she is a hero.

Kudos for presenting this. I listened with an open mind, hoping to hear some thing that would soften my opinion of her, which was largely shaped by comments around the football player suspensions and Reggie Lynch reports.

While I deeply respect her bravery in light of what she has gone through, I think she is coming from a fundamentally different place than at least two groups of people (1. those who place a very high value on the success of Gopher revenue sports, and 2. lawyers...particularly, *good* lawyers) and it is apparent from listening to this podcast that she is never going to understand or care about the concerns that those two groups have (the valid concerns, in my view).

I don't want to rehash or re-argue all of the problems with the football and Lynch cases and the way they were handled, but I will simply say it is obvious to me (as a longtime lawyer and law professor) why she believes Coyle "didn't listen to her" when she first met with the administration to "express her concerns" about the way the athletic department dealt with this issue. For all of her bravery and the respect that commands, she also comes off as extremely biased against athletes, and not particularly bright.

Nadine asked all the right questions -- I was impressed that many of the questions were not softballs, and they were questions I was interested to hear Abby answer. But in many instances Abby did not answer the question asked, but instead just regurgitated standard talking points that she's probably recited hundreds of times to hundreds of different questions. Then Nadine would move on to the next scripted question without probing for a more precise answer to her question. One example is when Nadine asked about the damage done to the football players who were ultimately found not to have been involved, and Abby more or less shrugged off the question and blamed the players' lawyer for leaking names (which, for many reasons, is beside the point even if it had been true).

It is beyond question that everyone deserves a safe campus and to be free of harassment and assault, but it is also true that the Title IX process has been shown to be deeply flawed, including its application at the U of M. Those who champion the aggressive use of title IX to "get the bad guys" are, in my view, part of the problem.