Northwestern’s president sent the wrong message about football coach, twice

Whatever head coach Pat Fitzgerald knows about what happens in the Northwestern Wildcat football locker room, one overriding truth about the hazing scandal now roiling the university is clear. That is that university President Michael Schill said a lot that is wrong in both his two-week suspension of Fitzgerald on Friday and with his “apology” a day later. Does Schill’s decision to relieve Fitzgerald of his job finally get it “right?”

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Fitzgerald’s firing is an abrupt end to a situation of which we still know very little for certain and a particularly sad conclusion of a distinguished career.

But it at least acknowledges what Schill’s minor sanction and his equivocating admission that he “may have erred” in the light punishment he originally ordered did not – that hazing rituals are not acceptable, either in college sports or anywhere else.

There is, to be clear, no question Schill erred in ordering a mere two-week suspension of the head football coach of a program wherein a six-month investigation found hazing claims were “largely supported by evidence.” His failure to recognize that certainty compounded the problems emerging as claims about the Northwestern football program escalated.

If hazing rituals ever were thought to have some vague merit, such ideas have been discounted and repudiated in American society in recent decades. At nearly every level of competition or team management – from high school sports teams to military training and corporate boardrooms – bullying, harassing, abusing or shaming novices in shows of status or power are now broadly condemned. There is no setting today in which a college coach or a university president could presume that hazing would be greeted as simple bonding or harmless play.

So, the imposition of a two-week suspension on Fitzgerald in early summer when little is happening in his program anyway, even if the investigation couldn’t confirm the coaching staff’s level of awareness – and perhaps especially if it couldn’t – suggested a university administration that either didn’t believe the results of the report it commissioned or didn’t take them seriously. If the former, why not stand up and say so? If the latter, ... well, “may have erred” was simply no excuse.

Considering the seriousness of the facts produced by the six-month investigation and laid out in Schill’s Monday announcement that Fitzgerald was being fired, it is something short of stunning that the university president had to wait to take serious action until the community response grew to a clamor.

And as reporting and ongoing investigations deepen, the questions seem to be swelling not just within Fitzgerald’s football program but within other facets of Northwestern athletics. That’s a reality Schill should not ignore.

But beyond that localized reality, if an institution of Northwestern’s caliber and reputation can fail to take an unequivocal stance against abuse and humiliation in the guise of “team bonding,” what does that say about society’s disdain for the practice?

That indeed is the more disturbing implication of this situation, the recognition that its scope could extend beyond incidents in one locker room and reflect a level of tacit, enduring acceptance of behaviors that have been overtly and publicly disparaged for years.

Fitzgerald’s reported departure from a program he nurtured for 17 years is a costly response to this scandal. There is likely much more to be learned about what did and didn’t happen under the coach’s watch. But, even without that consequence, we already received one deeply disappointing lesson. At the highest level of academic and collegiate rigor, hazing can still be summarily dismissed and potentially even tolerated.

If anything of value is to come of this situation, it must be a redoubling of our – and our hallowed institutions’ – resolve to truly eliminate the practice.

The Daily Herald

https://www.dailyherald.com/discuss/20230711/daily-herald-opinion-whatever-we-eventually-learn-about-hazing-allegations-northwesterns-president-sent-the-wrong-message-twice