Does Ohio St misuse the law to protect itself?
A law professor, in the link below, proclaims Ohio as “national champions” in perfecting the (mis)use of laws about student privacy to protect its own public image. While more qualified people than me can judge the merits of the professor’s legal arguments, the paper should interest many people here. To me, it provides a damning portrayal of hypocrisy, self-serving interpretations, attempts to conceal events from the public, twisting student privacy concepts, as well as caring more for misbehaving coaches than student athletes.
-hypocrisy
Eg claiming that student privacy precludes the release of information about the Clarret academic cheating scandal while at the same time violating the privacy of students making the accusations—for instance, “lambasting” the teaching assistant who made the allegations—saying she was “mentally and psychologically unstable”.
-self serving legal interpretations and attempts to conceal information from the public
eg selectively releasing information about student athletes’s accomplishments, while prohibiting the release of information that could harm the school, such as student parking ticket records--which are public at many other schools. Thus, the public and the media, which often drives investigations, can never know about NCAA violations that have previously been “exposed by simple parking tickets”
-twisting the concept of student privacy to serve their own agenda
Eg dubiously classifying as “education records” emails about the trading of sports memorabilia for tattoos and marijuana”. If these were “education records,” they would reveal a much clearer violation of student privacy---sending “education records” from the football coach (Tressel) to someone not affiliated with the university (Sarniak).”
-caring more for misbehaving coaches than student athletes.
Eg Ohio St quickly disassociated itself from Terrelle Pryor.”yet it ”reassociated itself with former Coach Tressel, allowing him to retire rather than resign.” (thereby forgiving a $250,000 fine, giving him $52,000 pay with 250 hours of unpaid vacation and sick time as well as insurance).
“It’s hard to believe.. that Ohio state cares about its student athletes when it continues to reward the misbehavior of its coach while simultaneously dissociating itself from the coach’s athlete.”
"Schools like Ohio State seemingly care less about their athletes than they do their own legacies."
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=meg_p…
Here's Ohio's defense:
In explaining Ohio State’s defense of Department chair Goings' comments relating to Norma McGill’s [the teaching assistant quoted in the Clarett article] psychiatric issues, Ohio State spokeswoman Elizabeth Conlisk explained that while McGill violated FERPA in discussing Clarett, [which this author agrees occurred], Goings did not because Goings’ attack on the teaching assistant was based on rumors, not student records.
Got that? There's nothing wrong with ruining a GA's career and life by spreading innuendo about her psychiatric history as long as it's just rumors and not based on any hard evidence.
Goings is still a professor and is director of the graduate studies program of his department--he served as chair until 2008.
they blame the victim and twist the law to suit themselves.
To pose a completely rhetorical question: what is worse?
To do what the dept head did: to spread rumors about a student's psychiatric history or
To do what the TA did: essentially to support or amplify the statements of a student (clarett) who said himself that he engaged in academic misconduct with Ohio staff?
i guess slander is ok in their view.
if i were an osu student about whom the university ever said anything negative, in contravention of their stated understanding of FERPA, i think i'd figure out how to take action pretty quickly. seems like one might even sue the federal government to defund a university that violates FERPA.
there were threats on her life and she had to leave Ohio.e
Also, she was probably an impoverished teaching assistant, who concluded that the meager, delayed and uncertain benefits of a suit were hardly worth the immense personal and possibly financial costs.
Goings was the department head spreading the rumors--you mean the GA I assume....
Who knows. It would be hard to find an attorney in Columbus willing to take on the case, especially since as a TA I doubt she had the resources to actually hire an attorney and would have needed somebody willing to work on spec.
Maybe it would have been possible to find an attorney willing to take it on when she got back to Kentucky, but I don't think her life went particularly well after Columbus, at least at first--various stories referred to her as living on the street in her hometown for a while. It would have been pretty much impossible to find academic work without a rec from OSU and obviously her department wasn't interested in giving her a good one.
I'm having trouble thinking of an athletic/academic whistleblower whose career survived the experience. Look at Baylor: Dave Bliss is still coaching at a high school in Texas, the guy that turned him in will never coach again. The woman that blew the whistle at Tennessee had her duties stripped and her office moved to the basement--at least they had the sense not to fire her, like they did at Georgia. And those were full professors with the resources to fight back legally.
cannot be overstated. If the University itself is willing to stoop this low to cover their asses, is it any wonder that the NCAA can't ever find anyone willing to testify on the record? Or that Clarett needed a hatchet?
ESPN had an article about the TA titled "Norma the mental freak" fergodsakes. Who is ever going to want to go there?
Hey Michelin I think you meant Ohio. You wrote Ohio State.
but I figured that in this case, it was important to be clear and not to associate the blame with poor Ohio University. If they get the downdraft from the inferno in Columbus, they may need to change their name.
They may need to change the entire state's name. But, no more than four letters, hopefully. It took them long enough to learn to spell the current one.
note that I did not say "ohio state" but "ohio st" and there are 2602 words beginning with "st,. So, we could be calling them the Ohio
stallholders
stewardesses
staphylococci
stewpans
stigmas
stillbirths
stinkbugs
stinkies
stoners
stupefiers
stupids
stumblers
streetwalkers or
starlets
(did you hear about the man who goes to confession and says:
"Father, I must confess. I did it with a starlet."
To which the holy father replies: "You did it with a bird?")
well at least there appears to be a consistent legal precedent working against OSU in their case with ESPN
57 pages? I'll read it after finals week...
but if you are a lawyer in training you will want to read it all. We hope you report back to us.
Legal writing = footnote fetish.
You got a source for that?
That's just academic bullshit.
In the "real world," concise simplicity pays. Can't expect judges to plow through copious footnotes. Often times they don't read anything at all.
Because academics are the only people in the world that like to hear themselves talk? Um, okay.
Maybe the judge in your case didn't read the file but I can assure you that almost all judges read their files and associated paperwork. Having said that, I read the entire 57 page treatise and believe that it could have easily been written as a 15-20 page document without losing its impact. Most lawyers can't write concisely because think they get paid by the word.
In the "real world," I get paid to read a bunch of stuff (including the footnotes) and write papers with lots of footnotes. "Concise simplicity" is just superficial bullshit to cover up a lack of actual thought or responsible analysis.
Anything that gets more people discussing how Ohio State University is so successful at denial and stonewalling to hide their cheating is a mark on the positive side of the ledger.
Those are excellent points he makes in his argument. And I hate to beat a dead horse, but around here...its OHIO.
see my posts below on reasons for using "Ohio St" in this case.
oh, and excuse me for beating a dead horse once again but
around here, we call a female law professor "she", not "he"
I think in general Ohio State's brass is used to living in a litigious atmosphere, and have very lawerly responses to just about anything.
The way the Tressel scandal was handled was a vintage Law & Order episode when McCoy is going up against the huge company with brilliant lawyers. There was never an ounce surrendered until they had to, the investigators ran into walls of blunt statements and perfect books that made at least the lent cars they had evidence for appear to be perfectly legal loans, even if they stretched the description of legal to its limit. The one key witness was Pryor, and he fled to the NFL so he couldn't be compelled to testify.
If you can step back from the unfairness of how seppuku Michigan could never have the gumption to stick a finger in the eye of the NCAA and then actually win the fight they picked, it's brilliant defense lawyering. Ultimately the edifice stands. Ohio State is a self-perpetuating good--they are absolutely convinced of their own divinity therefore any action in their own defense is an action in the defense of good as they understand it.
This goes to the underlying principle of Michigan vs. Ohio State: devotion to ideals, vs. devotion to the organization. Why should it be so surprising that they should see the law as just another structure they must conquer, as they see the NCAA, as they see Michigan. Their athletic department is the pinnacle of achievement without ideals, the embodiment of what can truly be accomplished when freed from the entire concept of "should." Since the students who take part and may be abused chose to enter that program, they do have some culpability for what happens to them as a result. If a kid got $500 or a free tat, or a car, or tutors who did his homework for him, got to hang around eating chicken and playing video games, this is not what's important to the symbol, since it just adds more to the deep narrative of the sports fantasia.
What I mean is Ohio State is being Ohio State. The actual laws broken or actual people harmed is pretty minute except in certain documented situations. It's their athletic department, not the school, and in the great childhood game for adults that is college football, mostly what they are doing is playing Vader to our Luke. Ours is not to whine about this, but to beat them.
Yet, neither I nor the law professor, whose article is linked, admire their lawyers' acts. I hope you would agree that pointing out a perversion of the law is hardly an unjustified activity., and she documents such perversions in great detail.
Yes, I do hope we continue to beat Ohio. Yet, as you point out, football for us fans is a fantasy game. Is winning the Ohio game then really more important than preserving the intent of our laws? Such a viewpoint would be more consistent with Ohio than Michigan values.
Meta comment: this is the kind of thing I NEVER would have found or skimmed or read if there had been no posting here at mgoblog. Thanks for bringing this to the board's attention.
Regarding the matter at hand, I do hope that FERPA is majorly rehauled. It is clearly being abused and misused by Universities wanting no bad publicity.
Having said that, in general, I stand behind some level of privacy. While it is true, as cited in the paper you linked, that a Columbus State University student's parking ticket is available, while an OSU football student's parking ticket is not, there is a significant difference. As an Ohio football player, it strikes me that there is an inordinate amount of interest in what that player did. Most of us "normal" students automatically have a degree of privacy, simply because we are part of the anonymous crowd. In our celebrity driven culture, virtually all football players have lost much of their privacy. I had more than a few parking tickets while a student in Ann Arbor. While I'm guessing they were a matter of semi-public record, I doubt that anyone other than myself, the police who wrote the tickets, and the court personnel who helped me settle them, ever knew about them. You can bet that if anyone on the two deep had a dozen parking tickets, someone would find a way to publicize this.
I must say, I appreciate that largely, this board tries to avoid overmuch speculation and rumor mongering about athletes and prospects. As has often been said, who of us didn't do stupid immature things when we were 16 - 22 years of age. Once you're older than that, stupid things still happen, but you have less of an excuse and free pass for them.
As you suggest, overhauling FERPA may be the only hope for curtailing abuses, while still preserving privacy. The intent of the law seems good.
Meanwhile, it's important to raise public awareness of abuses and the need for change.