ESPN's Rittenberg Says UM Must Answer Gibbons Questions
Don't see this posted here, although it apparently went up at ESPN yesterday. Goes to the question of whether this becomes a national story. Rittenberg says that Hoke will be facing many questions at signing day next Wednesday:
http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/95155/michigan-must-address-gi…
Among things Rittenberg reports that I didn't know was that the U found that Gibbons "engaged in unwanted or unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, committed without valid consent, and that conduct was so severe as to create a hostile, offensive, or abusive environment."
The biggest question, according to Rittenberg, is when the athletic department became aware of this finding. Among others will undoubtedly be why Gibbons's absence from the bowl was attributed to a family issue.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:20 PM ^
This guy is a damn fool if he thinks Hoke is going to answer any questions about a past player on a day where the future can officially be talked about.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:14 PM ^
And you're a damn fool if you don't think that every reporter there isn't going to pepper Hoke with question after question about it. None of those reporters care about signing day. The class has been set for six months. But this Gibbons story? That's something new and juicy. Now does Hoke have to answer their questions? No. But if he refuses or if they ask him enough and he gets feisty about and channels his inner Lloyd Carr and snaps at them, that's going to make things worse.
Hoke and Michigan's best play here is to offer a statement about it and hope that kills the story then and there. Refusing to answer is only going to add fuel to the fire that they are covering something up.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:54 PM ^
Hoke has some statement at the beginning, then says he has no further comment on the issue, then answers all the Signing Day questions.
Maybe that kills the story, maybe it doesn't, but it's the "best play" as you say.
Refusing to offer ANY answer is the "worst play" to try to kill the story. It just invites further columns that call for a further escalation (some no doubt penned by the likes of Drew Sharp): "Michigan's being evasive! Mary Sue Coleman needs to launch an internal investigation into who knew what and when!"
January 31st, 2014 at 4:58 PM ^
Yeah, we can all asume that hoke will lie to us all again anyway.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:24 PM ^
than in what the standard is for booting players off of the squad. And this goes back, as some of the smoke begins to clear now, to RR. If the washtenaw blog is right then there was plenty of evidence of serious wrong-doing on Gibbons's part, possibly on Lewan's, too. People can and should debate this, but I (speaking personally) want a higher standard for the football team than "he not a convicted criminal." And I think it can be argued that when serious charges are lodged against a player and there is some strong indication of wrongdoing they should be suspended until the issue is settled. It's worth repeating that Michigan won games because these two guys were on the squad.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:31 PM ^
And you want them to be suspended until the issue is settled? What if it is like the Duke case? And they don't play for over a year (if it takes that long) and it ruins their future and possible career choice? What then?
I'm with you, in a perfect world, I'll take a million Kovacs, Denard, and Matt Wile playing for my beloved team. But even if you picked 100 of the most wonderful upstanding young men you can find, something could happen during 4 years of college. Sadly.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:48 PM ^
Let's be real: the Duke case is an exception. False accusations of this sort are so exceedingly rare that it's almost not even worth mentioning.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:53 PM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 8:13 PM ^
yeah--I know which side my sympathies fall on.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:58 PM ^
that people can be falsely accused??? Oy.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:09 PM ^
Brian Banks begs to differ.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:25 PM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 5:33 PM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 11:39 PM ^
February 1st, 2014 at 9:53 AM ^
February 1st, 2014 at 10:36 AM ^
February 3rd, 2014 at 9:26 AM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 8:56 PM ^
to go through the shame and humiliation of accusing military colleagues of raping them. It's a new fad.
I struggle to understand what makes guys think they need to rush to the defense of this kind of ugly. But it's real.
January 31st, 2014 at 5:12 PM ^
Everyone says this until it is them or someone in their family.....
Accusations can be weapons to destroy people - that's why this stuff has to be dealt with as best as possible in the criminal justice system (as imperfect as it can be). It isn't the place for Universities and their internal boards to decide.
February 6th, 2014 at 1:58 PM ^
The Duke case would almost certainly have not turned out the way it did, if it had been handled as a purely administrative matter. Those three lacrosse players would have been expelled. No, they wouldn't have been put in jail. They would never have had a trial. But they would have been judged simply on the basis of whether they created a "hostile environment" in the view of their accuser. And they would likely have been judged by one or more representatives of that class of faculty/administrators like the "Group of 88," who condemned the players and the team based on a knee-jerk reaction to incomplete information. Because the defense lawyers would have had little substantive involvement and their legal tools would have been very limited.
I say again; if there is a real case of rape, mere expulsion from the University of Michigan (or Duke) is a grossly inadequate remedy. If there is a phony allegation of rape, expulsion from the University of Michigan is an outrageous offense to the accused. The important thing is to make a complete investigation of the facts, with serious consequences, while protecting the due process rights of the accused.
The criminal justice system is the place we all look to, for that kind of resolution. An administrative proceeding is a lousy substitute. Administrative proceedings are intended only to serve the needs of the institution, not the parties.
The Gibbons case is just one of a great many cases we might see going forward, if the current "Dear Colleague" policy on Title IX enforcement continues. There are going to be problems; guaranteed.
January 31st, 2014 at 8:53 PM ^
she was internally injured. She had bruises. Read the police report, or listen to the former Pathology Professor who exposed the case:
http://themajors.net/detroit/?p=14609
I'm really hoping that people here are speaking out of ignorance, rather than just mean macho stupidity.
February 1st, 2014 at 9:23 AM ^
Here, here. While so many are going through mental contortions to justify the actions of the university, forgotten are a campus full of women who count on administration to do the right thing and protect them.
February 6th, 2014 at 2:10 PM ^
What were her "internal injuries"?
What exactly makes you say she was "badly injured"?
Her alleged "bruising" is a subject of considerable debate; by my reading of the police records, it is not clear what the nature of the supposed bruising was, and was by no means evidence of an assault.
"Vaginal tearing" is not, by itself, evidence of a sexual assault. If it were, then no one would be able to explain why the AAPD never referred any charges to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor.
The only thing that Doug Smith has done of any consequence was to FOIA the records. All of his writing, all of his other reporting, has been riddled with errors.
He called Gibbons -- who has never been charged or convicted -- a "rapist." No self-respecting professional journalist would make that mistake. I think it could be the basis for a defamation action by Gibbons against Smith. Not that Gibbons is likely to do that.
But one look at Doug Smith's wierd history at Regents meetings, at city council meetings, on his blog; it is remarkable when any serious news outlet takes him seriously at all.
I really want to know what Smith's role might have been in the reopening of this matter within OSCR.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:47 PM ^
Everything sounds great in a perfect world, but you are introducing an immense amount of uncertainty when you are subjectively determining how "strong" an indication of wrongdoing occurred based on accusations.
This is a bad situation, but bad facts tend to make bad law, and creating blanket suspensions because it "looks" like you did something wrong isn't beneficial to anyone.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:42 PM ^
So Meyer was wrong to suspend Carlos Hyde?
It's not really all that uncommon to suspend a player on the basis of an accusation, even if the accuser eventually chooses not to cooperate with the investigation.
January 31st, 2014 at 6:15 PM ^
Do you mean the event where they have video of him striking a woman? That suspension was probably justified.
January 31st, 2014 at 6:44 PM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 10:05 PM ^
I was responding to comments on what RR should have done back in '09.
I have no problem with how Hoke has handled the situation, or at least what I know about it. I've never been comfortable with RR's lack of visible response at the time, as respects both Gibbons and Lewan.
January 31st, 2014 at 10:15 PM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 4:00 PM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 4:18 PM ^
If a police officer is accused of a crime and is place on adminastrative leave while the accusation is being investigated - is that "assuming guilty before proved innocent"?
January 31st, 2014 at 4:29 PM ^
PAID administrative leave.
Even Major Malik Hassan, the guy who committed the workplace violence at Ft. Hood, continued to collect his considerable monthly pay until the day he was convicted of murder almost four years later.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:59 PM ^
the accused player could still remain on scholarship (paid) until the issue is resolved...or transfer.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:05 PM ^
I'm less interested in the "family matter" issue than in what the standard is for booting players off of the squad. And this goes back, as some of the smoke begins to clear now, to RR. If the washtenaw blog is right then there was plenty of evidence of serious wrong-doing on Gibbons's part, possibly on Lewan's, too. People can and should debate this, but I (speaking personally) want a higher standard for the football team than "he not a convicted criminal." And I think it can be argued that when serious charges are lodged against a player and there is some strong indication of wrongdoing they should be suspended until the issue is settled. It's worth repeating that Michigan won games because these two guys were on the squad.
Yep. It's really bad that those two guys played in 2013 and one was named a captain. Jesus.
This will become clearer to more people as the days go on.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:37 PM ^
Being a division 1 scholarship athlete is a privilege, playing for Michigan is a privilege and these kids should be held to a higher standard than just "well, he's wasn't charged by the police so it must be ok."
If you read through the stuff that was leaking out onto the internet and the police reports then it becomes rather difficult to defend the behavior of Gibbons & Lewan. At the very least, these guys should have been suspended from the team indefinitely until the situation was cleared up. And the University should have promptly investigated then and settled this stuff years ago.
The fact that the case was delayed/ignored until right about the time these athletes finished their eligibility is very embarrassing and reeks of a coverup whether intentional or not.
Gibbons better hope that he never runs into a "Girl w/Dragon Tattoo" vigilante type...or he'll be wishing he was in jail. (And oddly enough, that actress is from families that own two NFL teams.)
It's not going to be pretty but I think Michigan needs to get some heavy blowback from this case.
February 1st, 2014 at 9:28 AM ^
"BLONDES>BRUNETTES?: Since Michigan redshirt sophomore kicker Brendan Gibbons finished an impressive season (13-for-17 on field goals) by hitting a game-winning 37-yard field goal in overtime to defeat Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl, there’s been a lot of talk about brunettes.
After the game on Tuesday, Gibbons said that before the kick, he simply envisioned brunette girls and it helped him relax. He said it was a strategy that Hoke suggested to him.
On Thursday, Hoke gave his side of the story.
At the end of practice each Thursday, Hoke has Gibbons line up for a kick. Usually, Hoke calls a couple timeouts to ice the kicker.
The first time Gibbons lined up for the kick with Hoke at the helm, Hoke pulled him aside during the time out.
“What makes ya happy?” Hoke asked him.
“Well, I like the sand, the water and pretty girls.”
“Pretty blondes?”
“No, brunettes.”
And, according to Hoke, “That’s the end of the story.”
http://www.michigandaily.com/sports/notebook-stonum-ticketed-hoke-expla…
January 31st, 2014 at 3:28 PM ^
The University's investigation concluded that he committed crimes (maybe not rape, but crimes nonetheless) but the police/prosecutors aren't pressing charges. LOL law enforcement. What a joke.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:32 PM ^
maybe its because the two bodies exercise different burdens of proof? The law obviously deeming not enough evidence to argue against a 'he said, she said' argument. Nobody knows what happened that night except Gibbons and the girl, and potentially, alcohol may have effected even that understanding...murky waters
January 31st, 2014 at 4:37 PM ^
I'd bet a dollar or a donut that there are different evidentiary standards at play. Furthermore, I believe the UM board can look at both violations of law and violations of codes of conduct. So to coldnjl's point, it's not apples to apples. It's more like apples to chainsaws. As it should be, it's easier to get expelled than convicted for bad behavior.
On the "nobody knows" point, I think that's right. But while false accusations do occur, experience has taught me that it is much more common that the accusations are sincerely made, but many cases aren't brought to trial because (i) the burden of proof is high, and (ii) victims get weary of reliving the experience, especially through the lens of the press and aggressive defense lawyers. The bottom line is that a rape case is a difficult one to prosecute.
January 31st, 2014 at 6:26 PM ^
Further, it appears that the reason UM found against Gibbons in 2013, but didn't in 2009 is because the burden of proof was "clear and convincing" in 2009 before being reduced to a "preponderance" in 2011 or 2013. (The US Dept. of Education required the different standard in 2011. It's unknown to me what was happening in the interim).
If the University didn't think there was sufficient proof to meet the clear and convincing standard I don't know why a lawyer would think that means the prosecutor should have tried to convict someone under the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
January 31st, 2014 at 9:14 PM ^
January 31st, 2014 at 6:41 PM ^
The University can sanction a student for an act that is “so severe as to create a hostile, offensive or abusive environment,” Creating an offensive or abusive environment isn't a crime.
January 31st, 2014 at 8:19 PM ^
bruises, vaginal tearing, and Gibbons's semen. I know that this is a football board, and you don't expect the most enlightened crowd here. But 'm hoping that people here are writing in ignorance of the actual case; otherwise. . . scary.
January 31st, 2014 at 6:00 PM ^
Prosecuting a CSC case without a witness is almost impossible, unfortunately.
Edited to change abbreviation for Andrew! See below...
January 31st, 2014 at 3:34 PM ^
LOL your lack of knowledge about law.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:45 PM ^
FWIW I'm pretty sure Cooper Lilly has a pretty keen understanding of the law (what with him being an attorney and all that) but my guess would be he disagrees with the outcome of the police investigation.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:55 PM ^
difference between the two investigations? That would be enough for me to cast a sideways glance. Perhaps he sees that and is just here pushing a personal agenda?
February 5th, 2014 at 3:37 PM ^
You got it right. I've got a problem with the way rape/sexual assault allegations are treated. I could bore you with my opinion but I chose to simply make an obnoxious emotional statement and leave it at that.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:58 PM ^
If that's really the case, he should probably take his CLE seriously this year and do some brushing-up.