I fear for the entire university with this guy in charge. I can’t understand what the trustees can be thinking by retaining him. Schill’s defense of Gragg as relatively new, and his reference to Fitz as leader of a small entity, are just two of many red flags in this interview. I don’t know how he can be taken seriously with so many unserious answers that speak loudly with what they don’t say. Credit to the Daily for at least asking the necessary questions. The fact that he doesn’t even know if his AD will be speaking? Just shocking. The more he does and says the worse it gets. I can’t imagine what he’s saying here is true, that he changed his mind by reading a few anecdotes and taking to the aggrieved players. What was even the point of the report?
It just keeps getting worse
- Thread starter Medill '03
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The trustees are just as culpable as him. That's why he's staying, why Gragg isn't getting fired, etc. This failure goes up to the trustees. You want Schill and Gragg gone? Start with the entire board of trustees.
That’s what’s so scary. How is it possible that so many on the board fail to see the complete disaster this guy and Gragg are?
The future of Northwestern University is in the hands of very poor leadership.
Because the board is a bloated social club that selects for chumminess and not good decision making.
I like that he spent the Sunday after the suspension ‘reading and rereading’ the report. I like the idea that he hadn’t read it when the suspension was announced. (Presumably, he had, but can we be sure?)
I wish the reporters had specifically asked how much input Fitzgerald had into the initial suspension. Before the suspension was announced, had there been any discussion of a longer suspension because he *should* have known.
I’m embarrassed for him that the decade-old racism charge had any impact.
It’s almost shocking that he’s never considered answering questions publicly. Yeesh.
Reading between lines, I suspect the report itself was watered down and sanitized. The job of the investigators was to do the report because they said they’d do the report, just to keep it clean. Idiots.
Gragg, what a doof.
I wish the reporters had specifically asked how much input Fitzgerald had into the initial suspension. Before the suspension was announced, had there been any discussion of a longer suspension because he *should* have known.
I’m embarrassed for him that the decade-old racism charge had any impact.
It’s almost shocking that he’s never considered answering questions publicly. Yeesh.
Reading between lines, I suspect the report itself was watered down and sanitized. The job of the investigators was to do the report because they said they’d do the report, just to keep it clean. Idiots.
Gragg, what a doof.
Oh my gravy what a train wreck.
The Daily doesn’t ask about baseball, especially insofar as Gragg let donors run the Foster hiring and failed to do proper due diligence that would have avoided proven, substantiated accounts of abuse that happened again here. I guess we should have expected they would publish the unchallenged thoughts of one person.
Schill supports Gragg simply because some of the alleged malfeasance happened before him. He’s not responsible for whatever has happened while he’s been here?
Schill…….didn’t read the report before making decisions? Announcing decisions? Announcing changes to the decisions? Before reading news coverage of the decisions? Only then, two days later, did he read the report?
Schill on one hand says, “individual culpability and knowledge matters” but fires Fitz because “[h]e owns that culture, and when you own a culture, that means you should take whatever steps are prudent to make sure the culture is a good culture.” Yet, again, no anything re: Gragg.
Then, just a few minutes later, he says, “We don’t think it’s appropriate to sweep up everybody in an allegation unless we can somehow substantiate the allegation. In this case, so far, we haven’t been able to tie individuals.”
Just the tip of the iceberg. This is preposterous leadership. These guys need to go away.
The Daily doesn’t ask about baseball, especially insofar as Gragg let donors run the Foster hiring and failed to do proper due diligence that would have avoided proven, substantiated accounts of abuse that happened again here. I guess we should have expected they would publish the unchallenged thoughts of one person.
Schill supports Gragg simply because some of the alleged malfeasance happened before him. He’s not responsible for whatever has happened while he’s been here?
Schill…….didn’t read the report before making decisions? Announcing decisions? Announcing changes to the decisions? Before reading news coverage of the decisions? Only then, two days later, did he read the report?
Schill on one hand says, “individual culpability and knowledge matters” but fires Fitz because “[h]e owns that culture, and when you own a culture, that means you should take whatever steps are prudent to make sure the culture is a good culture.” Yet, again, no anything re: Gragg.
Then, just a few minutes later, he says, “We don’t think it’s appropriate to sweep up everybody in an allegation unless we can somehow substantiate the allegation. In this case, so far, we haven’t been able to tie individuals.”
Just the tip of the iceberg. This is preposterous leadership. These guys need to go away.
The Daily: Do you feel as though your job is in jeopardy, and do you have any plans to evaluate your position at the University?
Schill: Not in the slightest. I have been in communication with tons of members of the board, and the vast majority are supportive of my decision to terminate the coach. They know that it was the right thing, they know that it was the only moral decision that could be made at that time, and they’re fully supportive of me.
Schill: Not in the slightest. I have been in communication with tons of members of the board, and the vast majority are supportive of my decision to terminate the coach. They know that it was the right thing, they know that it was the only moral decision that could be made at that time, and they’re fully supportive of me.
They've been skating scot-free because they're not visible publicly, but the BOT are running this into the ground as much as Schill.
If the vast majority of the BOT are supportive of firing Fitz, then they must too be terminated. It’s one thing to fire Fitz for poor performance but to fire him like this? It’s the epitome of ineptitude. This president was a poor choice by the BOT therefore all of them must go.
Nothing groundbreaking to say here but...
1. It's fascinating to see a nerd like Schill in charge compared to a guy like Morty. But I also acknowledge Morty, Phillips, and Fitz were perhaps too chummy to sort this out appropriately. Those three guys together would probably have this whole situation and the media under control, but I don't know if that truly makes me feel better to be honest.
2. I never realized the board had literally dozens of members. I am accustomed to seeing boards much smaller than this, and for good reason - too many people for any one of them to feel individually responsible for what's going on here - too easy for them to act with relative anonymity.
1. It's fascinating to see a nerd like Schill in charge compared to a guy like Morty. But I also acknowledge Morty, Phillips, and Fitz were perhaps too chummy to sort this out appropriately. Those three guys together would probably have this whole situation and the media under control, but I don't know if that truly makes me feel better to be honest.
2. I never realized the board had literally dozens of members. I am accustomed to seeing boards much smaller than this, and for good reason - too many people for any one of them to feel individually responsible for what's going on here - too easy for them to act with relative anonymity.
No it wasn’t.A SIX month investigation basically discarded in 48 hours.
Look, I think this all has been handled about as poorly as it could have been. But he met with the investigators and each player’s testimony after speaking with the whistleblower.
Maybe Gragg will finally speak next…
I recognized that I wanted to rethink it. I wanted to signal to the community that there was going to be something more in all likelihood. I spent Sunday reading and rereading the report. I also met with the executive committee of the Board of Trustees, and we discussed this.
In addition, on Monday morning, I met with the investigator and her associate, and what I did there was I asked them to provide me with details from the raw testimony of each person they spoke with. So we went person by person. I wanted to make the right decision with as much information as I could, and the report was a summary of the raw material.
But when you hear it, one by one, one instance of bad behavior after another, the magnitude of it hit me even more. I decided that the only choice, the only moral choice, was to terminate our relationship.
What is amazing is that your football and baseball coach got canned. Why does yhe softball coach still have a job, if what you guys have said about hazing in the softball program is true. Could it be , because it is a women’s sport and they are concerned about a title 9 backlash, they will do nothing. If that happens, then if I am Fitz, I sue Northwestern for reverse sexual discrimination.
Also, besides the scandal at MSU, Bob Knight at IU and PSU, no one has mentioned the sexual mistreatment of football players at Michigan, that has just been glossed over and Harbaugh lying to the NCAA and nothing happening. This should tell everyone that Meat chicken does not have to abode by any rules or laws. Was just surprised that no one on this board brought up Michigan.
Also, besides the scandal at MSU, Bob Knight at IU and PSU, no one has mentioned the sexual mistreatment of football players at Michigan, that has just been glossed over and Harbaugh lying to the NCAA and nothing happening. This should tell everyone that Meat chicken does not have to abode by any rules or laws. Was just surprised that no one on this board brought up Michigan.
The thing is Rocky Wirtz is on the board. He of all people should have known how best to handle a scandal like this considering he had experience with the Kyle Beach incident.
Oh wait, never mind....
The only moral choice was to give Fitzgerald a chance to respond to the allegations.
How can this be true when it was *his* locker room, *his* culture, *his* promises to take care of their sons, *his* entire job?
Fitz did respond.
He responded “I never saw nothin’ and you can’t prove anything and gimme two weeks unpaid vacation and you know and I know that nobody cares enough about NU football to actually dig into what happened.”
Fitz would have a job if Fitz acted like a leader and took responsibility for his failings.
But the last time he willingly took responsibility for his failings is when he fired McCall two years too late.
(Also whenever he said “its on me” lololol)
Pointing thumbs instead of fingers may have had a different meaning in the context of hazing. (OK that was pretty sick) .
Someone suggested that there may not be any more firings, at all, as these folks are all present or future defendants, and they want everyone in the same leaky boat.
I am just amazed if we can fund a single person on this board that thinks Doctors Schill and Gragg are in the least bit competent. The BOT is supposed to comprised of intelligent people that protect the overall entity from this type of incompetence.
They are embarrassments whose failures of leadership and communication are, at this point, much bigger threats to NU as an institution than the original allegations and the decision to terminate Fitz.
We will see what application volume, admission rates, matriculation rates, and donation figures look like next year. Those metrics will tell a story one way or another. Forget about the litigation costs and liability.
At the beginning of this mess, Fitz got suspended.
The next day the Daily Northwestern ran what seemed to me to be a dangerous set of accusations that it had no time to corroborate.
Then there was a big show of outrage.
One day later Schill said he needed to reconsider.
Immediately some female member of the Board of Trustees put out a public congratulations to the school newspaper for running the allegations as quickly as possible.
If you are on the Board of Trustees, this just reeks of bias. You cannot do that. It is totally unethical. And yet this unethical person still sits on the board.
Alarms started going off in my head that Schill was going to fire Fitzgerald.
I now believe that one or more member of the Board of Trustees told the Daily Northwestern what Richardson's allegations were - or did whatever it could to swiftly get those allegations published - in a blatant breach of responsibility to the university.
Anyone who has ever been part of a decision making body this big...you know how the conversation can become so diluted that guys like Schill and Gragg get and keep their jobs.
Solid conspiracy theory.
A Medill graduate and NU trustee, Christine Brennan, congratulated the student journalists for getting the story where nobody else did.
Congrats also came in from several other non-NU affiliated journalists and media types.
One of the Daily reporters appeared on ESPN as a result of the story.
Their reporting led national news for a few days. That’s quite an achievement for a journalist who is ~20 years old.
The alarms should have gone off because NU had clearly sanitized the story for the purposes of trying to stupidly bury it on a Friday.
I'm not on the Daily's side here, but they had the accuser and at least one other former player/witness corroborating.
Kidding aside - I don't know what the threshold is for the media to "fact check" but two firsthand eyewitnesses by confirmed players with one furnishing a supporting photo as evidence seems like enough to go to print. There's no Board conspiracy here. They surely wanted this to be no problem at all and Fitz to be getting ready for B1G Media Days answering how he was going to turn around the 1-11 embarrassment that was 2022.
And although I was not fond of Brennan's public pandering to the Daily...they did break a news story that drew the attention of the national sports media (who were clearly not investigating) and compelled the university president to actually do his job (thoroughly think through a problem concerning the highest paid university employee). I would agree with anyone they spent the proverbial equivalent of "found money" here - a compelling story fell into their lap with all the pieces ready to go, and they rolled. Not exactly hard-nosed investigative journalism - just a willingness to publish.
You go to print with a story like this with the accuser’s account and another player from several years back who relays a similar hazing experience? No vetting of the source to understand if he has an underlying agenda that may be skewing his account? No attempts to speak with a handful of the accuser’s current teammates to corroborate his account? Come on! That was shoddy, gossip column journalism and I use the term “journalism” loosely. There is no way they had properly investigated and corroborated the story in one day. This was all about being first, and much less about getting it right. Woodward and Bernstein they are not.
Why couldn't the Daily take a little more time to get both sides of the story? What is such impressive journalism about hearing one individual's allegations and then publishing them uncritically?
Well that would align with the possibility that they had the story all along, courtesy of a someone with an agenda and access to information. The students were, of course, on summer break.
Yeah this interview sounds like an arrogant, immature person who is basically just playing at the job of being a university president.
And I feel like we glossed over how in order to try to get his message / version of events out, he decides that he's going to take the next step of... doing a sitdown Q&A with the effing student newspaper?? Real hard hitting stuff, you are so courageous Schill. Not an actual press conference with real reporters, no let's do an interview with some students who you literally are responsible for overseeing as your job, and who have proven to be unreliable and with limited sourcing / verification ethics throughout this process. Maybe next he'll get someone from the NUsports.com website that is paid for by the university and have them interview Gragg to get his take, that makes perfect sense and really will inspire trust and respect from the alumni base and media at large. That's how we'll turn the tide of public opinion, of course.
Anyone else thinking of the line Logan delivers in Succession: "I love you but... you are not serious people"
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If that’s the case, it should have been even more evident to them that they were being used by Richardson in his plot to get FItz fired. Maybe they went along willingly.
The Daily reached out to the university and the university declined to comment.
Former NU football player details hazing allegations
Content warning: This article contains mention of hazing, sexual assault and suicidal ideation. A former Northwestern University football player told The Daily some of the hazing conduct investigated by the university involved coerced sexual acts. A second player confirmed these details. The...
dailynorthwestern.com
“University spokesperson Jon Yates declined to comment on the specific details of the allegations.”
The University thought that their sanitized version of hazing would be the end of it. They stood behind their two-page, detail-less summary, even when contacted with specifics.
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What did they get wrong?
Has anyone affiliated with Northwestern football ever said, “There was no hazing at Northwestern?”
I know your feelings are still hurt because Fitz is gone, but that’s because of Fitz’s failings and the University’s failings.
The story told to The Daily was fundamentally the same that was told to the investigators. We know the locker room photo was in the investigation. We know the Shrek Clap was in the investigation.
When the public saw what the president and AD saw, the public was pretty outraged.
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