Mike rice abused player, A key member of the executive search committee that selected embattled Julie Hermann to be Rutgers’ next athletic director says she fully expects Hermann — who is scheduled to visit the New Brunswick campus later this week — to take over the position on June 17.
“I think she is an excellent choice,” Candy Straight, who serves on both Rutgers’ Board of Governors and Board of Trustees, said Monday. “I supported the decision to hire Julie. She has my full support today. I look forward to her joining the Rutgers family.”
Straight said she had not been aware of allegations that Hermann physically and verbally abused students when she was the Tennessee women’s volleyball coach in the 1990s until after they were reported by the Newark Star-Ledger following Hermann’s hiring.
“At the time we hired her, and I was on the search committee, I was unaware of the student allegations from the volleyball team. I was made aware of them when The Star-Ledger broke the story,” Straight said. “Since that time, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to Julie and ask her hard questions about that situation. After talking with her, I am very comfortable with her answers, and the situation.
“I’m very comfortable with the due diligence that was done by Rutgers and me personally, after this story broke, and I see no reason that that should disqualify Julie,” Straight added. “In my mind, given the experiences that she has had, she said it was a difficult experience for her. She’s learned from it.”
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany attended Monday’s press conference at Yankee Stadium announcing an eight-year partnership between the Pinstripe Bowl and the Big Ten and was asked about the drama unfolding at Rutgers over Hermann’s hiring. Rutgers will join the Big Ten for the 2014 football season.
The issues at Rutgers are essentially local decisions. If I was asked what my opinion was, I would give it to them,” Delany said. “But it would be a private conversation.”
While he acknowledged that circumstances at Rutgers were “uneven” at the moment, he said he thought things “will calm down.
“It’s a great institution,” he said. “I fully recognize it’s a story. It’s appropriate for me to stay above the fray at this point.”
Delany and Hermann are scheduled to be at Rutgers on Thursday and are expected to talk about the university’s impending entry to the Big Ten.
New Jersey Assemblyman John F. McKeon said the meeting is bound to be awkward and that the Hermann scandal has already damaged the school’s standing with the Big Ten.
“How can it not hurt?” he asked.
Straight said the executive search firm that screened Hermann had made her aware of discrimination lawsuits stemming from Hermann’s management decisions during her years at Tennessee and Louisville.
“I’m fully comfortable with the information that we received and I am today, too,” she said.
But one New Jersey lawmaker said Hermann is already so tainted that it will be difficult for her to actually assume the AD job later this month.
“The whole thing is so awkward,” said Assemblyman John Burzichelli. “She arrives here so compromised. We’re not talking about a high school athletic director. She has to manage a big budget and raise a lot of money. She has to have the confidence of a lot of important people.
“I don’t know how she can fit in after being so compromised,” Burzichelli said. “The press has done a better job vetting her than the executive search firm they hired.”
Hermann, who spent the last 15 years as a senior associate AD at the University of Louisville, was hired for the Rutgers post after former athletic director Tim Pernetti resigned under fire. Pernetti took heat for failing to fire men’s basketball coach Mike Rice after seeing video in which the coach physically and verbally abused his players.
McKeon and a major Rutgers donor, meanwhile, ripped the university’s general counsel for an op-ed piece that compared Hermann to President Clinton and attacked the credibility of Tennessee volleyball players who claim Hermann was verbally and physically abusive.
“Did he really compare Julie Hermann to President Clinton? Is he really questioning the integrity and veracity of her former student-athletes?” asked real estate developer Steven Plofker, a donor who serves on the board of the Rutgers University Foundation.
“If the university administration insists on Ms. Hermann assuming her office, I hope in her upcoming visits that she will be forthcoming about incidents in her past and how she has been able to overcome any mistakes she has previously made,” Plofker added.
John Farmer Jr., the state’s former attorney general, wrote in Sunday’s Star-Ledger that some Americans had doubts about Clinton before the 1992 presidential election because the Democratic candidate had claimed he had tried marijuana but had never inhaled. Farmer also claimed that voters were wary of Clinton because he had “prevaricated about his enlistment and resignation from the National Guard.” (Clinton never actually served in the military; Farmer may be confusing him with President George W. Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard.)
Clinton went on to become one of the nation’s most popular and effective Presidents in recent history, Farmer said, and he suggested the scandal-stained Hermann will accomplish great things for Rutgers, too.
Farmer also claimed critics have embraced allegations that Hermann physically and verbally abused athletes when she was the Tennessee women’s volleyball coach in the 1990s without concrete proof. “They have overlooked the proven tendency of memory and gossip to exaggerate events,” he wrote.
McKeon said it was clear that Hermann was not properly vetted for the athletic director job — and that Farmer, who got his job after former university general counsel John Wolf resigned in the wake of the Rice scandal — should understand the need for transparency.
“The school seems to be in a four-corner defense, stalling for time,” McKeon added. “To hope this goes away is not proper.”
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Mike rice abused player
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