Lou can you please give us a summary?

[jimmyNU]

Lou,

I feel like we are drowning in speculation. Can you please give this board a summary of the situation as you see it? You are as close to the sources as anyone I can ask.

Do you feel the witnesses are credible?
Do you believe that Fitz didn't know anything?
Are current players on record denying this?
What do you expect the administration to do next?
Do you expect more witnesses or evidence to emerge?

Thanks in advance.
Jim

 

[CappyNU]

Lou,

I feel like we are drowning in speculation. Can you please give this board a summary of the situation as you see it? You are as close to the sources as anyone I can ask.

Do you feel the witnesses are credible?
Do you believe that Fitz didn't know anything?
Are current players on record denying this?
What do you expect the administration to do next?
Do you expect more witnesses or evidence to emerge?

Thanks in advance.
Jim

Lou has written multiple columns with summaries of the situation, though they are likely for premium members only. More might be on his twitter account, I'm not sure.

 

[phatcat]

Lou is a professional journalist. He likely won't engage in speculation (like all of us)

 

[lou v]

Lou,

I feel like we are drowning in speculation. Can you please give this board a summary of the situation as you see it? You are as close to the sources as anyone I can ask.

Do you feel the witnesses are credible?
Do you believe that Fitz didn't know anything?
Are current players on record denying this?
What do you expect the administration to do next?
Do you expect more witnesses or evidence to emerge?

Thanks in advance.
Jim

This is what I published Sunday evening. It's a pretty good summary of where things stand -- though it will change quickly as time passes.

Northwestern hazing scandal continues to grow

What started as just a flicker, a two-week suspension for Pat Fitzgerald on Friday, has mushroomed into a wildfire.

northwestern.rivals.com

I'm not going to engage in speculation right now, but what I'd like to see the administration do next is release the report. Redact names, do what you have to do, but get it out there. There may be some damning things in there, but it's all going to come out anyway. Besides, the NU administration already looks ham-handed at best. It's a different cast, but, from a PR standpoint, this is looking a lot like Poliskygate -- and we all saw how that turned out.

 

[jimmyNU]

This is what I published Sunday evening. It's a pretty good summary of where things stand -- though it will change quickly as time passes.

Northwestern hazing scandal continues to grow

What started as just a flicker, a two-week suspension for Pat Fitzgerald on Friday, has mushroomed into a wildfire.

northwestern.rivals.com

I'm not going to engage in speculation right now, but what I'd like to see the administration do next is release the report. Redact names, do what you have to do, but get it out there. There may be some damning things in there, but it's all going to come out anyway. Besides, the NU administration already looks ham-handed at best. It's a different cast, but, from a PR standpoint, this is looking a lot like Poliskygate -- and we all saw how that turned out.

Thanks, Lou.

 

[Sheffielder]

This is what I published Sunday evening. It's a pretty good summary of where things stand -- though it will change quickly as time passes.

Northwestern hazing scandal continues to grow

What started as just a flicker, a two-week suspension for Pat Fitzgerald on Friday, has mushroomed into a wildfire.

northwestern.rivals.com

I'm not going to engage in speculation right now, but what I'd like to see the administration do next is release the report. Redact names, do what you have to do, but get it out there. There may be some damning things in there, but it's all going to come out anyway. Besides, the NU administration already looks ham-handed at best. It's a different cast, but, from a PR standpoint, this is looking a lot like Poliskygate -- and we all saw how that turned out.

I doubt we'll ever see the report released, because I'm fairly confident it will raise the main question Schill & Co. don't want to answer: "you had all this information and you still only suspended him for two weeks?"

I'm basing this on the executive summary report which basically stated that the accusations were "largely supported by evidence."

I also suspect the report has some of the more lurid details of sexually charged hazing involving nudity and the kind of stuff that makes non-college football fans interested for all the wrong reasons - the kind of stuff that makes people get out their pitchforks and torches regardless of merit or culpability.

 

[lou v]

I doubt we'll ever see the report released, because I'm fairly confident it will raise the main question Schill & Co. don't want to answer: "you had all this information and you still only suspended him for two weeks?"

I'm basing this on the executive summary report which basically stated that the accusations were "largely supported by evidence."

I also suspect the report has some of the more lurid details of sexually charged hazing involving nudity and the kind of stuff that makes non-college football fans interested for all the wrong reasons - the kind of stuff that makes people get out their pitchforks and torches regardless of merit or culpability.

I don't know, Sheffielder. I think the question about Schill & Co. is already being asked, and the pitchforks are already out. If they put the report out there, at least they control the narrative and all the info gets out at once. As it stands now, the media is going to continue to uncover things, little by little, and every headline/tweet is going to touch off another feeding frenzy. It's kinda like death by a thousand cuts or death by guillotine. At least with the guillotine, it's over quickly.

 

[Sheffielder]

I don't know, Sheffielder. I think the question about Schill & Co. is already being asked, and the pitchforks are already out. If they put the report out there, at least they control the narrative and all the info gets out at once. As it stands now, the media is going to continue to uncover things, little by little, and every headline/tweet is going to touch off another feeding frenzy. It's kinda like death by a thousand cuts or death by guillotine. At least with the guillotine, it's over quickly.

@lou v don't start letting logic enter the conversation here

But in all sincerity, I think if there are gratuitous details in the report, it will never be made public because to the casual onlooker (which is the super majority), it will make Schill look even more negligent.

I hope I'm wrong about this.

 

[jimmyNU]

Michael Schill is in a real jam right now. He was already the new guy in the room going up against Fitz's status as an NU icon. It appears to basically everyone that the 2-week summer suspension was too light. However, Schill must realize by now how silly he will look if he extends the suspension by 6-8 weeks and then new evidence emerges.

We're talking about 150-200 kids who live and breath text messages and cell phone videos. If you are Michael Schill, do you want to bet the farm that there's nothing new about to surface?

 

[ETown Jim]

Lou is correct. It's to NU's benefit to get the report out. Crisis Management 101.

NU announced this on a Friday later afternoon. That is generally accepted as an attempt to bury the news. And they withheld information, though others outside the university had the same info (accurate or not...verified or not).

The pinnacle of stupidity.

And so NU by its incompetence turned a one day story into an ongoing, multi-day national scandal. (As Lou so tightly summarized)

It's older guys who in 2023 think they can pull off something this dumb. The fact that the Prez and AD are new indicates to me that they may have been malleable to outsized board influence on punishment and how to announce.

What to do?

The facts have not changed for Hickey's team. It is what it is. Get the report out there and consider announcing its release at (today) a press conference that Hickey conducts with the AD on the sideline and from her office. At this point, only Hickey should answer Q's. She's the only one with credibility. Let her characterize the accusations and, most importantly, explain why her team wasn't satisfied about the full breadth and depth of allegations.

And let her characterize her team's recommendations....why the independent observer in the locker room makes sense.

The very best that NU can do today is to let the report/Hickey clean up some of the mess/disinformation that the epically bad announcement triggered. Doing so could move this to the next, less sensational and less newsworthy phase.

 

[corbi296]

I doubt we'll ever see the report released, because I'm fairly confident it will raise the main question Schill & Co. don't want to answer: "you had all this information and you still only suspended him for two weeks?"

I'm basing this on the executive summary report which basically stated that the accusations were "largely supported by evidence."

I also suspect the report has some of the more lurid details of sexually charged hazing involving nudity and the kind of stuff that makes non-college football fans interested for all the wrong reasons - the kind of stuff that makes people get out their pitchforks and torches regardless of merit or culpability.

The point is that it is not clear what allegations were largely supported by evidence. The ones in the report? If so, what are they. Most people are assuming that the allegations referred to in the report match the allegations the accuser spoon fed the NU newspaper. I am not sure that assumption is valid.

 

[Sheffielder]

The point is that it is not clear what allegations were largely supported by evidence. The ones in the report? If so, what are they. Most people are assuming that the allegations referred to in the report match the allegations the accuser spoon fed the NU newspaper. I am not sure that assumption is valid.

I suspect the accuser provided the same narrative to both parties, but how they came out in writing probably look considerably different. I think the Daily looked at the photo, found one corroborating witness and that was enough to go to print without too much more scrutiny. I could see the investigator considering this statement and account against/alongside 48 other accounts before deciding what to actually write in the report.

But I also think we'll never know.

 

[AdamOnFirst]

This is what I published Sunday evening. It's a pretty good summary of where things stand -- though it will change quickly as time passes.

Northwestern hazing scandal continues to grow

What started as just a flicker, a two-week suspension for Pat Fitzgerald on Friday, has mushroomed into a wildfire.

northwestern.rivals.com

I'm not going to engage in speculation right now, but what I'd like to see the administration do next is release the report. Redact names, do what you have to do, but get it out there. There may be some damning things in there, but it's all going to come out anyway. Besides, the NU administration already looks ham-handed at best. It's a different cast, but, from a PR standpoint, this is looking a lot like Poliskygate -- and we all saw how that turned out.

Lou, this was a fantastic article and I hope you'll either periodically update it with new happenings (ie, here's the stuff from the last 48 hours) or write new ones from time to time. With all the seperate tweets coming out it'll be helpful.

 

[corbi296]

I suspect the accuser provided the same narrative to both parties, but how they came out in writing probably look considerably different. I think the Daily looked at the photo, found one corroborating witness and that was enough to go to print without too much more scrutiny. I could see the investigator considering this statement and account against/alongside 48 other accounts before deciding what to actually write in the report.

But I also think we'll never know.

That’s my point. The report said the allegations IN THE REPORT are substantiated by evidence. There is no reason to believe all the allegations made by the accuser were found credible and included in the report.

As far the NU newspaper reporting is concerned, I fear you may be giving them too much credit. I doubt all the accusations they have included in their report were corroborated by even one other source and they certainly did not bother investigating the perspective of other team members. A rush to judgment in order to be the first out with the story.