Team Player, Part 2

Before reading further, please check out Part 1 of this report.

On December 7, 2012, a Florida State University (FSU) student reported to Tallahassee police that she was raped the night before by an unknown assailant after an evening of drinking. The alleged rapist turned out to be FSU's star quarterback Jameis Winston, who claimed that the sex was consensual. The charges were ultimately dropped for lack of evidence. FSU went on to win the NCAA's national football championship, and Winston won the Heisman trophy as the best college football player of the year. An April 16 investgation by Walt Bogdanich of the New York Times sheds further light on this incident.

Jameis Winston (©CBS Sports)

When the young woman reported to police, she had recent bruises and semen was found on her underwear. Detective Scott Angulo was put in charge of the case, but apparently there was almost no investigation. He failed to pursue obvious leads that would have easily identified the suspect and revealed that one of two teammates who witnessed the encounter, Chris Cashner, had videotaped the event. (In this age of cell phones, apparently some students like to film one another having sex.)

On January 10, 2013, Angulo got a huge break when the victim identified her assailant by name after seeing him on campus. Even then, he waited two weeks before taking the unusual step of calling Winston on the phone to request an interview. Not surprisingly, Winston lawyered up and never did speak to the police. The police finally interviewed his two teammates (who supported his claim of innocence) on November 14, almost a full year after the fact, but by that time, the tape had been erased. They also took a DNA sample from Winston, which matched that found on the accuser's clothing. On December 5, prosecutor William Meggs dropped the charges due to lack of evidence. He acknowledged that there had been deficiencies in the investigation, saying, “They just missed all the basic fundamental stuff that you are supposed to do.”

Meanwhile, FSU appears to have violated federal law by conducting no official investigation of the incident. Telephone records show that the university was aware of the charges against Winston on January 13, 2013, when an assistant athletic director called the police to ask about the progress of the investigation. Title IX of the Equal Opportunity in Education Act requires that when a university knows about a case of student on student harrassment—obviously including alleged rape—it “must promptly investigate to determine what occurred, and then take appropriate steps to resolve the situation.” FSU refuses to discuss the case citing privacy concerns, but whatever they did (if anything) did not interfere with their successful football season.

A strange presence lurking behind the scenes is the Seminole Boosters, a nonprofit organization with $150 million in assets that finances FSU varsity athletics. Bogdanich makes two interesting points. First, Detective Angulo had done private security work for the Seminole Boosters prior to the investigation. Secondly, the Boosters paid about 25% of FSU President—now Penn State President—Eric Barron's $600,000 annual salary! (What does this tell us about his job responsibilities?)

There are obvious similarities between this incident and recent events at Penn State. Former President Graham Spanier, Coach Joe Paterno, and administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz are accused of covering up child molestation charges against Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky for several years. Since then, elections to the Penn State Board of Trustees have pitted candidates representing Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship (PS4RS), who believe Paterno and his colleagues did nothing wrong, against candidates who accept the Freeh Report and NCAA sanctions against the university and want to move on. So far, four of six PS4SR candidates have been elected. Another round of Board of Trustees elections ends on May 8.

Penn State football fans can apparently take comfort in the fact that President-Elect Barron, in a situation with echoes of the Sandusky scandal, showed a similar reluctance to pursue charges against an important member of the football program.

Yesterday's paper reports that Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) intends to conduct hearings on college sexual assault policies, and will invite victims, administrators and university presidents to testify. She specifically mentioned the Winston case in her remarks. The U. S. Department of Education is reviewing FSU's handling of the incident. We can only hope that President Barron will receive an invitation to this party to share his perspective with the Senators.

You may also be interested in reading:

Team Player, Part 1

Freeh at Last

Who Pays?

Climate of Mistrust

Team Player, Part 1

Two months ago, Dr. Eric Barron, President of Florida State University (FSU), was appointed President of Penn State effective May 12. It seemed an odd choice, since FSU has a mediocre academic reputation and its integrity is tainted by two recent scandals. However, FSU won the NCAA National Football Championship last year, which may suggest what Penn State's #1 priority actually is. New information has recently emerged that raises troubling questions about the university Dr. Barron has spent the last four years governing.

FSU drew the attention of the academic community in 2011, when the Tampa Bay Times revealed that multibillionaire and conservative activist Charles Koch, through the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, had made a $1.5 million donation to the FSU Economics Department in 2008 to be used to hire new faculty for a program promoting “free enterprise.” In exchange, the Foundation's representatives participated in the screening process and were given veto power over new hires for the program. Under this agreement, Koch rejected 60% of the applicants suggested by the faculty, and two new faculty members approved by Koch were hired. When the the agreement become public, it was rejected by the FSU University Senate, but university senates have no power.

Dr. Barron came to FSU in 2010. He responded to the Times story and the Senate's objections by renegotiating the agreement in a way that leaves its consequences largely unchanged. Koch's representatives no longer participate in the screening process, but the Foundation is permitted to withdraw its funding if it objects to the faculty's choices. Since this would leave FSU on the hook for their salaries, it gives them an obvious incentive to hire candidates acceptable to Koch.

It would be naïve to think that academic scholarship is unaffected by political considerations. Government and corporate grants often determine what research topics are investigated and have been shown to exert a subtle influence on research results. The Koch Foundation gives approximately $80 million per year to about 150 universities (including Penn State). However, the FSU arrangement is a particularly egregious violation of the norms of academic freedom. Economics is a highly polarized discipline with clear differences between mainstream and conservative economists. The FSU donation seems to suggest that members of the corporate class can use donations to buy their own version of economic “knowledge.” It's not surprising that they would try to do this, but disappointing that a state-owned university would allow it to happen.

The Koch-FSU controversy takes on an additional twist given that Dr. Barron is a climate scientist, while the Koch brothers, deeply involved in oil and gas production, have used their wealth to secretly promote climate change denial. The FSU Economics Department uses an introductory textbook, Economics: Private and Public Choices, by James W. Gwartney, et al. Dr. Gwartney is an FSU faculty member, and two of his three co-authors were formerly affiliated with the university. Dr. Yoram Bauman, an economist with the Sightline Institute, has given the textbook a failing grade for misrepresenting the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other climate research. It is rated second worst on this issue of 18 popular introductory economics texts.

No one is accusing Dr. Barron of being a climate change denier. Between 1986 and 2006, while he was director of the Earth System Science Center and later Dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State, he recruited Drs. Richard Alley and Michael Mann, two distinguished climate scientists. Dr. Barron's views of climate science can be heard about 21 minutes into this interview. He appears to be a climate moderate concerned with predicting the future effects of climate change but emphasizing the scientific uncertainty about what these effects will be.

When Dr. Barron reports to State College for work next month, one of his first orders of business should be to explain how he intends to ensure that the Koch Foundation's Penn State donations do not influence research and teaching at the university.

In Part 2: The Jameis Winston case.

You may also be interested in reading:

Freeh at Last

Who Pays?

Climate of Mistrust