September 2014
As that nasty Queen
of Hearts said in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “No! No! Sentence
first – verdict afterwards!”
So it goes for the
men of the University of Ottawa’s varsity hockey team, suspended this week for
the entire 2014-15 season — before the police have decided whether any charges
will be laid and despite the fact that fully 21 of the players aren’t implicated
in the alleged incident of sexual misconduct at the heart of the matter and that
some of them, in fact, weren’t even in the city where the alleged offence may
have happened.
Amusingly, sitting
in for the King of Hearts (who in the Lewis Carroll story was the judge in the
trial of an alleged tarts thief) and presiding over the entire Ottawa schmozzle
is none other than university president Allan Rock, a lawyer who just happens to
be a former Liberal justice minister.
He announced
Wednesday that the suspension of the Gee-Gees hockey program, first imposed
March 3 after the university learned about an alleged incident in Thunder Bay
the month before, will continue this season and that the team’s coach, Réal
Paiement, has been “relieved of his duties.”
Like most of his
players, Mr. Paiement is not alleged to have been involved in the alleged
incident.
In fact, he
reportedly suspended a couple of players on his own initiative. His sin was in
failing to report to the university brass.
The incident —
Thunder Bay and Ottawa Police have completed their probe — apparently centres
around what happened after a lone player posted his contact information on a
hookup website while the Gee-Gees were in the northern city Jan. 30-Feb. 2 for
two games against Lakehead University.
A local woman
responded to the player and the two met for consensual sex.
But at some point,
allegedly, two other players arrived on the
scene: It is what may have happened
then, and whether that was consensual, that is at issue in the police
investigation.
Notably, the
alleged victim herself was not the original complainant; rather, it was a
friend, a so-called “third-party,” who first contacted the university in late
February.
Mr. Rock didn’t
respond personally to Postmedia questions Friday, but his spokesman, Patrick
Charette, the director of corporate communications for the university, did.
He clung
tenaciously to the fine distinction first made by Mr. Rock — that “we suspended
the program,” not the players, and that it was the “right thing to do, because
of the behaviour” or “serious misconduct” involved.
Asked for examples
of the misconduct, Mr. Charette twice mentioned “excessive drinking” and, when
pressed, “excessive dancing.”
Shortly after the
allegations came to light, the university hired an independent investigator,
Ottawa lawyer Steven Gaon, to probe them.
It’s his report
that led to the decision to suspend the program, and Mr. Charette confirmed in a
phone interview it will never be released publicly, ostensibly not to jeopardize
the now-complete police probe (police are consulting prosecutors, with a
decision expected soon) and out of concern for the players’ privacy.
All that has been
publicly released is a six-page report, done by two sports management experts.
It acknowledges that the university has “a very comprehensive student-athlete
orientation process” for varsity athletes.
“However,” the
authors wrote, “we identified that these policies are not all distributed in a
written format nor are they clearly articulated in a student-athlete handbook.”
They recommend better reporting guidelines for coaches, detailed “behavioural
guidelines” for athletes and the establishment of an ethics committee.
Mr.
Charette
also acknowledged
what
Mr. Rock
admitted earlier —
that “we understand that some players were not there [in Thunder Bay]” that
weekend, and that most aren’t suspected to have been involved in criminal
behaviour.
“We’re not the
police,” Mr. Charette said several times. Rather, “it’s the behaviour” which
concerns the university.
The impact on
innocent players has been real, Ottawa lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said in an
interview. He represents “eight or
nine” Gee-Gees players, all of whom co-operated in the investigations and who
are now considering a lawsuit.
“I’m representing
guys who were nowhere near the scene of the alleged incident,” he said, “who
have no first-hand knowledge.”
One is a young man
who attends the university on a hockey scholarship, Mr. Greenspon said, and
whose future is now in limbo. (Mr. Charette said the university will honour
those on hockey scholarships, just not the hockey part.)
Mr. Greenspon was
disdainful of the parsing done by Mr. Rock.
“That [sort of
hair-splitting] may fly in the House of Commons,” Mr. Greenspon sniffed, “but
it’s a little bit rich… the players are the program.”
At the very time
the allegations surfaced last February, the university was already in crisis
mode after a student union leader, Anne-Marie Roy, went public with a sexually
lewd Facebook conversation about her among five male students.
All quickly
apologized, and those who held positions with the union resigned, but the
revelations sparked much debate about how pervasive or not was “rape culture” on
campus. Mr. Rock met with Ms. Roy to offer his support and condemned “attitudes
about women and sexual aggression” that have “no place on campus or anywhere
else in Canadian society.”
It
was during
that
over-wrought time
that
the university first learned of the allegations involving the players
and suspended the team — er, program — indefinitely.
The immediate
impact was perhaps best described last March by a graduating player, Pat Burns,
who tried in vain to protest some of the immediate effects of the suspension.
He wrote an open
letter to Mr. Rock, after his hand-delivered plea for an appointment went
unanswered. Mr. Burns was
“un-invited” to the reception for graduating athletes and the annual athletic
banquet.
“…what about the
exoneration of those found to be innocent?” he asked in his letter, and those
damaged by “the university’s decision to suspend the entire program prior to any
investigation?”
It was his version
of what Alice told the Queen of Hearts, “Stuff and nonsense. The idea of having
the sentence first!”
“Off with her
head!” said Mr. Rock.
National Post,, June 27, 2014.
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