Farfromgeneva wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 10:14 am
Actually WG just hit google and here is one piece from a higher ed type web site. I learned about it from the BOT a couple of years later as I came in 96 but had a lot of exposure to presidents and BOTs through through my student govt efforts and football where a Teammate nearly put the lacrosse players face through urinal because said lacrosse player who has beat up the football players girlfriend and wanted the Morton treatment (FB player was thrown out) and I knew both as a Fr.
BTW, never said the reinstatement was all BJ. And “late night brawl” was dragging a kid they had a beef w from HS out of a car and did him like Reginald Denny.
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A Controversial Reinstatement
Professors at Hobart and William Smith criticize return of star lacrosse player
By Douglas Lederman
MAY 25, 1994
A star lacrosse player at Hobart and William Smith Colleges is back in action -- a cause for celebration for him and his fans, a bone of contention for many faculty members.
The professors are miffed that Hobart’s dean, Richard Guarasci, overruled a faculty-student panel and cut short the suspension of Cabell Maddux, who earned all-America status last year as the top scorer on Hobart’s most celebrated and successful team.
In November, the colleges’ Committee on Standards barred Mr. Maddux from Hobart for the rest of the academic year for his role in a late-night brawl. But when the panel unanimously rejected the athlete’s appeal for reinstatement in March, Mr. Guarasci stepped in and let him return to class. Late last month, the dean went a step further and put Mr. Maddux back on the men’s lacrosse team, 9 games into an 11-game season and two weeks before the start of the national playoffs.
Mr. Guarasci said Mr. Maddux had proved -- through weeks of community service, hours of counseling, and a newfound religious fervor -- that he could be a good citizen at Hobart and William Smith. Keeping Mr. Maddux off the team any longer, Mr. Guarasci argued, would have unfairly punished him for being an athlete, since the colleges rarely bar students from extracurricular activities.
“The decision came down to whether or not it was ethical to continue to deny a student full participation rights just because he’s a visible athlete,” Mr. Guarasci said in an interview. “If he was in the choir or on the newspaper, we probably would not be having this conversation.”
Mr. Guarasci also said he believed that one of the faculty members on the committee had a “bias” against Mr. Maddux because he was an athlete.
That galled many professors, who believe that Mr. Guarasci erred in reinstating Mr. Maddux and that, if anything, the athlete’s value to the championship lacrosse team has worked for him, not against him.
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“It amazes me that he would try to deflect responsibility for his actions in that way,” Tom Glover, a biology professor, said of the dean. Mr. Glover quit the Committee on Standards, in part over Mr. Maddux’s reinstatement.
He and others noted that Mr. Guarasci almost never overrules the committee’s decisions, and said that his atypical intervention on Mr. Maddux’s behalf undermined the faculty-governance system and the panel’s intended message: that violence will not be tolerated.
“This kind of decision collides with the climate of academic seriousness that we want on this campus,” said Craig A. Rimmerman, associate professor and chairman of the political science department. “It undercuts that climate by appearing to emphasize the primacy of athletics and ignoring the faculty governance structure.”
As a star of Hobart and William Smith’s most visible team -- which will become even more visible next year when it moves to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I -- Mr. Maddux is a Big Man on Campus. But the senior is known almost as much for his cocksure attitude and his self-described “stupid” behavior off the field as for his flashy exploits on it.
He had never faced formal disciplinary action, however, until last fall. Late one night in October, he and several fraternity brothers were returning from a party when they got into a fight with another group of students. Two of Mr. Maddux’s friends did most of the fighting, but as the scuffle ebbed, he intervened and further bullied one of the students, who filed charges against Mr. Maddux and two friends.
The three were arrested and charged with third-degree assault. Mr. Maddux pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct; he was fined and sentenced to 120 hours of local community service.
The colleges also took action. After a hearing, the Committee on Standards, which includes three professors and one student, voted to suspend Mr. Maddux and another student for the rest of the year. The panel let the students finish the fall term, which had one week left.
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Mr. Guarasci fully supported the suspension. Members of the panel said he had told them at the hearing that Mr. Maddux would never again play Hobart lacrosse.
But Mr. Maddux said the dean had told him soon after the hearing that he had a “slim, slim chance” to be reinstated early. That hope motivated him, he said.
In January he worked in Florida for three and a half weeks for Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit group that builds houses in poor communities. He said the experience gave him a new appreciation for religion and for the problems of others. In February he spent three weeks in the Texas desert on an adventure-travel program, time he used to “reflect on myself and figure out who I wanted to become.”
In March, Mr. Maddux and the other student with whom he was suspended appealed their penalties to the Committee on Standards.
After a hearing, the panel’s four members unanimously rejected reinstatement. Three administrators who work with the committee also opposed the students’ return.
“If the college has a policy that says one year off is what makes a difference, this young man should also have been off for a year,” said Cindy Sutton, a professor of education and a member of the panel. “My concern is equal justice, and equal application of justice.”
Mr. Guarasci attended the committee’s hearing on Mr. Maddux’s case, which he admitted was unusual. He gave the case special attention, he said, because of its high visibility and because he felt that “with at least one member of the committee, there was strong bias against the individual.” (Mr. Guarasci did not identify that person, but Mr. Glover said that Mr. Guarasci had accused him of bias.)
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“I don’t think the committee listened to him at all,” Mr. Guarasci said of Mr. Maddux.
Mr. Glover, who attended Ohio State University on a basketball scholarship, called Mr. Guarasci’s charge of bias “annoying.” Joseph M. Berta, a music professor who is the panel’s chairman, said he was “disappointed” at the dean’s suggestion. He said the committee had based its decision “on the facts.”
Mr. Guarasci looked at those facts and drew a starkly different conclusion. Citing Mr. Maddux’s community service and supportive letters from people who had worked with him during his suspension, Mr. Guarasci said he had concluded that the colleges would help Mr. Maddux more by bringing him back than by keeping him out.
Mr. Guarasci ruled in March that Mr. Maddux and the other student could return to class, but that Mr. Maddux could not play lacrosse.
Mr. Maddux called that decision “bittersweet,” but said he continued to hope to resume playing. When he returned to the campus, he tutored local schoolchildren, began a chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and helped plan a campus public-service day.
Last month Mr. Guarasci allowed Mr. Maddux to rejoin the team. He said he believed that Mr. Maddux had “worked hard to right himself,” and that the athlete had had a “horrible punishment,” missing most of his senior season and blowing a chance to be the Division III player of the year.
Mr. Guarasci also said that given the faculty opinion against Mr. Maddux’s reinstatement, he had made the more difficult choice.
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“By keeping him off, we would have been telling him that the adult world makes its decisions based on what’s politically convenient rather than on what’s educationally sound and morally right.”
He added: “It’s called parole. You try to rehabilitate young people. When they do make progress, you try to reward them for it.”
Many faculty members are baffled by the wide disparity between the committee’s unanimous opinion and the dean’s ruling. Most of them say they would like the dean to explain more clearly and convincingly why he did what he did.
Until they get that explanation, some professors said they had concluded that Mr. Maddux’s athletic skill was a factor in Mr. Guarasci’s decision. Such suspicions arise, in part, because the faculty is still split over the colleges’ decision to upgrade the lacrosse program to Division I next year, a move pressed by Mr. Guarasci.
Mr. Maddux has bolstered the team since he returned. He scored nine goals in the final two regular-season games, and added six more in an opening-round playoff game.
Mr. Guarasci said he had felt no pressure from coaches, alumni, or fans to reinstate Mr. Maddux. Most faculty members believe him when he says that athletics played no role in the decision.
That’s the dilemma for people like Don L. Woodrow, a professor of geology: He trusts the committee members, too.
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“When they tell me things, I believe them. But when the dean says something, I believe him, too,” said Mr. Woodrow. “We are left with this terrible blade edge on which to stand. How you get off that, I don’t know.”
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