Keyser Soze said:
...This is a key paragraph from Shillinglaw:
"Pepper Hamilton concluded that a number of factors had contributed to the code of silence within football. Those factors included the absence of a full-time Title IX Coordinator prior to November 2014, unclear reporting procedures, and inadequate Title IX training for Athletics Department personnel. However, Pepper Hamilton also concluded that Coach Briles and McCaw knew that Judicial Affairs had jurisdiction for investigating sexual assaults. Indeed, on April 23, 2013 the very same day Coach Briles learned about the student-athlete's account of being gang raped he was forwarded a letter stating that Judicial Affairs had investigated and cleared another one of his players of sexual assault allegations."
This very paragraph that you cite as "key" to the issue, is in and of itself, exculpatory in nature. It takes the one incident that you and others like to use over and over again as "preuve extraordinaire," and provides 4 factors for Briles' failure to report, 3 of which are mitigating and exculpatory in nature, and 1 that is assumptory and negated by the other 3 factors.
It says quite plainly that there is:
1. No Title IX Coordinator,
2. Unclear reporting procedures, and
3. Inadequate training.
Then it tells you that despite these three things, Briles should have reported the incident to Judicial Affairs, since he knew they were responsible for handling sexual assault cases. The only problem with that is that common sense would indicate that the person who received the complaint first-hand would be responsible for filing the report with JA, not someone who received it as effective hearsay. Now, Title IX may require that he report it anyway, but if he wasn't trained to report a second-hand complaint, how in the world should he be expected to do so, when the person that heard the story first-hand is an employee of the institution as well?
Finally, it was PH that labeled the incident as a "sexual assault," which the BOR then turned into a "gang rape." It was not reported as such by the volleyball player (you can't even call her a "complainant" since she was not complaining about anything...not to the university, not to the police, not really even to her coach). She simply was providing her coach with a reason for her impending transfer. Further, any report would at that point have been moot for several reasons:
1, The time period for investigating the incident had long passed,
2. The player had already withdrawn from school and was leaving the very next day, and
3. The players involved had already left the university, with the exception of one, who was already suspended and whose withdrawal from the university was imminent.
So you are basing Briles' guilt (and that of Barnes, McCaw and Hill) on the failure to properly report a complaint, which was not actually a complaint, that was beyond the investigation limitation, for a student who had already withdrawn from school, against other students who were effectively no longer students, by employees who were admittedly untrained in proper reporting protocol and Title IX guidance? Further, the only person who has been sworn to the oath, Barnes, stated that he talked to Judicial Affairs (not that he made a formal report) for advice and was told that unless his player wanted to participate in the process, there was nothing that could be done (a failure on the part of Judicial Affairs).
Can you not see the folly of this line of reasoning? If you want to say that Briles and his staff were derelict in their adherence to a proper structure of discipline under a code of conduct consistent with the university's overall mission, you likely have a valid point. But, at any time during the staff's tenure, did the university do anything to suggest that the football program was outside that mission? Did they ever establish any policy to promote adherence? It would seem from the evidence, that to the contrary, the administration and governors provided a tacit sanctioning of the program's methods, both through its own complicity and its failure to act.
