How a 'clerical error' uncovered a coaching scandal at Texas Techby Daniel Libit"Almost exactly one year ago, I emailed a public records request to Texas Tech University seeking 'all documentary materials related to 2018-2019 student athlete exit interviews.'
On Wednesday, that request materialized in a joint investigation story published in USA TODAY, which discovered myriad allegations of psychological torment wrought by head coach Marlene Stollings; inappropriate touching and sexual harassment by her hand-picked basketball trainer; and a potentially dangerous system of coerced overexertion, involving heart-rate monitors, which one former player described as, 'basically like a torture mechanism.'
What distinguishes this particular story from the ever-growing list of athlete-abuse claims made against college coaches, is how they have been so thoroughly documented by Texas Tech and yet, thus far, to little evident effect.
For at least the last two seasons, Stollings has carried forth as head coach, pocketing over $700,000 in annual salary, despite
the school maintaining a lengthening paper trail of alarming and widely-shared expressions of misery from numerous players on her team.
And yet, if not for what Texas Tech's in-house lawyers would later describe as a "clerical error," it very well might not have come to light.
... I eventually made a records request for documents from the previous year's exit interviews and encountered an absolute bonanza. ... As it came to pass,
Texas Tech attempted to file its denial brief about my request on July 11, 2019 the 15th business day after I had emailed it but
accidentally uploaded the wrong document into the public records electronic filing system. The school evidently was not aware of this error for two more months when, on Sept. 9, it received notice from the AG's Office that it had failed to comply with the procedural requirements for an appeal and was therefore required to turn over the documents to me, posthaste.
... What if Texas Tech hadn't played the public records delay game in the first place?
What if they had handed over the documents last summer, and the reporting commenced six months earlier? How much alleged suffering could have been mitigated?
In describing their experiences, some of the athletes expressed guilt for not blowing the whistle earlier and louder.
:"I've seen people on Twitter commit and it makes me sick to my stomach," one player said. "It's like when you boil a frog, and you're like, 'This isn't so bad. Then it gets worse and worse.' And then you're dead."
Read the entire 6 Aug 2020 articlehttps://extrapoints.substack.com/p/how-a-clerical-error-uncovered-a