For the record, Portland has denied any harassment or discrimination and is claiming that Harris had a “bad attitude.” Penn State is now facing the threat of another lawsuit if this statement by Portland is not retracted:
Penn State claims that it is currently “investigating” the allegations and has refuse d to make any other statements.
The really unfortunate thing is that this may actually work to Penn State’s favor. Apparently there is a current trend for colleges to use homophobia as a recruiting tool.
Portland said Harris “did not meet the level of commitment I expect all players to have to this great program, which includes performance during games, performance during practices, physical conditioning and performance in the classroom.”
Doering called Portland’s statement “patently false” since Harris’ academic performance was above minimum NCAA requirements. Harris’ grade point average was about 3.0, according to the NCLR. The NCAA minimum is 2.0.
Portland’s statement is not patently false unless ALL the elements are false. That is, a player could be a star performer during games, a star performer during practices, and at peak physical condition, and still fail to meet classroom criteria. Or a player could meet classroom criteria and be in top physical condition and a peak performer during games, but fail to perform during practices. A failure on any single condition triggers the failing mark overall. Doering’s supposed rebuttal based solely on academic performance is meaningless.
That bit of illogic aside, I fail to see what the hell the problem is with lesbians playing ball. Is it contagious? Will other girls get the Gay?
She did not fail at any of the criteria. She succeedod on the court and in the classroom. Her decision to leave was her own. She was not cut and Coach Portaland did not make any of these sorts of statements until after the lawsuit was filed.
Plus, Portland is publicly on record as making statements about “not tolerating” lesbians, etc. It also seems that there are other players willing to back up Harris’ side of the story.
Harris “did not meet the level of commitment I expect all players to have to this great program, which includes performance during games, performance during practices, physical conditioning **and **performance in the classroom.”
The “and” in her statement means that each element must be true for the statement to be true. Harris’ GPA is prima facie evidence that her level of committment to the classroom was at an acceptable level. The last element of Portland’s statement is false thus the statement as a whole is false. The first 3 elements may be true (and its impossible to prove those 3 false) but the last one is false.
I know there’s nothing more aggravating than being accused of something that isn’t true. But I can’t help wishing the stock response to “Are you gay?” was “Mind your own business. Asshole.” But that’s not important now.
I hope Portland gets it in the shorts.
(And I hope I can restrain the urge to make a Witchsmeller Pursuivant joke.)
“A former Pennsylvania High School Player of the Year in 2003, Harris was third on Penn State in points, steals and assists last season as a sophomore. According to a biography included on the NCLR Web site, she was a 4-year member of the National Honor Society in high school and was a President’s Academic Award recipient with an eye toward a medical career.”
…refutes at least the first and third elements of the statement as well.
I was planning on pitting Penn State tonight. As a avid follower of women’s college basketball I’ve been following this for some time. Glad some one beat me to it.
I think the reason why Jen Harris has such a compelling and strong case is that she was such an outstanding player and student. Her 3.0 grade point was while majoring in pre-med. She played in every single game she was eligible for over her entire career at Penn State. She averaged over 10 points a game and would have been the only returning player to average over double digits in points. She started most of her sophomore season and played an average of 25 minutes per game. Hardly the statistics of a marginal player. As a matter of fact, by any measure she would have been the best player on the team this year.
If she HAD been at the end of the bench, then that old standby - “She was just unhappy over playing time” would have been trotted out. Something very hard to refute.
A very good summary of the entire situation can be found here:
http://boards.rebkell.net/viewforum.php?f=2
The reason all of Penn State needs to pitted, not just Rene (Which rhyms with meenie, btw) comes from the University response such as this one as described in
"University spokesman Bill Mahon told AP that Portland was free to comment as she saw fit. “To demand that we take an individual’s free speech away from them is wrong,” Mahon said Monday. “I’m sure it’s normal for anybody to respond when allegations are made against them in the front pages of newspapers.”
“There is no First Amendment right to make false and malicious allegations,” Karen Doering, Harris’ lawyer with the NCLA, told the Daily Collegian. “It doesn’t take a lot of investigation by the university to see that coach Portland’s statement contains false information.”
and this, fromthe women’s hoop blog
"Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon continues to insist that this whole thing appeared out of the blue. “Until less than a week ago, this wasn’t an issue,” he said.
Mahon added that the 1991 addition of sexual orientation to the school’s antidiscrimination policy had nothing to do with Portland. “I know newspapers have speculated [why the clause was added], but it’s all part of someone’s imagination,” he said. “We did it because we thought it was right.”
Mahon is either a liar or a complete moron. The former is more likely.
Just to recap the history:
Longman’s article on Portland was published on March 10, 1991. Protests began on campus immediately demanding action.
The Penn State Faculty Senate met on March 20 and voted 93-12 to add orientation to the antidiscrimination policy. The AP and the Philly Inquirer reported that the Senate’s debate included discussion of Portland’s policy and Longman’s article.
The Senate’s action was recommended by a policy committee chaired by math professor Donald Rung. After the Senate’s vote, Rung said: “It’s not clear what impact this would have on [Portland]. Clearly, all people need to be judged on their merits and not on some irrelevant issue.”
And here’s what Athletic Director Jim Tarman said after the policy was adopted: “Because of recent media attention, it is especially important that we make it clear beyond question that discrimination against any group is contrary to the mandate of this institution.”
The LEVEL OF COMMITMENT includes:
[ul]
[li]performance during games[/li][li]performance during practices[/li][li]physical conditioning **and **[/li][li]performance in the classroom[/li][/ul]
In order to meet the LEVEL OF COMMITMENT, Harris must meet every element. Proving she met only one of those items does not prove she met all of them.
And frankly it’s hard to imagine performing like that without the requisite physical conditioning.
So I’d expect that in order for the criticism to be true, there are either other unstated elements of the “Level of Commitment,” or she failed to perform acceptably during practice.
Minor point unrelated to discrimination issues: A 3.0 GPA is not likely to advance your prospects of a medical career. Unless you’ve got influential friends in the Dominican Republic.
If there was an issue with her practice habits it didn’t seem to affect her playing time or her game performance and Portland never said anything about it before Harris transferred.
Once again, Harris was the one who chose to leave Penn State. She was never benched or cut by Portland so Portland’s statement that Harris “failed to succeed” is completely disingenuous. Harris was succeeding just fine at both basketball and academics. She didn’t leave because she was forced to or because she wasn’t getting playing time. She claims she left only because of Portland’s harassment and apparently other players are willing to back her up.
It doesn’t make sense at this point to say that she leftbecause she had a bad attitude during practices (the only thing which isn’t demonstrably a success of the four items listed). That implies that the team or that Portland were involved in the decision. A successul, star player walked away from the team, not a bubble player or a back bencher and not somebody who had been disciplined or had playing time cut.
When you add in the additional factors that Portland is on record as publicly stating that she doesn’t want lesbians on her team and that her lawyers say they have other players willing to support Harris’ allegations then Occam starts to slice this story to ribbons.
From a logical standpoint, Portland is completely right. All she has to do is admit that putting up with homophobic comments and never thinking about leaving the program are additional elements to the level of commitment she expected.
Penn State coaches in general are having a rough year.
Pennsylvania newspapers sued the university to release Joe Paterno’s salary. The university is fighting this tooth and nail. Here is an article about that.
I think one of the underlying issues is that PSU thinks it’s entirely private and above any kind of scrutiny. It receives tax money from the state, and its employees are employed by the civil service and subject to state retirement, but they fight any attempts at transparency. According to them, their meetings aren’t subject to the state’s open-meeting law.
I’m willing to bet Portland honestly thought she could have this policy and no one would be the wiser.
Legally speaking PSU is a state institution isn’t this against the law, or something? I guess maybe it’s a grey area or it would have been brought up already, but typically public schools are not allowed to just carte blanche discriminate like this.
Or maybe Penn State University isn’t a public school. . . but I doubt that given the name of the institution.
If this was just an isolated incident I might say this is an argument between a player and a coach gone too far. Since there are so many others willing to support Harris’s side I’d say this coach probably is pretty discriminatory and sounds like a real pain in the ass to play for.
Of course, she does have a pretty good record, and in sports isn’t that all that really matters?
I just looked it up online, PSU is definitely a public school and is one of the land-grant institutions founded after the civil war.
I’m shocked that Joe Paterno’s salary is not public already. Sports Illustrated regularly publishes a list of the top 25 coaching salaries in divsion IA football. And there is always a little caveat about people like Larry Coker (University of Miami’s head football coach) who have “indeterminate” salaries because they work for private schools that do not have to report the salary of their football coaches. Just from that little blurb I read in SI every year I assumed public schools did have to reveal this information.