It’s 3 a.m. and your phone rings. Struggling to shake the crust from your eyes, you wonder who it could be. And then it smacks you like cold water to the face.
It’s your daughter.
You answer and hear crying on the other end. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to calm her down, you understand what the crying is about.
Your daughter tells you she was sexually assaulted. She also tells you this person is a football player.
Sadness comes first. How could someone do this to your daughter, the very picture of perfection in your eyes?
Then comes anger.
You want justice. You want this person to be held accountable for his actions. However, your daughter doesn’t want to take it to the police. She doesn’t want every graphic detail about one of the worst moments of her life to become public record.
Instead, she decides to take it to the school’s Title IX office, claiming that the assault violates the student code of conduct. And when it comes to Title IX investigations, every detail is kept private.
Good, you think. This guy will be dealt with appropriately.
Then it comes time for the hearing, which decides whether someone did, in fact, violate the student code of conduct.
The way these hearings usually work is by assembling a committee of trained students and faculty members who make the decision. However, if either the accuser or the accused doesn’t want this option, then the university is responsible for selecting a hearing officer to replace the committee. This can be a qualified professional within or outside the university.
Good, you think again. They’ll pick the best person for the job.
Then you find out a former athlete from the school who spends thousands of dollars every year to attend the school’s football games will decide whether the player who allegedly assaulted your daughter is guilty.
Suddenly, you’re back to anger.
And you’d have every reason to be downright enraged.
Stop imagining. You don’t need to, because that cavernous feeling in your stomach is exactly what the parents of Antonio Callaway’s accuser likely felt when this happened to them.
It was revealed on Aug. 5 in a letter sent from his accuser’s lawyer to ESPN that UF had appointed Jake Schickel, a lawyer and UF football booster from Jacksonville, as the hearing officer for Callaway’s case.
For background, Jim McElwain announced Callaway’s suspension from the team in March. It was later revealed it stemmed from an incident that occurred in early December and that Callaway was being accused of violating the UF student code of conduct by sexually assaulting a student. He was found not responsible by Schickel on Friday.
Before I go further, let me tell you what I’m not saying.
I’m not saying Schickel can’t do his job unbiasedly. I’m sure he’s a very qualified professional who’s professionally objective.
I’m also not saying that Callaway — or football players or anyone else — is guilty based on an accusation. All I’m saying is that if your child told you this happened, you’d want UF to look into the facts fairly.
So with those clarification out of the way, now I want you to imagine again.
Imagine that’s the response you get when your daughter is accusing a football player of sexually assaulting her.
Don’t worry, you’re told, because, “A hearing officer or committee member would not be disqualified or lack objectivity simply because he or she had been a student athlete decades earlier or purchases athletic tickets as more than 90,000 people do each year.”
How comforting. Don’t you feel better about the university’s decision now?
For a school that — like any school — takes a zero-tolerance stance on sexual assault, it’s pretty bold for UF to have the shamelessness to do this while also telling you, the parents of incoming students, that the school gives a damn about your child.
Because while appointing Schickel could’ve been an honest mistake, the fact that the school defended his appointment shows that UF is willing to put pride before fairness. Even when sexual assault scandals have ravaged other universities recently, this one chooses to put itself on a path toward being the next one by embracing a totally unnecessary scandal.
Instead of saying, “Sorry, we made a mistake,” UF instead chose to say, “This is the way it is, now deal with it.”
So until UF realizes its colossal mistake and corrects it, if you’re a parent of a UF student, pray that you never get that 3 a.m. phone call. And pray even harder that it’s not because of a football player.
Ethan Bauer is the assistant sports editor. Contact him at ebauer@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @ebaueri.
