Ex-Northwestern player files lawsuit against university, Pat Fitzgerald
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A former Northwestern University football player filed a lawsuit Tuesday, listing former football coach Pat Fitzgerald, university president Michael Schill and Athletic Director Derrick Gragg among the defendants accused of negligence in “failing to prevent hazing traditions, failing to intervene in hazing traditions, failing to protect students from acts that were assaultive, illegal, and often sexual in nature,” among other allegations.
The player, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, competed for Northwestern from 2018 to 2022. The player is identified as “John Doe” in the complaint, which was filed in Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois.
“This morning, our firms filed the first lawsuit against Northwestern University, The Board of Trustees, and now fired football coach Patrick Fitzgerald for allegations of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and racial discrimination,” the former player’s attorneys, Patrick A. Salvi II, Parker Stinar and Adam Pulaski, said in a statement. “It is alleged that Fitzgerald knew, enabled, and encouraged this behavior and created a culture of abuse within the football program that carried over throughout the athletic department. We intend to hold the defendants, including Fitzgerald, accountable for the alleged actions and seek justice for victims of abuse, hazing, and discrimination.
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“Institutions, athletic departments, and coaches are responsible for creating a safe and supportive environment for student-athletes. There is no place for the vile and disturbing hazing incidents that have taken place within the Northwestern football program. We applaud the courage of our client and the others who were brave enough to speak out about their experiences in the hopes of ending these types of incidents both at Northwestern and elsewhere.”
The lawsuit, which also lists former university president Morton Schapiro as a defendant, said the player was subjected to hazing and harassment that included sexualized acts and racial discrimination. It accuses school leadership of negligence in allowing those incidents to occur in the team’s locker room and at its training camp. The plaintiff is seeking damages in excess of $50,000.
Tuesday’s filing comes a day after a group of former Northwestern football players announced their intent to take legal action against the university, though a lawsuit has not yet been filed. That group includes eight former players represented by civil rights attorney Ben Crump and the firm Levin & Perconti. The firm told ESPN on Monday that it has received “dozens” of phone calls from former Northwestern players and expects the number of players involved in the lawsuit to grow.
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Both cases stem from a report of “an extremely disturbing and vile hazing situation” within Northwestern’s football program made by an unidentified former player to the university at the end of the 2022 season. In December, the school hired a law firm to investigate those concerns, and it released an executive summary of the investigation’s findings July 7. (The school has not released the full investigator’s report.) It also suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay, one of several steps university administrators took after commissioning the independent investigation.
A day later, a report in the Daily Northwestern student newspaper detailed additional allegations of hazing within the program. Fitzgerald, a former star linebacker who served as the team’s head coach for 17 seasons, was fired July 10. In a statement to ESPN, Fitzgerald maintained he had “no knowledge whatsoever of any form of hazing” within the program. He added that he has retained an attorney to “take the necessary steps to protect my rights in accordance with the law.”
Three days after Northwestern dismissed Fitzgerald, the school fired baseball coach Jim Foster, who “engaged in bullying and abusive behavior,” according to a Northwestern human-resources document obtained by the Chicago Tribune.
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On Tuesday, Schill said Northwestern will review the athletic department’s practices and make those findings public.
“In my view, which I know many of you share, we must ensure that we have in place appropriate accountability for the athletic department,” he said in a statement. “We will implement the Faculty Senate’s prior request that we engage an outside firm to evaluate the sufficiency of our accountability mechanism including the Committee on Athletics and Recreation and our ability to detect threats to the welfare of student-athletes. I also believe it is important to examine closely the culture of Northwestern Athletics and its relationship to the academic mission. Both of these reviews will be conducted with feedback and engagement of faculty, staff and students, and both will be made publicly available.”
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Source: The Washington Post
