Swimming in Scandal - Part 6

UC-Berkeley's swimming scandal - which we last covered in September* - seems to have concluded, although there could be litigation ahead. From the Mercury News:

It was a day Cal swimmer Leann Toomey thought she would never see. “Not in a million years,” Toomey said. Toomey, a former All-America swimmer at Cal, is one of more than 40 women who alleged they were bullied by Teri McKeever, Cal’s groundbreaking women’s swimming head coach. McKeever, the most successful female coach in swimming history and who led the Golden Bears to four NCAA team titles, was fired Tuesday after an eight-month university-commissioned investigation concluded that she discriminated against swimmers on the basis of race, national origin and disability, including using the n-word, and abused athletes in violation of university policy, the Southern California News Group has learned. “They finally heard us,” Toomey said.

The investigation’s heavily redacted nearly 500-page report based substantiated reports of bullying and discrimination over a period of decades first disclosed by the SCNG last May. After interviewing 147 people and reviewing 1,700 documents, attorneys hired by the university found “by a preponderance of the evidence that Coach McKeever discriminated against certain student-athletes, in certain instances, on the basis of race, national origin and disability.”. The attorneys also found McKeever’s behavior “toward some, but not all, student-athletes in some instances was abuse and violated University policy.” Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton, who has been heavily criticized by current and former Golden Bears swimmers for ignoring or dismissing credible complaints about McKeever’s behavior, apologized in a letter Cal swimmers Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m writing to inform you that today we have parted ways with long-time women’s swimming coach, Teri McKeever’” Knowlton wrote. “After carefully reviewing an extensive investigative report that was recently completed by an independent law firm, I strongly believe this is in the best interests of our student athletes, our swimming program, and Cal Athletics as a whole." ...

Full story at https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/01/31/breaking-news-cal-fires-teri-mckeever/.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/09/swimming-in-scandal-part-5.html.