Colorado Soccer Player Drops Sexual Assault Lawsuit

[sterlingice]

Ex-soccer player fed up with legal 'guerrilla warfare'
Associated Press
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1945583

DENVER -- A former University of Colorado soccer player dropped her federal lawsuit against the school Monday, saying she could no longer endure the legal "guerrilla warfare" in a case at the heart of the sex-and-recruiting scandal surrounding the football team.

Monique Gillaspie, 21, filed the suit in January, accusing the athletic department of retaliating against her after she talked to police about a 2001 off-campus football recruiting party where two other women say they were raped.

She said she was sexually assaulted by two football players after the party but did not report it because she feared the players and thought it would worsen her problems at school. Gillaspie, who at the time was the only black player on the team, also claimed the department ignored her complaints of racial discrimination by her coach and teammates.

"I want to make very clear that my decision to terminate this litigation should not be interpreted as a retraction of what I have identified as having happened to me and others while a student-athlete at CU," she said.

She said she believed CU still has "serious problems" with racial diversity in the student body, faculty, coaching staff and administration. She declined further comment beyond a written statement.

In an interview from her home in Long Beach, Calif., Gillaspie's mother, Susan Gillaspie, said the family stands behind the allegations, but believed the university's attorneys were engaging in personal attacks. She also said no CU official had ever contacted the family to discuss the allegations, even before the lawsuit was filed.

"Compensation was never an issue," she said. "They have a program that does not value diversity. They're only interested in one thing and that is their football program, their cash cow."

Monique Gillaspie had been scheduled to give a deposition Monday. She said she planned to testify when the other lawsuit comes to trial next spring.

CU spokesman Ray Gomez said the university was prepared to go to trial.

"While we looked forward to our day in court, we are relieved that the defendant has chosen to walk away from this case without any compensation," he said.

He denied the Gillaspies' allegations of "guerrilla warfare."

"We have sought only to mount a vigorous and ethical defense against charges we believe to be baseless," he said.

Thomas Rice, an attorney for former athletic director Dick Tharp and women's soccer coach Bill Hempen, said Gillaspie agreed to dismiss the case with no concessions from any defendant and with the agreement she could not file it again.

"The simple truth is she's given up the case because it was groundless," Rice said. "From the very beginning, Bill and Dick had been adamant that the allegations made in this complaint were false and the fact that she's given up her lawsuit voluntarily I think speaks volumes about the truth of that assertion."

The scandal erupted in January with the public release of a deposition in one of the lawsuits. In it, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Keenan said she believed sex and alcohol were used to lure football recruits to the Boulder campus and that school officials had been warned to clamp down on partying by recruits and student-hosts.

Over the next several months, football coach Gary Barnett was put on leave over comments he made about two women who claim they were raped by his players. One involved former kicker Katie Hnida, who said she was raped by a Colorado teammate in 2000.

The scandal helped prompt an NCAA task force and congressional hearings on recruiting. The school made sweeping changes to its recruiting policies and Tharp resigned last month, saying he had done nothing wrong.

In all, nine women said they had been raped by football athletes since 1997, though police and the attorney general decided against filing any charges. Gillaspie and two other women sued the school, saying its failure to rein in athletes broke federal Title IX gender equity law and contributed to their assaults.

Gillaspie said she gave police details about the off-campus party where Lisa Simpson and the third woman say they were raped by football athletes. Simpson and Gillaspie have agreed to allow their names to be published, and Simpson has consolidated her lawsuit with the other alleged victim. Their case is scheduled to go to trial May 31.

Attorneys for Simpson and the other woman did not immediately return calls. Simpson spokeswoman Lisa Simon said Gillaspie's decision would have no effect on the remaining case.

"Monique Gillaspie has demonstrated a tremendous amount of courage and strength, and she'll continue to do so when she testifies this spring and tells her story, one that is very moving and very credible," Simon said.

School officials said in October that Gillaspie's lawsuit had cost the university $18,000 in legal fees. Rice said there were no plans to ask her to cover those costs.

-------------------------------

"I want to make very clear that my decision to terminate this litigation should not be interpreted as a retraction of what I have identified as having happened to me and others while a student-athlete at CU," she said.
*cough* Sure...

SI

[Ben E Lou]

Gillaspie, who at the time was the only black player on the team, also claimed the department ignored her complaints of racial discrimination by her coach and teammates.She said she believed CU still has "serious problems" with racial diversity in the student body, faculty, coaching staff and administration. She declined further comment beyond a written statement.

In an interview from her home in Long Beach, Calif., Gillaspie's mother, Susan Gillaspie...OK. I haven't looked it up yet (but I'm about to), but allow me hazard a guess here: I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, there's a higher percentage of black people in Long Beach than in Colorado. ;) Perhaps the "diversity" problem is a geographical one, no?

[sterlingice]

OK. I haven't looked it up yet (but I'm about to), but allow me hazard a guess here: I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, there's a higher percentage of black people in Long Beach than in Colorado. ;) Perhaps the "diversity" problem is a geographical one, no?
Strange. I noticed the middle of Kansas also has less black people than Houston did. I'd even hazard that the number on the KU campus is not much higher than in my high school (scratch that, 800 on KU campus vs ~25% at my 2800 person high school so ~700 tho I believe it's closer to 1000 now). Can I sue for lack of diversity?

SI

[Ben E Lou]

Ah yes. Here we go, some 2000 Census Numbers....

Percentage of Black People in Colorado: 3.8%
Percentage of White People in Colorado: 82.8%
Percentage of Non-Whites in Colorado: 17.2%

Percentage of Black People in Long Beach: 14.9%
Percentage of White People in Long Beach: 45.2%
Percentage of Non-Whites in Long Beach: 54.8%

To be clear, discrimination is wrong wherever it exists. That being said, when you go from an environment that is racially and culturally diverse to a college in a state that is lilly-white by comparison, you need to adjust your thinking on what "diversity" means.

To be fair to the kids who make this sort of change of environment from high school to college, it IS very much a culture shock. Heck, GrantDawg can vouch for this, as he was standing right there at the Tucker game a few weeks ago when it happened: we were talking with a white kid from Tucker who is a freshman at The Citadel.* Tucker, in case you didn't realize it, is a pretty diverse community as well; the principal told me about a month ago that this year the high school is 58% black and 38% white. So, I asked this kid how he liked The Citadel, and one of the first things out of his mouth was, "It's weird. It is SO WHITE!" Bear in mind, we're talking about a white kid here, and HE is even going through a bit of culture shock. Typically, the culture shock for black kids is an even greater one, and often, they'll project the culture shock onto the new community, and assume that the new community is racist/discriminatory, and that's why it is "SO WHITE!" In reality, the University of Colorado is "SO WHITE" because, well, the state of Colorado is "SO WHITE"--especially when compared to the home of Doggy Dogg. ;)



*--Actually, there's a pretty funny side story about that conversation. At the time that it took place, a small group of college freshmen alumni had gathered at halftime on the track, near where the stairs come down from the stands empty on the track. Two or three times in that 5-10 minute span, a little kid would come to the top of those stairs and ask Thomas to autograph his UGA hat or something for him. Of course, TB's buddies were giving him a little good-natured ribbing about it. At one point, while Thomas had his back turned to us signing something, Clay (Citadel kid) jokingly said something like, "Yeah, that shows me my place in the world. I'm standing over here with a bunch of guys and Thomas is over there signing autographs, probably getting all the chicks, the attention..." Before Clay could even finish, I mean immediately, as if on queue, one of the Tucker waterboys, a kid probably somewhere in the 9-12 year-old range, walking past, stopped, looked at Clay and said, "Hey, aren't you Andrew McKain's friend???" :D

Clay says, "Yep, there ya have it! Thomas comes back, and he's signing autographs. I come back, and nobody even knows my name!" It was priceless.

[Tigercat]

SkyDog, there are a few other things at play. If you look at some of CU transfers(players transfering away), some of them have said publicly that the reason they are transferring away was because of problems with race relations on campus. Some players that transferred in just the last couple of years have been passed off as casualties of the sex mess, but have cited these problems as their real reason. I don't think its just question of percentages, there are other universities where athletes are able to feel ok even if the racial compisitions aren't very diverse.

[Ben E Lou]

Strange. I noticed the middle of Kansas also has less black people than Houston did. I'd even hazard that the number on the KU campus is not much higher than in my high school (scratch that, 800 on KU campus vs ~25% at my 2800 person high school so ~700 tho I believe it's closer to 1000 now). Can I sue for lack of diversity?

SII think that people in general, both black and white, either forget or don't fully grasp how concentrated the black population in America is. We essentially live in the Southeast, and in big cities. To go further on the Colorado example, Denver and Colorado Springs house a combined total of 21% of Colorado's total population. However, 52% of the black people in the state live in one of those two cities, making a combined total of 9.3% of the population of the two (not TERRIBLY below the national average of 12.3% black). The rest of the black people (roughly 80,000 others), make up only 2.4% of the rest of the state's population.

"There ain't really that many black people IN America. I mean really, you find black people in like ten places: D.C., Atlanta, L.A, New York, Chicago, Detroit....TEN PLACES.....There ain't no black people in Minnesota! Only black people in Minnesota is Prince, and Kirby Puckett!"--Chris Rock

[Tigercat]

Dola: here is an article about the two players that recently left CU in regards to possible race problems:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1818098

edit:damnit, this was a dola originally, i swear! curse you haunted board!

[TroyF]

Dola: here is an article about the two players that recently left CU in regards to possible race problems:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1818098

edit:damnit, this was a dola originally, i swear! curse you haunted board!

Tigercat,

It's the same problems that Skydog talked about.

There isn't a real race problem in Boulder. There are more whites, but Boulder is one of the most liberal towns you'll find in the entire country. It's nicknamed Berkley of Rockies for a reason. There aren't a lot of blacks in Boulder though.

I think you'll find most of us (white or black or latino) are all the same. When things get a little rough for us, our first reaction is to look for outside sources to blame. The first thing you do is look for differences and blame those for the problems.

I'm not saying Boulder doesn't have it's share of dirtbags, but I can tell you that Stillwater, OK is even more lily white than Boulder and I've seen fifty times the discriminitory behavior there as I ever have in Boulder. And I love Stillwater, so that's not a knock on the town.

[daedalus]

*cough* Sure...Which part of the article or the quote you singled gave you pause?

[Solecismic]

Having visited friends in Boulder who were Colorado alums, I agree with TroyF. At least as far as my friends were concerned, Boulder was a liberal oasis in the middle of the Denver suburban desert.

Katie Hnida has done very well kicking for the Anachronism since the scandal broke. I hope the other football team victims do as well.

[Tigercat]

Tigercat,

It's the same problems that Skydog talked about.

There isn't a real race problem in Boulder. There are more whites, but Boulder is one of the most liberal towns you'll find in the entire country. It's nicknamed Berkley of Rockies for a reason. There aren't a lot of blacks in Boulder though.

I think you'll find most of us (white or black or latino) are all the same. When things get a little rough for us, our first reaction is to look for outside sources to blame. The first thing you do is look for differences and blame those for the problems.

I'm not saying Boulder doesn't have it's share of dirtbags, but I can tell you that Stillwater, OK is even more lily white than Boulder and I've seen fifty times the discriminitory behavior there as I ever have in Boulder. And I love Stillwater, so that's not a knock on the town.

You could be right that its nothing, but i didn't mean to imply that it was something that prevailed throughout Boulder or that it was wide reaching. My thought is that i've just seen this from a few sources. Athletes that could have picked a number of other things to say about CU and their reasons for being concerned about being a student-athlete there, but they are bringing up race related issues. As you say, there are much worse places to go as far as tolerence amongst the student body. Hell, i went to LSU, thats where Sammy Joseph transfered from CU to, and i would bet one could prolly find as much if not more race discrimination there than at Colorado.

Maybe there is some sort of stigma that black student athletes face in Colorado from specific groups that is so apparent that it just overshadows an otherwise tolerant campus? Regardless, if an embattled coach is giving it creedence by repeating it when he had so many other problems at the time to deal with, one has to wonder what could be wrong. But who knows since the athletes aren't going into specifics....

[Ben E Lou]

Dola: here is an article about the two players that recently left CU in regards to possible race problems:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1818098

edit:damnit, this was a dola originally, i swear! curse you haunted board!Reached by telephone in his hometown of New Orleans, Joseph refused to comment on any aspect of his situation.For those of you scoring at home, New Orleans is 67.3% black. I'm not saying that there aren't some issues that Colorado needs to deal with. There may well be. However, the fact remains that Colorado is one of the whitest states with a big-time college football team. There's simply going to be an element of culture shock for black kids who go there, no matter how well Colorado deals with this. I don't recall the latest stats for what percentages of black kids attend college versus white kids, but according to that article, Colorado's campus is around 1.8% black, in a state that is 3.8% black. My gut feeling is that those numbers fall pretty close to national averages, and they don't have much more of a diversity problem than anyone else. You can't get blood from a turnip.

[Tigercat]

For those of you scoring at home, New Orleans is 67.3% black. I'm not saying that there aren't some issues that Colorado needs to deal with. There may well be. However, the fact remains that Colorado is one of the whitest states with a big-time college football team. There's simply going to be an element of culture shock for black kids who go there, no matter how well Colorado deals with this. I don't recall the latest stats for what percentages of black kids attend college versus white kids, but according to that article, Colorado's campus is around 1.8% black, in a state that is 3.8% black. My gut feeling is that those numbers fall pretty close to national averages, and they don't have much more of a diversity problem than anyone else. You can't get blood from a turnip.


Just a little side info, Joseph went to Archbishop Shaw High School, a Catholic school in the suburbs, with a decidedly white population. (Although it has be known for quite a few black athletes, particularly the New Orleans Joseph family, of which Sammy was a part.) Of course there could be a little extra info to where hes coming from there, he and his family are probably treated like royalty there, whereas at CU he is just another number(allbeit a starting number).

[Alan T]

I think that people in general, both black and white, either forget or don't fully grasp how concentrated the black population in America is. We essentially live in the Southeast, and in big cities.


I lived my first 7 years in Southeast Atlanta, when I went to school for the first time there, in a school of about 800 students (K - 5th grade), I was one of only 3 white students there. I guess it did not seem weird to me then because, well growing up I was the only white family in my neighborhood too :) Later on in the early 80s my family moved to Northeast cobb county (back in the days before I-575, and I-75 was still 2 lanes, where most of Cobb county was still farm land), now -that- was a culture shock :)

[Klinglerware]

Perhaps the mood on campus is not so much anti-black as it is anti-athlete? I can certainly not speak to relations at Colorado at Boulder, but at the school I went to, the athletes on campus regularly felt discriminated against, since the perception on campus was that academic standards were lowered for their benefit (which was probably true in some cases and definitely not in others) and therefore they were less qualified to be there than the other students. For black student-athletes, with the ongoing controversy re affirmative action, et al., I suppose it's a double whammy--the perception is that you are there because you are a recruited athlete and through racial preferences. I've read that on some western campuses, most black male students are recruited athletes--a phenomenon which serves to support perceptions.

[Ben E Lou]

I've read that on some western campuses, most black male students are recruited athletes--a phenomenon which serves to support perceptions.Well, just from glancing at the ESPN article, it is clear that at least 20% of the black male students at the University of Colorado are on the football team--not just athletes in general, but on the football team.

[Klinglerware]

It's hard to get "liberal Boulder" to jive with "racial discrimination". The only explanation I could come up with (as alluded to in my earlier post) is that liberal campuses tend to be more suspicious of student athletes, both for the academic reasons I mentioned earlier and because athletes are perceived to have less progressive attitudes than the rest of the student body. The sex scandal is probably doing nothing to help the reputation of the student athletes on campus. For the black football players, perhaps they're feeling the anti-athletic backlash in racial terms, since the black male student population and black male student-athlete population are almost one and the same.

Again, I would caveat these remarks by stating that I don't know what the campus atmosphere is really like at Boulder, but this is my stab at it from my experiences at a pretty liberal university.

[Desnudo]

You've got "liberal Boulder," but a state university in the Rockies. I had friends that went there, and they were no long haired hippies. At a school that large you're going to end up with a very broad range of people, so it would not be suprising at all if there were racial problems.

However, the problem with those articles is they don't point out any specific accusations that would help people understand exactly what the problem was.

[Coffee Warlord]

Well, just from glancing at the ESPN article, it is clear that at least 20% of the black male students at the University of Colorado are on the football team--not just athletes in general, but on the football team.

I'd venture to say probably around half, if not more, of the black male students at CU are there for atheletics. The way they had the dorms set up there was they had a set of 4 dorms for the engineering/heavy research programs, a bunch of regular dorms scattered across campus, and then a massive building a few blocks off campus that housed mostly atheletes.

Now, mind you, I only spent a year in the dorm, but I cannot recall a single black student there.

CU's got a decent sized chunk of asian and indian students, and the city itself had a pretty high latino population, but that's about it. It's a very, very, very, very white dominated campus. It's also a very, very, very, very berkley-esque campus (in terms of attitude) and quite liberal city.

And damned good food. :)

[Klinglerware]

You've got "liberal Boulder," but a state university in the Rockies. I had friends that went there, and they were no long haired hippies. At a school that large you're going to end up with a very broad range of people, so it would not be suprising at all if there were racial problems.


That makes more sense, especially when the demographics would suggest that a good chunk of the student body probably would not have much prior interaction with African-americans...

[dacman]

... I had friends that went there, and they were no long haired hippies...
Bullshit. I spent 3 days on campus in July 2003 -- there were more long haired hippie types than I could count.

[Desnudo]

Bullshit. I spent 3 days on campus in July 2003 -- there were more long haired hippie types than I could count.

Okay. 3 whole days huh?

[NoMyths]

Heck, GrantDawg can vouch for this, as he was standing right there at the Tucker game a few weeks ago when it happened: we were talking with a white kid from Tucker who is a freshman at The Citadel.* Tucker, in case you didn't realize it, is a pretty diverse community as well; the principal told me about a month ago that this year the high school is 58% black and 38% white. So, I asked this kid how he liked The Citadel, and one of the first things out of his mouth was, "It's weird. It is SO WHITE!" Bear in mind, we're talking about a white kid here, and HE is even going through a bit of culture shock.[/i]Heh...up until July, I was working at The Citadel. And yes, their culture is very shocking. :)

[Coffee Warlord]

The running joke at CU was often "We have 1 black guy. I think. We're not sure where he is, but we know we have one!"

But what CU lacked in racial diversity, they made up for in sheer insanity. I wonder if the guy who folded himself into a box on Pearl Street (outdoor quasi-mall there) is still there.

[GrantDawg]

To be fair to the kids who make this sort of change of environment from high school to college, it IS very much a culture shock. Heck, GrantDawg can vouch for this, as he was standing right there at the Tucker game a few weeks ago when it happened: we were talking with a white kid from Tucker who is a freshman at The Citadel.* Tucker, in case you didn't realize it, is a pretty diverse community as well; the principal told me about a month ago that this year the high school is 58% black and 38% white. So, I asked this kid how he liked The Citadel, and one of the first things out of his mouth was, "It's weird. It is SO WHITE!" Bear in mind, we're talking about a white kid here, and HE is even going through a bit of culture shock. Typically, the culture shock for black kids is an even greater one, and often, they'll project the culture shock onto the new community, and assume that the new community is racist/discriminatory, and that's why it is "SO WHITE!" In reality, the University of Colorado is "SO WHITE" because, well, the state of Colorado is "SO WHITE"--especially when compared to the home of Doggy Dogg. ;)

What made this comment even more striking is the kid. Here he was, camo top to bottom, looking like the classic teenage "redneck." and he says in his southern-drawl "it is SO whiite." Too funny.

[Ben E Lou]

What made this comment even more striking is the kid. Here he was, camo top to bottom, looking like the classic teenage "redneck." and he says in his southern-drawl "it is SO whiite." Too funny.And that pretty much sums up the Tucker community for you. Of course, there was also big ol' barrel-chested good-ol'-boy-of-good-ol'-boys Larry McClure saying that we were going to get crunk in the stadium. That one even surprised me. ;)

[TroyF]

The running joke at CU was often "We have 1 black guy. I think. We're not sure where he is, but we know we have one!"

But what CU lacked in racial diversity, they made up for in sheer insanity. I wonder if the guy who folded himself into a box on Pearl Street (outdoor quasi-mall there) is still there.


He's still there.

I agree with the insanity comment too. My God, that place is wacko. I love the Buffs, but Boulder is one of the most liberal towns you'll ever find in your life.

For some reference, they had a librarian in Boulder who refused to hang the American flag after 9/11. But she did hang a dildo on a string right at the enterence of the library. That was OK, the flag wasn't.

If you spend too much time in Boulder, your head explodes.

[GoldenEagle]

pix plz k thx