(10-10-2019 09:22 AM)JimJoyce Wrote: Ya know, we’ve heard all about these damning evil deeds by Joel for the last few years now. And yet every “investigation” turns up nothing. I’m not one to bring politics to a sports board, but do you think maybe, just maybe there could be no smoking gun?
Hi Jim,
There is a smoking gun. The Akron Beacon Journal and the Record Courier have it, their reporters have interviewed former staff, reviewed the documents and filed stories ... stories that were killed.
As a former reporter for one of those newspapers, I know how a powerful organization in a small town can squash a story simply by threatening to pull advertising. It happened with an investigative piece I wrote back in 2010. The story had been edited and fact checked. It was basically on the page for the next day's newspaper when the publisher came in and said he trusted my reporting but couldn't afford to risk losing KSU's advertising during a difficult time in the newspaper business.
The smoking gun for Nielsen, in my mind, is proof that he was dishonest in an HR investigation looking into sexual harassment by one of his senior staff members against another senior staff member. In that 2015 investigation, Nielsen is quoted as saying he hadn't heard any complaints against this staff member until September 2015.
The problem with internal investigations is that they usually turn up exactly what an organization wants the investigations to turn up.
Nielsen is a master of the cover up. When I was on his senior staff, we were told not to use our kent.edu email to communicate about sensitive subjects because the messages would be subject to the freedom of information act.
The proof that Nielsen was dishonest with the HR investigation happens to be an internal email by a former HR investigator in a different, earlier investigation, which proves he knew about complaints and questionable conduct months earlier.
HR investigators in the second investigation would have needed to have known to look for that email. We only know about it now because it was provided by a former KSU employee. It has likely never been considered by KSU leaders and compared against Nielsen's claims in his interview with HR. Nielsen probably doesn't even know about its existence until now. Another former member of Nielsen's senior staff has also gone on the record with reporters that Nielsen was informed three years earlier of predatory behavior involving the senior staff member with the gymnastics team, and that student athletes had come forward with complaints.
Those allegations came up again in the 2015 investigation, yet nothing was done. He was finally let go in the summer of 2018.
Nothing was done could be the KSU motto. In 2017, the KSU university campus-wide climate study was released. Athletics results were the worst by a "significantly significant margin" when compared with all other departments. What did KSU do? They gave Nielsen a contract extension rather than investigate the claims in the study.
Now KSU is going to initiate another climate study. And they are going to examine the running joke that is the Kent State Athletics "Game Plan." Why would anyone have faith in these studies?
I was part of a large group of former KSU Athletics senior staff members, head and assistant coaches, Varsity "K" Hall of Fame student athletes and presidents of the KSU student body, along with current members of the board of directors of the Kent State University Foundation, KSU's National Athletic Development Council, community and business leaders who signed a letter to President Diacon last month applauding him for starting an investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss why we believe the handling of the fireworks/field hockey situation was a symptom of a much larger problem, and offering documents that had been overlooked.
Our request was declined. And, as usual, the internal investigation turned up what was best for the organization... although Nielsen's own comments were pretty damning.
We'll be releasing documentation, including what we believe is a smoking gun, for the public to review and make up their own minds.
Like I've said in previous posts, there's been a smoking gun in the public domain for a decade, and that's Nielsen's record. It isn't very good when you hold it up against what KSU is paying him.
Even if you like Joel, it's hard to argue the lack of ROI.
Hopefully the fact that longtime donors are pulling back their gift commitments to KSU Athletics until Nielsen is replaced might also make some people in power see that there have been smoking guns all over the department.
Dave