A few weeks ago, when student
journalists at the Daily Northwestern saw that revered coach Pat Fitzgerald had
been suspended, they suspected there was more to the story. What they uncovered
was years of hazing allegations.
The university's initial press release announcing the coach’s
two-week suspension was short and matter-of-fact. It acknowledged that an investigation found
evidence to support a complaint about hazing within the football program but
provided few details — except that university officials strongly disapproved
and changes would be made. Released on a late summer Friday, it drew minor
media attention, and the story easily could have ended there.
But reporters for Northwestern’s student newspaper wasted no
time digging into what they saw as holes in the administration’s announcement. Within a few days, systemic hazing within the
Northwestern football program was a national news story-- with the university divulging
shocking details from its investigation — and firing revered coach Pat
Fitzgerald outright.
“It seemed clear that there were things unsaid in the
[university’s initial] statement,” Alyce Brown, a print managing editor of the
Daily Northwestern said. “We saw the
announcement the same as everybody else,” added Nicole Markus, the paper’s
summer editor in chief. “And then, through that, we just started trying to do
our own independent reporting.”
The result was a detailed report that filled in the gaps of
the university’s announcement with specific new details about the hazing
allegations. The students secured an interview with the anonymous former
football player whose complaint to university officials had prompted the
initial investigation. He revealed that the hazing allegations under
investigation included coerced sexual acts forced on junior players by masked
upperclassmen in a dark locker room. And a second unnamed player corroborated
the whistleblower’s claim that Fitzgerald knew about and encouraged the hazing.
Hours after the story was published in the student newspaper,
Northwestern University President Michael Schill sent an apologetic email to
the campus community, saying he failed to fully consider the situation before
handing down Fitzgerald’s initial punishment. And as the Fitzgerald story
gained traction over the weekend and was picked up by national news
organizations, the Daily Northwestern reporters continued to follow leads. The
next Monday, they published a story detailing what three former players
described as a racist culture within the football program. They told the paper
that members of the coaching staff, including Fitzgerald, made racist comments
or racially coded remarks and had different standards for Black players, who
were told to cut longer hairstyles to comply with what Fitzgerald called the
“Wildcat Way.”
In his statement announcing Fitzgerald’s firing, Schill
acknowledged that new revelations in the media about the systemic nature of the
hazing prompted him to reevaluate his original decision to simply suspend the
coach. “As much as Coach Fitzgerald has
meant to our institution and our student-athletes,” he wrote, “we have an
obligation — in fact a responsibility — to live by our values.”
The Daily Northwestern operates independently from the
university. It is published by a nonprofit organization called the Students
Publishing Company, which is overseen by a board of directors composed of
alumni, faculty, staff and student volunteers.
“Our philosophy is the newsroom is independent, and the board is just
there to support,” Chairman John Byrne, a lawyer and former editor in chief, said.
The firewall between the university and the newspaper is doing its job; the student journalists told The Post that Northwestern did not try to interfere with their reporting on these stories. And they emphasized that the story about Northwestern’s football program is ongoing. “The story doesn’t just go away just because Coach Fitzgerald has been fired,” Markus said. “There’s a lot more going on, and so we’re looking now to next steps.”
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