If cheerleading scandal involved hazing, UK is right to take a strong stand
For those of us who came of age following University of Kentucky sports in the 1970s and ‘80s, Monday morning officially marked the moment where the world turned upside down.
Facing potentially unflattering headlines arising from an alleged cheerleader hazing scandal, the UK administration turned Monday to its athletics department to fix the problems.
First, UK announced that it was dismissing all four of its cheerleading coaches after a three-month internal investigation of alleged behavioral issues by cheerleaders on some off-campus trips.
The investigation “found the coaching staff and administrative advisor failed to provide reasonable oversight during off-campus events, where inappropriate conduct by members of the cheerleading squad included hazing activities, alcohol use and public nudity,” UK said in a news release.
Second, the university announced that cheerleading was being placed under the full authority of the UK Athletics Department for the first time.
Turning to athletics in a crisis is a far cry from the latter decades of the 20th century, when the “academic side” of UK was repeatedly forced to deal with sports scandals.
In a virtual news conference Monday, Kentucky President Eli Capilouto said, “I would first like to say we are sorry. That we didn’t meet the high standards that you expect of us. Second of all, I want to say it is a new day. You will never hear of any behavior such as this going forward.”
Within the Universal Cheerleaders Association, news of Kentucky’s cheerleading problems dropped with the impact of a nuclear bomb. Over the past 35 years, Kentucky has won 24 UCA national championships.
Nevertheless, faced with charges of hazing it deemed credible, the UK administration dismissed ultra-successful head cheer coach Jomo Thompson, as well as assistants Ben Head, Spencer Clan and Kelsey LaCroix.
UK said its investigation “also found lax oversight and poor judgment by T. Lynn Williamson, who served as the cheerleading program’s advisor for four decades.” Williamson, whose primary university job was principal deputy general counsel, retired days after learning of the investigation, the university said.
While attending a team retreat last summer at Lake Cumberland, some Kentucky cheerleaders were partially nude (women topless, men bottomless) when they performed “the basket-toss stunt” off the dock and into the water, UK’s report says.
At a UCA team camp held at East Tennessee State University, the report says new UK male cheerleaders were ordered by older male squad members not to wear underwear while reciting a lewd song that had apparently been a tradition in the Kentucky cheerleading program since the 1970s.
If they got lyrics from the song wrong, the new cheerleaders were apparently ordered to remove an article of clothing.
There were also allegations of alcohol being consumed at both the UCA camp and the Lake Cumberland team retreat even though both were considered university-sponsored trips.
However, the reason this is more than just “college kids getting drunk and naked” is because hazing was allegedly involved.
According to the website hazingprevention.org, 71 percent of those who have been hazed go on to suffer negative consequences. Those can include emotional instability, sleep deprivation and/or a loss of sense of control and empowerment.
During a time when the coronavirus pandemic and the efforts to contain it have created myriad threats to the well-being of major universities, Capilouto and his administration deserve credit for taking the time to deal with the hazing allegations in public.
Sandy Bell, Kentucky executive associate athletics director, said during Monday’s virtual news conference that UK will launch a national search for a new cheer coach and hopes to have one in place within a month.
“We expect to receive some outstanding candidates,” Bell said.
The goal for Kentucky cheerleading moving ahead, Bell says, is to continue to win UCA national championships.
With college athletics departments facing potentially significant financial headwinds due to the coronavirus and its impact on live sports, it was unclear Monday what additional commitment of resources may be required from UK Athletics now that it is fully running cheerleading.
UK publicist Jay Blanton said, traditionally, Kentucky has spent “a few hundred thousand dollars annually” on cheerleading scholarships.
That money, Blanton says, “has come from two sources, athletics and our general institutional scholarship budget. We will be evaluating that process and administration going forward as part of our review of the program.”
What we do know is that, when a UK administration is turning to its athletics department to “fix” a scandal, we are a world away from the days of “popped-open” air-freight packages and “Kentucky’s Shame.”
Says Capilouto: “The move to have (cheerleading) under the full authority of athletics is, I think, (due to) a demonstrated record of strong structure and (a) culture of compliance.”
