The University of Florida is catching heat after naming a former athlete and booster to hear a Title IX sexual assault complaint against two players.
For the last eight months, Treon Harris and Antonio Callaway have not been eligible members of the Florida Gators football team. While the school and head coach Jim McElwain have not said the exact reason why, we now know it relates to a Title IX sexual assault case brought against the players for an incident that took place in December.
Harris has since transferred from the school, which means he is no longer a part of the case as part of an agreement. Callaway will still go before an arbitrator selected by the school, but it appears he will be the only one doing so, according to NBC Sports’ College Football Talk:
"A woman…will skip her Title IX hearing after a former Gators athlete and current booster was chosen to hear the case.The man at the center of the case is Jake Schickel, a Jacksonville attorney and Florida law grad. Schickel is a former trustee of UF’s law school, a former track and field athlete, and a booster that contributes at least $6,800 annually to the Gators’ football and basketball programs."
The attorney for the alleged victim says both the woman and her parents won’t attend, as well as five witnesses, calling it a “fundamentally skewed process” while saying she still wants the case to go forward.
Callaway’s lawyer responded by taking a cheap shot at the woman, showing his lack of class:
"We are not going to besmirch his client in the press. The totality of the investigation which is over 1,000 pages will do that for us."
The school released a statement defending their move with a laughable justification:
"Any hearing officer and all committee members are trained and vetted for their impartiality. A hearing officer or committee member would not be disqualified or lack objectivity simply because he or she had been a student athlete decades earlier or purchases athletic tickets as more than 90,000 people do each year."
Maybe Schickel could be impartial – and we’re not saying the school had to get someone with ties to rival schools like FSU, Miami or any other school. But when you have a state of 20 million and you get someone who gives thousands of dollars to the school, it’s not a good look.