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LSU, kinesiology professor end lawsuit
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by Michael Gendall
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Louisiana State University put to rest a three-year-old lawsuit Friday, announcing a settlement with former kinesiology professor Tiffany Mayne.
Mayne and former LSU graduate student Caroline Owen sued the university in the spring of 2002, alleging the chair of the kinesiology department, Amelia Lee, would not allow them to give zeros to several students who turned in plagiarized work because they were members of LSU's football team.
"[Lee's] exact words were that I couldn't give them zeros on the paper and that I couldn't fail them because they were football players," Owen recalled.
Owen said there is no doubt in her mind the student athletes plagiarized the work, but proof only exists for some of the cases because six or seven other students' papers "disappeared."
"I know they were plagiarized for a fact," she said. "There were five that I can actually prove, the others disappeared … they were all football players."
Owen said she settled her dispute with the university nearly a year earlier and LSU awarded her $150,000 plus apology letters and recommendations. Mayne received $112,000 Friday but no apology and no recommendations, Owen said.
LSU Vice Chancellor Michael Ruffner said the university settled Mayne's case because the university had more important issues on which to focus, but insisted the settlement was not an acknowledgment of guilt.
"We've just had a hurricane here, we're moving forward with many important initiatives [and] this wasn't one of them," Ruffner said. "LSU continues to deny any wrongdoing. The matter is settled, and we don't want to give any undo importance by further commenting on this subject."
The university insisted in both cases they did not do anything wrong, but Owen said the university's lawyers privately admitted wrongdoing "off the record" in the settlement period.
"I don't think the university itself is a bad place," she said. "I think, just like every other institution in the world, there's some bad people in charge of things. [Lee] did a lot of strange things to people and football brings in a lot of money."
Still the chair of LSU's kinesiology department, Lee refused comment when contacted Sept. 19.
"Oh no, we don't talk about that," she said of her department.
According to Owen, LSU promised identity protection during the lawsuit. However, within 24 hours of that promise, Owen said, the athletic director told television cameras the plaintiffs were two women in the kinesiology department and identified the class in question.
"They were horrible, they were horrible. From the second I did what I did I got threatened," she said of the way LSU handled her allegations. "I ended up having to move, have everything listed in my parents' name. My phone number wasn't listed until very recently, my mail had been tampered with, I got death threats [and] I had dead animals placed on my door."
David McDonald, University of Wisconsin history professor and consultant to the Chancellor regarding athletics, said most universities leave it up to the individual professors to decide how much leniency to grant any student, athlete or not.
If the allegations at LSU are accurate, McDonald said, the university not only discredits their academic integrity but also calls into question how much they respect their athletes.
"You're abandoning the one thing that keeps you from charges of exploiting these players," McDonald said. "Holding them up to standards and making them earn a degree."
The NCAA refused comment, because they said this matter is between the individual and the institution.
