Almost nine months following LSU women’s basketball coach Pokey Chatman’s resignation, the University is no closer to drafting a policy statement about relationships between coaches and players or professors and students.
The lack of a policy was the focus of a legal discussion Wednesday about Chatman’s resignation in March amid allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with players.
Chatman’s lawyer Mary Olive Pierson spoke about the Chatman case at Lod Cook Alumni Center as part of the Baton Rouge Bar Association’s Continuing Legal Education program.
LSU System spokesman Charles Zewe told The Daily Reveille in April a written policy might be proposed to explicitly define inappropriate conduct.
But Zewe said Wednesday, the University has not created a policy and does not plan to.
“The Chatman case is closed,” Zewe said. “We are not talking about this anymore. Nothing has changed in regard to policy.”
Pierson said Chatman resigned while under the impression she had violated an “absolute” written University policy forbidding relationships with student-athletes. Pierson said once she learned no policy existed, she realized Chatman had cause for a lawsuit because of “material misrepresentation of facts.”
Pierson said she used this example of inequality to craft a message for the public.
“My message in Pokey’s case was fairness and equality,” Pierson said. “This was not about condoning relationships. This was about equal policies.”
Pierson said she attempted to downplay the rampant gossip about Chatman’s resignation and focus on the policy issue.
“The topic itself was very controversial and salacious, and it brought up all sorts of thoughts in people’s minds,” she said. “It bothers me that some people can violate the ‘policy’ and get away with it, and others can’t. That really isn’t right.”
Pierson said Chatman decided not to pursue the lawsuit because she wished to move on and pursue other coaching opportunities. Instead, she settled with the University for $160,000, which was guaranteed as the bonus clause in her contract.
“She didn’t want to spend two to three weeks on St. Louis Street litigating this if she could do something else,” Pierson said. “She was actually thinking about leaving anyway because there was nowhere else for her to go here. She had achieved the highest.”
The American Association of University Professors does not keep records on universities’ sexual relationship policies, according to John Knight, director for the AAUP’s program in academic freedom and tenure. The University has not adopted the AAUP policy, which defines consensual relationships as “fraught with the potential for exploitation” because of the “significant power differential” between faculty and students.
The NCAA also does not track universities with sexual relationship policies, instead placing the responsibility on individual universities to maintain a “positive relationship” between coaches and student-athletes.
But Knight “unscientifically” estimates the majority of universities have some sort of written relationship policy.
“They range from strong cautions to outright bans,” Knight said.
Auburn University approved an outright ban in its Intimate Relations policy in 2005.
Auburn “prohibits all faculty, administrators and supervisors, including graduate teaching assistants, from pursuing or engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with students, both graduate and undergraduate, whom they are currently supervising or teaching,” according to the statement.
LSU Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope said he is not aware of any plans to draft a relationship policy. Cope said the Senate could only pass a resolution, not an actual governing document.
“Universities have to be very careful before they start formulating policies that stand in the way of fundamental rights,” he said.
Charles Weems, LSU Board of Supervisors member, said he has heard no plans to develop such a policy.
“I’m not aware of where the process might be with the development of such policy,” Weems said. “It’s pretty clear that’s always been a no-no. It’s assumed.”
Pierson said University officials used the Naragon v. Wharton case from 1984 as an example of precedent for the Chatman situation. In the case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit decided LSU administrators did not violate a lesbian music instructor’s rights when they prohibited her from teaching after an affair with a student.
Pierson said confusion could have been eliminated if the University developed a policy.
“They’ve been considering it for 25 years. So maybe they need to think about it a little longer,” Pierson told The Daily Reveille.
—-Contact Amy Brittain at [email protected]