The College of California-Berkeley has launched a proper investigation into Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton and govt affiliate athletic director Jennifer Simon-O’Neill’s dealing with of dozens of allegations over the course of years that former Golden Bears ladies’s swimming head coach Teri McKeever bullied swimmers on an virtually each day foundation, the Southern California Information Group has discovered.
Attorneys employed by the college have begun contacting present and former Cal swimmers and their dad and mom as a part of a follow-up investigation to an eight-month, $2-million probe that led to McKeever’s firing on January 31, in response to three individuals acquainted with the investigation.
The present investigation comes towards the backdrop of months of mounting criticism of Cal from former and present swimmers, together with Olympic gold medalists, and outstanding monetary boosters of the Golden Bears athletic program that Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill and different college workers prioritized athletic success over athlete well-being. Particularly, swimmers and their dad and mom preserve that Simon-O’Neill and Knowlton’s inaction led to dozens of athletes being subjected to McKeever’s verbal, emotional and bodily abuse and in some instances even enabled the coach’s bullying.
Golden Bears boosters, a few of whom have made seven-figure donations to the Cal athletic program, have lobbied Chancellor Carol T. Christ for months to fireplace Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill, arguing their failure to successfully tackle McKeever’s conduct precipitated swimmers to be endangered and broken the college’s status.
The McKeever investigation’s closely redacted practically 500-page report substantiated allegations of bullying and discrimination over a interval of a long time first disclosed by the SCNG final Could, discovering that McKeever, who coached Cal to 4 NCAA crew titles, discriminated towards swimmers on the idea of race, nationwide origin and incapacity, together with utilizing the n-word, and abused athletes in violation of college coverage.
After interviewing 147 individuals and reviewing 1,700 paperwork, attorneys for Munger, Tolles & Olson, the Los Angeles-based regulation agency employed by the college, concluded “by a preponderance of the proof that Coach McKeever discriminated towards sure student-athletes, in sure cases, on the idea of race, nationwide origin and incapacity.” The attorneys additionally discovered McKeever’s conduct “towards some, however not all, student-athletes in some cases was abuse and violated College coverage.”
Up to now, 44 present or former Cal swimmers, together with Olympic medalists and NCAA champions, 23 dad and mom, a member of the college’s males’s crew, three former Cal coaches, a former administrator and an athletic division worker have instructed SCNG that McKeever, the one lady to function head coach of a U.S. Olympic swim crew, routinely bullied swimmers, usually in deeply private phrases, or used embarrassing or traumatic experiences from their previous towards them, used racial epithets, body-shamed and pressured athletes to compete or prepare whereas injured. Swimmers and fogeys have additionally alleged that McKeever revealed medical details about athletes to different crew members and coaches with out their permission in violation of federal, state and college privateness legal guidelines and pointers.
9 Cal ladies’s swimmers, six since 2018, have instructed SCNG they made plans to kill themselves or obsessed about suicide for weeks or months due to what they describe as McKeever’s bullying.
Cal declined to remark. Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill have repeatedly declined to touch upon the McKeever investigation and criticism of their dealing with of athlete and mother or father complaints.
McKeever has denied any wrongdoing. Her lawyer mentioned she is going to pursue a wrongful termination lawsuit towards the college. McKeever’s firing didn't embody a monetary settlement.
In current weeks and months, Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill have privately tried to distance themselves from McKeever, in response to a number of sources.
However college administration and athletic division officers together with Knowlton, Simon-O’Neill and Sandy Barbour, Cal’s athletic director from 2004 to 2014, obtained between 2010 and 2022 greater than 30 complaints from Cal swimmers or their dad and mom alleging bullying conduct by McKeever, in response to interviews, college paperwork and emails obtained by SCNG.
Regardless of the repeated complaints, Cal has paid McKeever just below $3 million in whole compensation since 2010 and has given her eight raises in her base pay between 2010 and 2019, in response to her contract and different college monetary data. McKeever’s annual base wage has elevated by greater than 77% since 2010.
McKeever is a godmother to one in all Simon-O’Neill’s kids. Simon-O’Neill was employed by Cal in 2008 as director of Olympic sports activities operations. She was named affiliate athletic director in 2013 and after extra promotions was named to her present place, govt senior affiliate AD, chief of workers and senior ladies’s administrator in 2019. She was the direct supervisor of the ladies’s swimming program till the accountability was faraway from her final Could, a day after the publication of an SCNG report by which 19 present and former Cal swimmers, six dad and mom, and a former member of the Golden Bears males’s crew portrayed McKeever as a bully who for many years has allegedly verbally and emotionally abused, swore at and threatened swimmers on an virtually each day foundation.
Knowlton has been Cal’s AD since 2018.
On the time of McKeever’s firing, Knowlton wrote to Cal swimmers that he “was disturbed by what I discovered in the midst of studying by means of the report’s 482 pages that substantiate far too many allegations of unacceptable conduct. I need to apologize, on behalf of Cal Athletics, to each student-athlete who was topic to this conduct prior to now, and I need to thank everybody who had the braveness to return ahead and share their story with the investigators.”
Thomas Newkirk, McKeever’s lawyer, mentioned he was stunned by Knowlton’s letter.
“Jim Knowlton, why he's apologizing to athletes when he knew how Teri coached your entire time he was there's past me,” Newkirk mentioned. “It is mindless.”