Northwestern’s Schill ‘Reread’ Hazing Report Before Firing Coach
As his university faces negligence lawsuits over an alleged failure to prevent hazing in its athletic program, Northwestern president Michael Schill told the Daily Northwestern on Monday that his July 10 decision to convert football coach Pat Fitzgerald’s two-week suspension into a firing came after he learned new details from the investigation.
The explanation raises questions about how thoroughly Schill—an attorney and former dean of both the University of Chicago and UCLA law schools—reviewed the investigation’s findings before suspending Fitzgerald three days earlier.
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Schill told the Daily Northwestern, which on July 8 published an account of hazing on the football team, that he was “affected by reading” the student newspaper’s coverage. He also acknowledged he had “over-weighted” a finding by ArentFox Schiff, a law firm the university retained to investigate, that there was insufficient evidence Fitzgerald knew of the hazing.
After “reading and rereading” ArentFox’s report that weekend and meeting with the Board of Trustees, Schill said he met with two investigators on July 10. He said he “asked them to provide” him “details from the raw testimony of each person they spoke with,” adding he and the investigators “went person by person.” Later that day Schill fired Fitzgerald, which Schill described in the interview as “the only choice, the only moral choice.”
Attorneys for former players suing the school could use Schill’s interview to assert he did not treat the scandal with sufficient care and priority. They can question why Schill didn’t ask for witness details and “raw testimony” before acting and why he waited to do so until after the scandal had attracted national headlines. He acknowledged in the interview the report was only a “summary of the raw material.” Why didn’t he want those raw details after reading the summary?
Fitzgerald, who says his suspension was part of a “mutual agreement” with Schill, could also use the interview to boost a potential lawsuit against the school.
On one hand, Schill said he hasn’t suspended or fired other Northwestern employees, including coaches and athletic staff who worked alongside Fitzgerald, partly because “everybody is entitled to due process.”
On the other hand, Schill changed Fitzgerald’s punishment from a short suspension into a permanent firing after a mere weekend of “rethinking” and talking to investigators that he could have questioned more thoroughly earlier. Schill did not extend Fitzgerald a chance for a hearing to address Schill’s new understanding of the situation. For a university president who preaches the value of “due process,” he arguably didn’t live up to his own sermon.
(This story has been updated in the headline.)
