Harvard 2022-23: What's Up?

[dave1381]

My prediction is that the investigation is largely going to exonerate Coach Stone in terms of any violations of her contractual responsibilites, violations of policy of the Harvard Athletic department, or violations of state law. For any lapses mentioned, she'll say she followed proper procedures in self-reporting issues. There will be some acknowledgement of recent player unhappiness and a willingness of always listening to feedback.

The complaintants have been very successful in getting their story picked up by the media, but this is different from arguing any kind of breach of responsibility from Coach Stone. As I've noted earlier, I'm not sure where exactly "emotional abuse" or a "culture of fear" relates to any kind of specific breach -- there's a lot of discretion to coaches to offer positive and negative feedback. To the extent there were grievances, did the student-athletes follow appropriate procedures, as well as the rest of the athletic department? Physical health is the responsibility of the doctors and the student-athletes. Mental health is the responsibility of the student-athletes who should take advantage of university resources. Regarding hazing, Coach Stone will be able to demonstrate that she followed required procedures in going over Massachusetts hazing law with her captains, and then it's the department's responsibility to follow up on hazing complaints. Necessary standards for hazing include "brutal treatment or forced physical activity likely to adversely affect the physical health or safety of any such student" or "subject such student... to extreme mental stress." Harvard has already offered the defense that activities (e.g., the naked skate) were voluntary and I expect that will continue.

Put another way, Coach Stone has thought about formal compliance on a regular basis for 27 years and how to defend herself, and she is good at defending herself. The student-athletes complaining against her have put together a case with a lot of emotional resonance designed well to encourage public support, but based on the articles, I see very little effort in focusing grievances in a way that would resonate in a formal investigation. I anticipate then that the investigation will barely put a dent into Coach Stone's support in the Harvard athletic department. Feel free to disagree, but we'll see.

[Trillium]

Why don't they just can her and get it over with? They have enough reason to do it on wins and losses alone. I'm not sure what value dragging everybody through the mud has.

Agreed. To me, this suggests that they've asked her "retire" to avoid having to prolong this, and she has refused. She figures she has enough powerful people in her pocket to survive.
To try to prevent further reputation losses, Harvard was thus forced to take this step.

[Trillium]

Agreed. Stone is done. Time to start discussing who the new coach will be. Crowell (UMD), Carpenito (NU assistant) and Desrosiers(Clarkson) would be 3 great choices to start

Crowell is NOT an appropriate candidate. At minimum she enabled Stone's abuse while at Harvard, but there are those that believe she was cut from the same cloth as Stone. The program needs to completely turn the page.

[Prowler]

The fact that the law firm is interviewing past players as well as current players is very telling. This goes beyond the media blitz and the attention grabbing "hazing" story and looks like they are digging deeper in to Stones behavior as it relates to the allegations against her.

[Trillium]

If Harvard were to encourage a coach to resign primarily on the basis of Globe/Athletic investigations, after Harvard's own internal investigation yielded no results, then (from Harvard's perspective) that surely gives these publications far too much authorty in arbitrating player-coach disputes. And investigative reporters on hazing beats surely have a lot of incentive to uncover hazing under every stone (pun unintended) with little accountability to investigate objectively whether hazing has occurred according to official legal or departmental definitions. The impartial investigation also clearly puts Harvard on firmer legal footing, for whatever decision is made.

It is highly improbable that the Harvard investigation yielded no results. There had been an ongoing pattern of behaviour confirmed by dozens of athletes over far more than a decade. This was no secret to the administration; the investigative reporting merely shone a public light on what Harvard chose to continue to ignore.

Merely that there were other factors involved (eg. concern about loss of powerful donors in Stone's camp) that factored into Harvard's decision to take no action despite the investigation's results. In addition to the disturbing stories of athletes which have been reported to the administration over the years, there is also the fact that in its own surveys, HWIH finished dead last in student-athlete satisfaction ratings, as well as the fact that the team has not performed well on ice in a very long time.

Even without the evidence of appalling behaviour on the part of Stone as reported by The Globe/Athletic , the last two factors should be enough reason to conclude it is time for Stone to retire. It seems more likely to me, that after having those conversations, Stone is refusing to retire, and has the hubris to believe she has enough powerful people in her camp to prevail.

[bodyup88]

Crowell is NOT an appropriate candidate. At minimum she enabled Stone's abuse while at Harvard, but there are those that believe she was cut from the same cloth as Stone. The program needs to completely turn the page.

I'm certainly not hearing any complaints coming from Duluth regarding Crowell. Moreover, she had a bevy of fifth year players come back this year. If she was an issue, many of those players would have departed.

[Nobody98]

According to the investigating law firm’s website, their “Culture Risk and Sensitive Investigations” practice goes beyond formal compliance. It’s about risk. Harvard doesn’t need formal compliance violations from Stone to find that it is in their best interest as an institution to remove her from her position due to the risks that come with her leadership style and the culture that comes with it.

https://www.jenner.com/en/news-insig...tions-practice

“These deep-rooted culture issues are often not easily visible to C-suite and Boards of Directors, and can affect organizations around the globe,” added Ms. Braamskamp. “Our approach to investigating sensitive, nuanced situations is to figure out what’s really going on in an organization, rather than narrowly assessing whether there is a legal claim or not and calling it a day. It is important to get at the heart of the matter to truly address these risks, so that our clients may move forward and are able to address the real issues, not just the legal risk.”

[Timothy A]

Crowell is NOT an appropriate candidate. At minimum she enabled Stone's abuse while at Harvard, but there are those that believe she was cut from the same cloth as Stone.

I agree. There was a game this season where 2 UMD players physically attacked an opposing player who transferred from UMD to another WCHA school during a game within the confines of playing the game, I believe is was Steamboat who saw it and shared it on this site. That kind of bullying cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. Since learning this I have lost all respect for her, and hearing she is a Stone prot?g? does not shock me one bit.

[ARM]

Since learning this I have lost all respect for her...

This isn't my impression of Crowell after a number of meetings, often in the immediate aftermath of a game when coaches tend to be most riled up. I doubt that she's sending her players out to goon up on former teammates or anyone else. Players on every roster are going to cross the line; it is naive to think otherwise. The true measure of a coach is their reaction when that happens with a player on their roster. One of the more infamous stories in the early days of the WCHA involved someone on the Wisconsin roster, and to Mark Johnson's credit, I think he suspended the player in question for a number of games. There was another story of a former MSU coach telling his team to take action if Miller put her top PP back on the ice in the final minute of a game that was already decided, and things got ugly. Things happen. My guess is that if you surveyed current and former coaches and players about what they thought of the NCAA coaches that they knew, Crowell would finish no worse than middle of the pack, and likely, higher than that.

[Trillium]

I'm certainly not hearing any complaints coming from Duluth regarding Crowell. Moreover, she had a bevy of fifth year players come back this year. If she was an issue, many of those players would have departed.

Stone’s behaviours from more than a decade ago are just becoming public now. You can’t assume that just because you haven’t publically heard anything bad, that everything is automatically rosy.

[thirdtime's . . .]

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/3/21/external-investigation-hockey/

More self-parodic corporate speak from the AD. The Crimson reports she sent an email to all Harvard student-athletes “regarding the concerning [ugh!] reports that we have received through media outlets and others about our women’s ice hockey program.” Notice that she mentions media reports first, while the “others” of course are the athletes she heard from a year ago and effectively dismissed. She’s doing a not-so-face-saving one-eighty. Then, as University Shrink, she tells the whole Harvard community that this is a “good time for reflection.” And of course the mandatory: “The conduct alleged does not represent who we are.” [ugh! ugh! ugh!] Stone is being shown out the door with the kind of blather that suggests AI is behind the PR. Not a responsible way to deal with this.

(My computer skills on display once again. You can find The Crimson online. Sorry.)

[dave1381]

It is highly improbable that the Harvard investigation yielded no results.

Right, right. Surely much of what The Athletic and Globe reported was known and ignored.

Stone... has the hubris to believe she has enough powerful people in her camp to prevail.

That I have no doubt.

Crowell is NOT an appropriate candidate. At minimum she enabled Stone's abuse while at Harvard, but there are those that believe she was cut from the same cloth as Stone. The program needs to completely turn the page.

And from Crowell's perspective, why would you possibly leave UMD where you've been largely successful, only to re-enter a situation where you'd be open yourself up for such criticism and bring attention back to your prior association with Stone, who would have been just removed in this scenario. That seems like more than enough reason for Crowell not to consider the position.

According to the investigating law firm’s website, their “Culture Risk and Sensitive Investigations” practice goes beyond formal compliance. It’s about risk. Harvard doesn’t need formal compliance violations from Stone to find that it is in their best interest as an institution to remove her from her position due to the risks that come with her leadership style and the culture that comes with it.
https://www.jenner.com/en/news-insig...tions-practice

Thanks -- that's informative.

I still raise the issue though, what specific defined principles of Harvard Athletics has Stone violated through her leadership style? I get that the law firm looks beyond narrow compliance issues and into culture, but it still needs to be the organization that broadly defines the desired culture -- not the law firm (it is law firm, after all, not a consulting service on improving workplace culture). Yes, the law firm can identify toxicity, like sexual harrassment which most organizations would have some broad policy against, but it still has to be toxicity somehow broadly defined by the organization. It's not clear to me where Stone's behavior is toxic, according to the culture that Harvard Athletics says it aspires to create.

From what I can tell, Harvard Athletics is largely tolerant of Stone's culture. We see that in that they've investigated her, listened to complaints for years, and kept her. The critics clearly want to nail her on discrimination policy but I see the evidence there as extremely thin, and Harvard has already kept her after investigating chiefs-indians etc.

Now should Harvard Athletics have more policies and principles aimed broadly at preventing the kind of emotional abuse and culture of fear that Stone is accused of creating, and better protect athletes from coaches? I agree that the student-athletes have made a decent case that Harvard's culture could be improved. But as it stands, I gather Harvard Athletics provides coaches with a ton of power and seems to offer student-athletes few protections to the kind of complaints they've raised here. So I remain skeptical there's going to be much success in taking down Stone without also achieving serious reform of the administration of Harvard Athletics.

[dave1381]

After having listened to the Stone segment of the latest "The Athletic Hockey Show Podcast", I take back what I said earlier about A.J Mleckzo and Jennifer Botterill not needing to be asked for comment. If The Athletic's position is that every aspect of Katey Stone's coaching facilitates a deplorable mind-control cult, then the only logical conclusion is that Mleckzo and Botterill served as cult leaders as captains. One cannot take the position that Katey Stone is evil incarnate and Mleckzo and Botterill are not also culpable. They each brought the credibility of Olympic gold medals and 3 Patty Kazamaier trophies to Harvard Hockey over their careers and put a happy face on Katey Stone's "Team First" approach to public in the early national championship era of college hockey. For The Athletic to demonize Katey Stone while not mentioning the role of Mleckzo and Botterill is hypocritical. If they go this route that Harvard Hockey is a cult, they have to follow through on all the logical implications.

Why do I think The Athletic hasn't mentioned Mleczko or Botterill in its coverage? It's because people for the most part like Mleczko and Botterill. It's a lot easier to push the story of Katey Stone's evil mind control cult onto the masses when you accompany coverage of Harvard Hockey with pictures of Katey Stone screaming and made by The Athletic editors to look as much as possible like Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. You put up the same story with photos of Mleczko and Botterill, would the casual followers of women's college hockey be so quick to believe immediately every horror reported about Harvard hockey?

And for reporters on a hazing beat who talk to hazing experts, The Athletic sure likes to mislead the public as to what the legal definition of hazing is. Just doing an activity under peer pressure does not equal hazing. The explicit position of The Athletic here though is that any activity done under peer pressure is therefore forced, and the implicit position of The Athletic is that these activities always resulted in "extreme mental stress" or "adversely affect[s] physical health or safety" because one of these conditions must be satisfied to satisfy the legal definition of hazing. You can read the stature on p.11 of the Harvard Athletic handbook. The handbook also includes links to a variety of Harvard Athletic's mental health resources, which clearly should have been better utilized by players so tramautized by being asked to abide by a "Team First" attitude for Harvard's program.

[ARM]

The handbook also includes links to a variety of Harvard Athletic's mental health resources, which clearly should have been better utilized by players so tramautized by being asked to abide by a "Team First" attitude for Harvard's program.

Your posts in this thread are mostly well-thought and balanced, though perhaps influenced in part by a relationship with the team that goes back decades. I find this statement troubling, however. I don't know the Harvard situation as well as others commenting here, and especially you. Thus, I'm commenting strictly in a general sense, not specific to Harvard at all.

Given the increased attention in recent years to issues like eating disorders and suicides of young people, the note here seems off. What if a program and/or coach is doing absolutely nothing wrong, but a student athlete's unique situation has her in need of mental health resources; would we make light of that? I think we all try to be as understanding and sympathetic as we can. Now if someone is in a situation where she feels ostracized, the likelihood of needing mental health resources increases.

With all that has come to light about how some university programs are run, if I am feeling abused or victimized in some way by an athletic program such that I feel I need mental health support, I'm not sure that I would entirely trust the sources that program is recommending. Yes, there are laws protecting me, in theory, but we have learned of organizations where protecting the athletes is pretty far down the priority list. I wouldn't be confident that anything I said regarding a coach/program wouldn't make its way back to the people who are contributing to my problems.

[reggiedunlap9]

I heard today that Stones assistant coach is taking a personal leave of absence from the team. This is really sad. Why is Harvard dragging this along ? It is time for a new coach. Very simple