Harvard 2022-23: What's Up?

[Skate79]

Yeah, there seems to be rather unanimous consensus that Harvard's Administration is as big a part of the culture problem that needs to be addressed as Stone is. They sure can't read a room. The hubris of both is horrifying. Not a good look.

What I'm wondering is what happens if the independent investigation comes back with substantive findings that Harvard cannot look away from without risking some type of action, legal or otherwise. Will there be moves made within the Athletic Department (I'm thinking McDermott) to either dismiss or suspend certain individuals? Harvard's Administration and culture are so ingrained in doing things a certain way based on how they have always acted in the past that I really doubt much will change beyond removing Stone and her staff. Which is a shame because it seems clear that significant changes need to be made to bring the University into the 21st century.

[Prowler]

Normally I'd agree. But notice that the one related issue Harvard has been willing to comment on publicly at great length (and this was after the Globe article!) was defending Katey Stone extensively on the chiefs-indians comments. Harvard even on first reference referred to the comment as "Coach Stone’s self-reported use of a once frequently-used colloquialism that is now deemed culturally insensitive during a team meeting" which is about as dismissive as one can get in describing such an event.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2...k-initiatives/
So I would be absolutely shocked if Harvard's view on this changes, and I don't expect it to be much of a focus of the new investigation.

This is where context matters. Had this Chiefs/Indians comment been made in a room full of white players, it probably wouldn't have drawn any attention at all BUT, it was made with two indigenous players in the locker room, and a third who was an assistant coach at the time, and directly pointed at one of them, an up and coming junior who because of her year was in the mix for a C the following year. This was a "put her in her place" kind of comment. The self reporting, and subsequent apology was when she realized she went to far (obviously) and the apology we keep reading about was never made in person to any of the 3 indigenous players. Kind of takes on a different tone when you know how it went down.

[dave1381]

What I'm wondering is what happens if the independent investigation comes back with substantive findings that Harvard cannot look away from without risking some type of action, legal or otherwise. Will there be moves made within the Athletic Department (I'm thinking McDermott) to either dismiss or suspend certain individuals? Harvard's Administration and culture are so ingrained in doing things a certain way based on how they have always acted in the past that I really doubt much will change beyond removing Stone and her staff. Which is a shame because it seems clear that significant changes need to be made to bring the University into the 21st century.

If someone in the department has to take the fall, I wonder if they would pin blame on the associate AD who is "sport supervisor for women's hockey" rather than (or in addition to) the AD. That's purely speculative, and I have no idea exactly how much the associate AD is to blame. But the job title clearly suggests some responsibility.

If McDermott, Harvard's first female AD, is forced out over defending Stone after only a couple years, I think they'd both push a sexism narrative and lawsuit, regardless of the case against them. Stone of course knows how Shannon Miller went out and eventually won a lawsuit, however different the situations may be. Stone also feels entitled to stay, obviously, and I would expect she strongly believes the women coaches who grew the sport have been treated unfairly —I haven't spoken with her in 15 years, but that's a well-informed guess. Of course the counterpoint, expressed often here on this forum, is that she needed to evolve.

To be clear, the feelings of Stone or ADs are not what's important here, compared to any alums who may have really been hurt, but I am forecasting how this all might proceed.

[Cornholio]

dave1381 - I am afraid the least-worst situation for the administration now is for Harvard to shut down the program for a few years while they do their formal investigations and evaluation. Just a mess all around.

[ARM]

Much of the reason why I don't think Stone will survive this is because I don't see how she can get her team back to competing for championships after this. The most recent season wasn't good, and Harvard recently had a season where it didn't make the postseason at all. Now that this is more out in the open, recruiting will become more difficult. Even if one agrees that she hasn't done anything that would be cause for dismissal, I think she winds up out the door in the same way that many other coaches do once their programs are in decline. Coaches don't have much legal footing when the reason for termination is failure to reach the desired level of competitiveness.

I don't see anything that would be cause for shutting down a program or dismissing an AD. There just isn't enough importance placed on women's hockey programs to threaten an AD, unless we're talking matters of death or dismemberment.

[Trillium]

Much of the reason why I don't think Stone will survive this is because I don't see how she can get her team back to competing for championships after this. The most recent season wasn't good, and Harvard recently had a season where it didn't make the postseason at all. Now that this is more out in the open, recruiting will become more difficult.

Totally. The team was 7-21-3 this season. With the graduations of their top 2 forwards and a D, along with this year's freshman defections, they are now losing 47% of their scoring, which was already weak relative to ECAC competitors. Further, there are surprisingly only 2 total Harvard commitments on the list for the next 2 seasons to replace them, 1 of which is taking a gap year next year. So it does appear that performance will continue to decline significantly for the next 2 seasons. Players who have never had much ice time or made much contribution to the scoresheet will be the ones who will have to get it done. But it gets worse. Now is when recruiting of the 2007s (incoming class of 2025-26) is happening, along with filling any remaining Class of 2024-25 gaps. April to September is always the prime recruiting season to evaluate talent: Nationals, Provincials, League Championships, High Performance Selection Camps, Summer Showcases, through to Stoney Creek Showcase in Ontario et al after Labour Day. And who is the one responsible for all that recruiting? The Associate Coach who has suddenly gone on a leave of absence!! Now MIA, Harvard will be at a huge disadvantage vs other programs in recruiting in 2025-26, even moreso than in the next 2 years.

This will be a monumental challenge for any coach, and best suited to a coach with experience and a track record in building/rebuilding programs. Who in their right mind could conclude that a coach..

(1) with a record of 77-94-17 over the past 6 years, despite great resources
(2) who has had 17 student-athletes leave the program over the last 4 years alone,
(2) who has shown a total unwillingness to evolve in any way over time, despite these failures, and
(4) who is now under the public spotlight for having rock bottom student satisfaction scores, with associated allegations in media outlets of a toxic culture, and abusive fear-driven coaching practices

...is in any way a potential fit for being successful in that turnaround task?

You definitely don't need a Harvard degree to easily reach the conclusion that Stone has to go immediately, even if you happened to be personally skeptical of the accuracy or extent of some of the allegations. There's no upside whatsoever for Harvard to do otherwise.

I don't see anything that would be cause for shutting down a program or dismissing an AD. There just isn't enough importance placed on women's hockey programs to threaten an AD, unless we're talking matters of death or dismemberment.

This isn't just a women's hockey problem. It's systemic within Harvard Athletics.

This week in The Harvard Crimson: Eighth Major Review of Harvard Athletic Department since 2016

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2...views-feature/

[dave1381]

A program shutdown would be entirely unmerited punishment of the athletes. Shutdowns happen when the athletes are at major fault. There's a recent example of this where Harvard cancelled a men's soccer season nearing its conclusion and to put the women's hockey athletes in this ballpark is tremendously unfair. It would effectively be placing equal blame on the athletes for the "hazing" and "culture", when the primary issues here clearly concern the coach and the administration. If we go by the stat that 74% of athletes haze by some definition, that's probably >30 other Harvard teams that should be shut down too by this criteria. Only difference here is that some players were willing to tell all and put everything in the worst possible context because they wanted to throw everything they could at Coach Stone.

Regarding why any AD's job would be at all at risk, yes, it is unusual that women's hockey would be so important. But here you have a case where the AD was just so remarkably tone-deaf in how she responded to the investigation at the end of last season, that I judge she was at fault for letting this situation spiral out of control. A wiser AD would have done better to manage the situation and at least make sure the players felt heard and had Coach Stone face any consequences at all, even if the AD's intent was always going to be to keep Coach Stone. Some are going to tell me that aggrieved players would not have been satisfied with anything short of Coach Stone's termination, but I don't believe it. There was surely a better middle ground here that wouldn't have resulted in everything blowing up out in the open like this. (And I don't mean to turn this point into another debate about the merits of keeping Coach Stone.) The cheerleading at the end of her team email announcing the investigation outcome was truly the height of the tone-deafness. The AD clearly was not listening to anything and nothing was going to change, so it's no surprise then that there were immediate transfers and so many coordinated on "airing their dirty laundry" to the media without restraint. Now we have the worst press for Harvard Athletics since this men's soccer incident.

[Cornholio]

After reading that crimson article you have to wonder why the ivies play D1 athletics at all. I know this is beyond the scope of what is happening at Harvard women's hockey, but at some point, when does the 'harm' created by trying to compete at the D1 level outweigh the "good". I've read that around 15% of the ivy incoming classes are recruited athletes, of which I would guess 99.99% would not make it through normal admissions. It seems to create a real disconnect in the ivy mission. Couple that with 'entitled' coaches, recruiting scandals (Yale), pressure on the athletes to train at the D1 level while taking 'real' class workloads, it just seems so disconnected in the modern sports era. Peer schools like MIT, CalTech, University of Chicago, Middlebury, (and I am sure a few others - sorry if I missed your favorite school) compete at the D3 level to keep their academic integrity in check. Other peer schools like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt are all P5 schools and get significant revenue from their conferences. Only other non-ivy peer school in a similar situation I can think of is Rice and I've read in the past they have seriously considered dropping football, dropping out of D1, etc. When do the ivies just punt on this whole "major" athletic thing and go D3?

[Trillium]

After reading that crimson article you have to wonder why the ivies play D1 athletics at all. I know this is beyond the scope of what is happening at Harvard women's hockey, but at some point, when does the 'harm' created by trying to compete at the D1 level outweigh the "good". I've read that around 15% of the ivy incoming classes are recruited athletes, of which I would guess 99.99% would not make it through normal admissions. It seems to create a real disconnect in the ivy mission.

What?!? You mean doing away with The Game, that most sacred of Harvard traditions?!?

Many years ago I read a book on Ivy Admissions that suggested that one of the key covert roles of Ivy Sports was to ensure privileged white families stayed in the majority, and providing a key means for them to prevail in the admissions process, rather than having to qualify solely through purely merit-based means (ie. highest SAT scores). (To digress briefly, the fact that it remains harder for Asians to gain Ivy admission in the process since higher SAT scores are required for them, is another policy to help maintain such "historic Ivy traditions". There were a number of policies in the Ivys that were put in place to protect the elite white majority, even for a long time deliberately keeping Jewish numbers low.)

The book noted that as a result. a very high proportion of the sports offered were ones which heavily skew to wealthy/waspy white elites (eg. rowing, sailing, skiing, tennis, golf, water polo, fencing, field hockey, ice hockey, lacrosse etc....all heavily played in the East Coast prep schools). This is no coincidence.

Further, it suggested that since most of the sports offered catered primarily to wealthy white families, with the means to invest in the "development of their children" through the best trainers, coaches, etc in high school to become "the best of the best athletically", the families were also disproportionately among those in student population who paid "full-freight", funding the ability to offer financial aid to all the brilliant-but-poor students who would otherwise not be able to afford an Ivy education.

Of course, not only do the athletes' families disproportionately pay the full sticker price, but in addition, alumni boosters of Athletics Programs are another significant source of donations for the athletic programs and the university as a whole. It is a fact that former athletes are among the universitys' most prolific donors later in life.

In other words, as always, follow the money.

[Cornholio]

Trillium - again your insight is very enlightening. I had always been impressed with the number of varsity sports the ivies sponsor (equestrian..) and always heard that one reason why they could sponsor so many was that they did not offer schollys so freed up money. But being the naive fool that I am, I never took it the extra step and considered it was a money spigot for the schools. I knew of one player who came from a very wealthy family who was border-line D1. A 'better' player on the club team but not one of the top. Was recruited and went to an ivy. Some of the parents were a bit surprised that a good but not one of the top club players was going D1 while some of the better players were not even being considered anywhere. Had heard that a donation was involved, nothing ever explicit and I took as just jealous comments from other parents but now who knows. Nothing as explicitly 'wrong' as say what the Yale soccer coach did but very much in a grey area at best. It really does put in perspective the ideals espoused by these 'elite' schools and reality. State U and ACHA hockey suddenly has a lot of appeal....

[dave1381]

This is the book I read on Ivy recruiting, back in 2004: Playing the Game: Inside Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League

Some economists I know tried to estimate exactly what share of students with some special admissions status (largely made up of recruited athletes) would not have been admitted under the regular process. Their answer is 75%, which I guess is more favorable finding to the athletes than the number just thrown out of 99.99%! This is the ungated version of the paper that has been published in the Journal of Labor Economics: https://tyleransom.github.io/research/legacyathlete.pdf The data was available because Harvard had to reveal a lot of its admissions data publicly due to the recent lawsuit alleging Asian-American discrimination.

[Skate79]

This isn't just a women's hockey problem. It's systemic within Harvard Athletics.

This week in The Harvard Crimson: Eighth Major Review of Harvard Athletic Department since 2016

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2...views-feature/

From the story, the Women's Cross Country coach stepped down based on allegations and complaints that draw a parallel to Coach Stone's current situation. So, it isn't unreasonable to assume that Harvard can point to the Women's CC investigation as a basis for terminating Coach Stone if she again refuses to accept a buyout or 'retirement' package.

[Skate79]

After reading that crimson article you have to wonder why the ivies play D1 athletics at all. I know this is beyond the scope of what is happening at Harvard women's hockey, but at some point, when does the 'harm' created by trying to compete at the D1 level outweigh the "good". I've read that around 15% of the ivy incoming classes are recruited athletes, of which I would guess 99.99% would not make it through normal admissions. It seems to create a real disconnect in the ivy mission. Couple that with 'entitled' coaches, recruiting scandals (Yale), pressure on the athletes to train at the D1 level while taking 'real' class workloads, it just seems so disconnected in the modern sports era. Peer schools like MIT, CalTech, University of Chicago, Middlebury, (and I am sure a few others - sorry if I missed your favorite school) compete at the D3 level to keep their academic integrity in check. Other peer schools like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt are all P5 schools and get significant revenue from their conferences. Only other non-ivy peer school in a similar situation I can think of is Rice and I've read in the past they have seriously considered dropping football, dropping out of D1, etc. When do the ivies just punt on this whole "major" athletic thing and go D3?

Not to go off topic but this is an interesting take. The football program plays in D-1AA which is several levels below the D-1 power conferences. This will not change and because there are plenty of schools such as Holy Cross and Lafayette that are on a similar level, the Crimson can be competitive w/o sacrificing academics in favor of a rigorous commitment to football activities.

Hockey is a different matter because the men and women play schools from Hockey East and the West where those schools offer athletic scholarships and have lower academic standards (Michigan excepted). In order for men's coach Ted Donato to field a competitive hockey team and match up with BC, BU, Michigan or Northeastern, he has to recruit players who are highly sought after by NHL teams (to wit: Sean Farrell, Matthew Coronato and Alex Laferriere, their three best forwards left early to sign with NHL teams this week). The admissions office is dead set on turning the school into a hockey factory where one and done or two and done is the norm. But given the amount of money being thrown around at athletes via NIL and the D-1 pressure to win now, Harvard may have to consider how long it wants to 'play this game' and look the other way when it comes to academics over athletics.

[dave1381]

Abra's recent social media posts, communicating the feedback that she received from the investigators, are more insightful than any of the recent reporting by The Globe or The Athletic or The Crimson on the investigation.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqWxiupL..._web_copy_link

[dave1381]

I do think it's plausible that the investigation will find that some players have been left hurt by the present system, that not enough has been done to prevent or care for that hurt, and this finding will be made public. That would be a fair outcome.

The cynical forecast, like I posted earlier, is that Harvard will narrowly focus public release of findings on hazing and racism, argue that despite missteps proper procedures were followed by the coaching staff and administrators, and continue to obscure and dodge major concerns or consequences.