A former swimmer at the University of California sent an unanswered e-mail to the school’s chancellor and athletic director in 2010, reporting sexual harassment by school employee Mohamed Muqtar, who was fired earlier this month after sexual assault allegations.
Jenna Rais swam at Cal in the early 2000s. In 2010, she sent an e-mail to school officials, claiming that Muqtar, an athletic department employee, had “asked about her sex life, rubbed against her in his office and had windows facing the pool to satisfy ‘perverted motives’,” according to PennLive.com. The e-mail went to then-chancellor Robert Birgenau and then-athletic director Sandy Barbour, but Rais says she never received even a reply.
“I was even more shocked that I didn’t receive any response,” she told PennLive. “I expected something. I thought that, if they really couldn’t take any more action that they would let me know – you know: ‘Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry but we can’t take any more action.’ Something like that.”
Muqtar was fired earlier this month after a former Cal basketball player filed a lawsuit alleging that Muqtar had used his position of power within the athletic department to sexually harass her and others. You can read more about that here.
Barbour is now the athletic director at Penn State University, and is drawing criticism for failing to respond to Rais’ report back in 2010.
If the school chancellor and athletic director receive an email from a student, and student-athlete, saying they were abused by an employee, you can’t just use the excuse that you missed it. If your boss emails you something at work, don’t thInk they will let it slide if you just say you missed it.
Not jumping to conclusions in this case, but I will say that the excuse of “missing the email” would certainly not be okay if they did use that
I believe the swimmer. Cal swimmers experience and/or witness abuse…emotional, psychological, and physical abuse. There are also too many preventable, avoidable injuries and broken bones. Oh…and anyone on deck and in the stands can hear what comes out of the coaches mouth. Student swimmers stay silent because of the threating environment. It is very difficult to change in the current environment. Swimmers need safety and support and the ability to keep scholarships if they are going to shine a light on the reality of college swimming.
Oh no… A collegiate swim coach… Coaching a top 2 team in the WORLD yells at his adult swimmers??? Put him in Jail for life!!!!!!!!! If you want to be babied go play a different sport. Mediocrity comes from being babied and always staying in your comfort zone.
Do your research on Sandy Barbour. At Penn State there were allegations of abuse in 3 sports. Women’s Gymnastics, Women’s Hockey, and just recently Women’s Swimming. Numerous athletes and coaches went to administration. Just google the sports at PSU with allegations of abuse and you will see.
I think Cal has had some issues. I’ve been reading about the football player that died in practice that was covered up (Ted Agu is name I think) by the athletic department. The case is still going on I believe.
Not sure I agree that the Ted Agu incident was covered up. There was a tribute on the calbears.com website to the young man for most of that season as I recall. May be true that the case is still ongoing, but if I knew about it, not much of a cover up.
A cover up of the events that lead to his death. Concussion.inc has a lot of info on it and you can find information in other places. Not good imho.
I never assume that any email I send:
a) arrives at its intended destination
b) is read by the intended recipient
Is there more to this story?
What are you getting at?
Persistance is what Becky D is getting at. If it’s that important, don’t stop until someone knows, like the Dean of Students or the President of the university.
If I send an email and expect some kind of action, yet nothing happens, I don’t automatically assume that the other person doesn’t care. However, the person who sent the email in this instance might have good reason to believe that the email was received, read, and ignored. We don’t have enough information to know.
I get 100s of emails a day. Sometimes I miss one and it’s the most important one.
But she could also have ignored it to make her job “easier.”
Wow! 100s! If it takes 1 min to open email, to read and to close it, and if it takes at least 1min to respond then it will take more than 7 hours a day to process them. You are a super person I would say. Unless those emails are of technical nature (some kind of log) that required neither to be read nor to be responded. If it is so then automatic sorting them in different folders by senders and topics will make your life easier and you will never miss the important ones.
Yozhik… In a business world you often get over a 100 emails a day… and yes people miss emails all the time. I agree with GOBLET and BECKY D. Just because an email is sent doesn’t mean the person doesn’t care….
I’m sure you’ve emailed… called…. or texted…. someone and they didnt respond. Does that mean they don’t care about you?
Sure, I totally get how hard it is to keep up on work emails, but do you have an assistant whose whole job is to make sure that emails like this get seen by the right people? That makes things a lot easier. Because I can assure you that the chancellor and AD at Cal each have at least one person like that working directly under them.
At my alma mater, which is MUCH smaller than Cal (~15,000 total enrollment), the Chancellor has an assistant, and that assistant has an assistant, both of whom are charged with filtering out the Chancellor’s inbox and deciding what the Chancellor needs to see and what can be addressed on a lower level (source:… Read more »
I agree if they had an assistant. Maybe they wouldn’t have had someone to do those tasks for them since it was 2010? Technology was very different back then.
I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not. I upvoted just in case.
it is sarcasm for sure ….” technology was very different back than (only 8 years ago !!!)
Victim blaming
I do not think that is victim blaming. I believe that 99%+ of the abuse allegations brought out are probably true but I feel like any thought or question brought up that does not 100% agree with the accusers storyline is called victim blaming. If people are allowed to speculate with minimal actual knowledge,as is the whole point of these comment section, then let them do it without trying to shame them. That said I have seen comments that deserve for someone to be ashamed.
Wow. Great spot for Barbour now. The university that aided and abetted a child rapist.