UAlbany sued for Title IX Violations surrounding Women’s Tennis program
ALBANY — A lawsuit alleging Title IX violations surrounding the University at Albany’s March 2016 decision to end its Women’s Tennis program was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
According to Deadspin, the lawsuit says the plaintiffs (Isidora Pejovic from Serbia, Chae Bean Kang from South Korea, Alba Sala Huerta from Spain, and Chassidy King, a U.S. citizen) are suing to “stop Defendants from discriminating against them and all others similarly situated” and for “injunctive relief to reinstate the women’s tennis program and supervise an accelerated Title IX compliance program” as well as “monetary damages.”
Gordon Graham, who served as the team’s coach from 2011 to shortly after its termination, name also is mentioned throughout the suit.
The suit lays out a predicament faced by non-U.s. Citizen team members at the hands of the University:
UAlbany’s timing and secrecy regarding the decision to terminate the program also limited the players’ options; the suit goes on to allege:
On the evening of March 23, 2016, in a surprise announcement, Defendant Benson told Plaintiff Graham that Defendant SUNY Albany would terminate women’s tennis immediately following the team’s participation in the America East Conference Championships. Defendant Benson then warned Plaintiff Graham, who had personally recruited many of the players that would be impacted by the university’s decision, not to tell anyone about SUNY Albany’s machinations. Defendant Benson said that he wanted to ensure that word of the decision would not leak to the team, the players’ families, or the public before his planned press release.
Plaintiff Graham nevertheless told the players about the termination after practice the next morning. The players trusted Graham. He had recruited them from around the world and Plaintiff Graham knew they would be devastated. After breaking the news to his team, Plaintiff Graham and his assistant coaches took the players to meet with Defendant Benson. After that meeting a furious Benson screamed at and threatened Graham.
The suit comes almost a year after Graham filed a November 2016 complaint with the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) alleging UAlbany gave male students a disproportionate amount of opportunities to participate in sports compared to their female counterparts.
The DOE acknowledged the report in January, and a February Times Union article said the department would indeed investigate the school. In August, the department issued a 12-page report from its Office for Civil Rights concluding that UAlbany did not provide equal participation opportunities for both male and female students, in the past three athletic seasons.
As reported by the Times Union, UAlbany entered into a resolution agreement with the Department of Education that laid out a roadmap for how the school will try to improve opportunities for female athletes over the next three years. Additionally, the school was not forced to make an admission of guilt and faced zero financial penalties.
On Monday, a UAlbany spokesman told Deadspin that they had not been served and had no comment on the lawsuit.
Dylan Rossiter contributed to this story
