Sally Mason has a serious problem

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By Times staff | Tuesday, July 29, 2008 |

On Jan. 16, University of Iowa President Sally Mason met with the Quad-City Times Editorial Board and had this to say about taking personal leadership in enforcing standards of conduct for Hawkeye student athletes: “If I get involved with that, we have an even more serious problem.”

Mason has a much more serious problem now. The Iowa Board of Regents is reopening its investigation into how the university handled a student’s rape allegation against two football players.

Letters from the victim’s mother — made public in the Iowa City Press-Citizen this week — accuse Mason and coaches of abandoning the student victim after she made the complaint.

“Shame on all of you for turning away from your moral and professional obligations. ... Shame on you for dropping this woman like a plague and turning your backs on her,” the mother wrote to the university on May 16. It wasn’t her first letter to the university. The university is now disclosing a Nov. 19 letter from the mother expressing concern that the investigation was being handled internally.

This week, Mason released both letters with a statement, “expressing my profound and sincere regret,” for the failure to notify the regents of the letters. Mason said she believed the letters violated student confidentiality laws.

Court affidavits in the subsequent criminal investigation suggest that while Mason allowed the athletic department to handle it, critical evidence of the alleged attack was discarded from the dorm room where police reports say the attack occurred.

Evidence suggests the school did act swiftly to protect itself and its reputation. Those court affidavits now show the two implicated players were off the team within a week of the alleged attack. By December, the university announced both had left the school.

Iowa City police pieced together an investigation and the two were formally charged in May, seven months after the victim told University of Iowa police.

In January’s editorial board interview at the Times, Mason talked admirably of the integrity of the athletic department, calling Athletic Director Gary Barta “a man with good values, a man who understands student athletes.

“The day I start to try to do his job is the day we might get a new athletic director.“

The student who filed the rape complaint didn’t need a university president concerned about the integrity of an athletic department. She needed a university president concerned about the safety of students.

Mason’s choice to relegate this woman’s rape complaint to an athletic director seems indefensible for any university president. It is inexplicable for a female university president.