CHICAGO — Allegations of hazing in Northwestern’s athletic programs broadened Wednesday as attorneys said female and male athletes reported misconduct inside two other sports and suggested sexual abuse and racial discrimination throughout the football program was so rampant that coaches knew it was happening.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said he and other attorneys have received disturbing details from former baseball and softball players on the university, along with growing complaints of abuse within the football program, which players described as widespread and devastating.
“It is a civil rights issue for me,” said Crump, who said 50 former Northwestern athletes — female and male — have spoken to the Levin & Perconti law firm.
“I feel these players have the appropriate to be respected and valued and never hazed, intimidated and retaliated.”
Black football players appeared to have faced an extra layer of abuse.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses fired football coach Pat Fitzgerald of enabling a culture of racism, including forcing players of color to chop their hair and behave otherwise to be more in keeping with the “Wildcat Way.”
“The abusive culture was especially devastating for a lot of players of color,” said former Northwestern quarterback and receiver Lloyd Yates, who’s Black.
Crump and Chicago-based attorney Steven Levin said they’ve not filed a lawsuit yet on behalf of any athletes. The attorneys represent 15 people, including Yates, and have been in contact with dozens of former athletes. Crump said nearly all of those are football players.
Warren Miles Long, a running back on Northwestern’s football team starting in 2013, said players were put right into a culture where sexual violence and hazing was “rampant.”
He said recent recruits had no sense of whether it was normal or limited to Northwestern.
The attorneys declined to detail the previous athletes’ complaints concerning the baseball or softball programs.
The Evanston, Illinois-based private school fired baseball coach Jim Foster amid allegations of misconduct last week, three days after Fitzgerald was dismissed.
Northwestern has been added to a protracted list of American universities to face a scandal in athletics and should eventually join the trend of constructing large payouts following allegations of sexual abuse.
A former Wildcats football player filed the primary lawsuit against Fitzgerald and members of the college’s leadership Tuesday, searching for damages stemming from the hazing scandal.
More lawsuits, filed by multiple law firms, are expected to follow from former football and baseball players in addition to from student-athletes who played other sports for the private school.
Yates said every member of the team were victims, “irrespective of what our role was on the time,” and lamented the college and team’s lack of leadership.
“The university and football program allow us to down and that’s why we’re here today,” Yates said, surrounded by some teammates who’ve also retained the Crump-led team of attorneys.
In a letter to Northwestern’s faculty and staff, University President Michael Schill wrote that an outdoor firm can be hired to judge how the college detects threats to student-athletes’ welfare and to look at the athletics culture in Evanston, Illinois, and its relationship to academics at the celebrated institution.
Northwestern fired Fitzgerald last week after a university investigation found allegations of hazing by 11 current or former players, including “forced participation, nudity and sexualized acts of a degrading nature,” Schill wrote.
After the college initially suspended Fitzgerald, The Each day Northwestern published an article including allegations from a former player who described specific instances of hazing and abuse and suggested he can have been aware.
Fitzgerald, who led Northwestern for 17 seasons and was a star linebacker for the Wildcats, has maintained he had no knowledge of the hazing.
Fitzgerald said after being fired that he was working along with his agent, Bryan Harlan, and his lawyer, Dan Webb, to “protect my rights in accordance with the law.”
An emailed statement Wednesday from Fitzgerald’s defense team quoted Webb responding to allegations, saying: “no arguments were made that might present any substantive, detailed, factual allegations, let alone evidence, about Coach Fitzgerald’s conduct,” and that Fitzgerald’s legal team “will aggressively defend against these and another allegations with facts and evidence.”
Webb, a former U.S. attorney, has been some of the sought-after private lawyers within the country for a long time.
The previous Northwestern football player, identified within the Tuesday lawsuit as John Doe, alleged Fitzgerald, Schill, the board of trustees and athletic director Derrick Gragg enabled and concealed sexual misconduct and racial discrimination.
The player, who was on the football team from 2018 to 2022, had his filing submitted by the Chicago-based Salvi Law Firm.
A second lawsuit was filed Wednesday on behalf of one other former Northwestern athlete who was on the football team through the same period, identified as John Doe 2.
It named Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner James J. Phillips, Northwestern’s athletic director until 2021, as a defendant. Phillips didn’t immediately reply to a text request for comment.
“It wasn’t just confined to 1 bad actor,” said attorney Parker Stinar, adding that he expects to file several more related lawsuits.