Wisconsin athletics has launched what school officials "called a proactive study of its safety and security policies in the aftermath of sexual assault allegations at Michigan State," according to Todd Milewski of the WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL. UW AD Barry Alvarez said that he is "confident department staff members are treating safety and security 'with care and professionalism.'" Wisconsin Special Assistant to the AD Walter Dickey, who will be leading the review, said that it has "not been triggered by allegations but was viewed as an opportunity to find ways of strengthening protocols." Safety in interactions between student-athletes and medical and training staff members is "one of the areas of focus, but so is facility security." UW Athletic Board Chair Peter Miller said that the plan is to "allow the coaches and athletes involved in the process to share their knowledge instead of only responding to preordained areas of the study." UW officials "hope to have the report done in April." Alvarez said, “This terrible situation at Michigan State presents us with an opportunity to make sure we have our own house in order, and to make corrections or changes as needed" (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 2/28).
HEAD-ON APPROACH: In Tacoma, Ryan Clark noted Washington AD Jennifer Cohen wants to "find the strongest approach" to address the topic of sexual misconduct with athletes and "how to prevent it." Cohen said, “You have to address it. You have to take action. You have to educate. You have to make sure you have more systems in place to not have it happen again.” Cohen said that UW has "programming throughout all of its student-athlete groups, which contains 650 athletes in 22 different sports." She also said the athletic department has a "program for its incoming freshman in addition to each team having a seminar around sexual misconduct and other issues like hazing." Cohen noted that the department brought in activist Alexis Jones to "talk with the football team." Cohen said that the school hired Jones to "develop to a curriculum across all of the men’s teams to create awareness about how to treat women while emphasizing subjects like sexual assault and harassment." Washington men’s basketball coach Mike Hopkins also had a district attorney from the King County prosecutor’s office "give a 90-minute presentation with the team about sexual misconduct" (Tacoma NEWS TRIBUNE, 2/27).
DANTONIO SHARES MESSAGE: Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio yesterday addressed the media for the first time in over a month, saying he wants to "commit to being part of the solution" across the college landscape. Dantonio said his message to players is "Be respectful of the process, make sure that we respect women, obviously, make sure that we have no incidents and we have to be very careful everywhere we go and understand that this is a process. They know the expectations here, they know the guidelines and the rules and we're going to follow those and stay within those" (MLIVE.com, 2/27).
