Nichole D’Antonio accused an Eastern football player of sexually assaulting her in 2003.

She had met the player at a party in late August and he had helped her and her roommate back to their room in Lincoln Hall.

D’Antonio said the player spent the night in the girls’ room because he was afraid to get in trouble with his coaches. All three students had been drinking alcohol at the party.

D’Antonio said she awoke in the night to the football player, who she wished remained unnamed, sexual assaulting her. He then silently left.

D’Antonio received an exam at the hospital the following morning; however, no rape kit was completed at that time.

“I just wanted to get out of there,” D’Antonio said. “I wished I had (done a rape kit), but I was just in another planet.”

For student-athletes who are charged and or found guilty of crimes, there are no set standards for consequences on the books for varying levels and types of crimes set by Eastern Athletics or the NCAA. It is up to the discretion of the deciding bodies on a case-by-case basis to decide what consequences will befall athletes who have been found engaging in varying criminal activities.

Jason Hall, the associate athletic director for compliance and academic services, said if an athlete is accused of doing something physically harmful or threatening to someone else, his office would probably be notified immediately. But that does not mean the department would provide assistance to the athlete.

“Just like other students don’t have anybody advocating for them when they do anything wrong, we don’t do that,” Hall said. “We don’t have a policy or a standard procedure to assist students in those types of cases – either on- or off-campus, for that matter.”

D’Antonio’s roommate at the time of the assault, Sara Stratton, went to the University Police Department to file a report, however D’Antionio did not want to pursue the charges with the UPD because she said she was afraid of the football player, but later decided to take the player to Judicial Affairs.

A hearing took place on Nov. 13 and the board unanimously voted the football player was guilty of assault. The board expelled the player from the university immediately and ruled he could not practice or play for Eastern.

However, D’Antonio and a professor, who wished to remain anonymous, who had been helping D’Antonio deal with the ordeal, said they saw the football player Dec. 1 at the Student Recreation Center. D’Antonio said the player met with Shirley Stewart, the vice president for student affairs at the time, on Dec. 1.

She said Stewart told the player he could remain on campus to finish the semester. He transferred at the end of Fall 2003.

Today, Eastern hands out a student code of conduct in a student planner to all athletes. This covers everything from drug testing to eligibility. It is an extended version of the general student code of conduct that non-athletes are held to when they chose to attend the university.

Each team’s coaches can then add to and create their own more strict guidelines for their members to abide by. Most teams at Eastern do not supplement the general student code.

The football team has no additional conduct contract members sign.

There are general guidelines for orderly conduct in the student planner, distributed to all athletes once a year.

“If the individual sport wants to work with their team individually or tweak it a little bit, they may have their own,” said interim athletic director Ken Baker. “But the planner is going to be the one they are held to.”

Hall said the policy for dealing with situations in which student-athletes violate conduct code has been in place since before he arrived at Eastern more than two years ago.

He said Eastern athletics does not have a policy in place, which outlines consequences for specific criminal violations.

“My personal opinion is if you’ve got a program where your student-athletes are in generally good behavior you don’t have to over-place it,” he said.

Hall said that because Eastern recruits a higher caliber of student than most other schools in the Ohio Valley Conference, his office is confident that the type of student-athletes brought in overall do better academically and behaviorally.

“I think there’s a clear correlation if you look at national studies that better grades tend to tie to better behavior. So as that pulls up I think the behavior of our student-athletes is better and the academic performance of our student-athletes is better and that lends itself to do a lot of positive things for us,” he said.

Hall said because Eastern has not had serious criminal situations yet, the department does not have a standard policy of consequences in place if they occur.

“So all in all we just haven’t had some of those desperate situations and those could arise at any time,” he said.

While there is also no policy in place to aid student-athletes who get in trouble with Judicial Affairs, Hall did say if the violation was related to athletics, or if the student were to ask a coach to come along for moral support or serve as a character reference the office would find that acceptable.

“I don’t have a problem with that and I don’t think anybody would any more than another student asking a professor to go to speak on their behalf or sit with them,” he said.

Since there is no set policy or chain of events that follows violations, Hall said if a student-athlete is brought to Judicial Affairs on a code of conduct violation there are a number of things which can take place next, depending on the offense.

“If Judicial Affairs cites a student for a violation of some sort, let’s say an RA catches a student with alcohol in their room and they are underage, they probably aren’t going to notify us immediately. They are probably going to handle it just like they would any other student,” Hall said. “In the case of just a normal regular student violation, I’m going to get a report on it after the fact. They give me that in writing and if there’s any concerns they let me know.”

With more serious violations, Hall said the athletic department’s involvement with student violations is more “case-by-case.”

He said however, the typical process for a serious offense will begin in Judicial Affairs. They would notify Hall and possibly the respective head coach.

Hall would then notify the athletic director, and then the vice president for student affairs would be informed. From there a decision could be made, or the school president could get involved.

If Judicial Affairs decided a student-athlete could not participate in their sport, Hall said the athletic department would abide by that decision or support the student-athlete in his/her appeal of the ruling.

“I would imagine any employee, whether it’s a coach or any campus RSO, who defied a ruling, would be in serious trouble,” he said.

Hall said that in the case of a serious charge without an official police report, his office would do everything they could to try and “figure the situation out.”

Hall said the department would be careful not to get too involved because there can be accusations that they tried to cover things up, or tried to “taint the process.”

“We’re not (trying to hide anything); we try to gather basic information to help out the alleged victim,” he said.

Hall said after his office had discerned whether the allegations were likely to be true, they would then pass any information off to the proper authorities, and inform those who brought the complaint to them of the proper people to contact if they wanted to pursue the issue. He said, after that, his department would be happy to cooperate in any way the could.

“Now we’ve had a change in administration and one’s approach may be slightly different than the other, but I believe that’s a fairly consistent approach that would be taken as it would be to streamline the information and then it would need to go through the proper channels,” Hall said.

Hall said, based on police reports, eyewitness accounts, and other evidence, they would then make a determination on whether the student “needed to be representing us at that given time or whether that’s something or somebody that we need to keep off the field or court or whatever the case may be.”

The NCAA is the governing body for college athletics. While they have many rules and sanctions on recruitment, drugs, training and academics, they do not publish or enforce a code of conduct for all member institutions.

Baker said the NCAA does not set a specific code of conduct for athletes.

“Their (the NCAA) rules are strictly for things related to eligibility and they have general rules on ethics and those kind of things but as far as specific conduct rules, they leave that up to their member institutions to do their own thing.”

Stacey Osburn, of the public and media relations department of the NCAA, said because the NCAA does not have one code of conduct for all institutions, each institution is encouraged to have and develop their own code of conduct that is in line with the individual school’s mission and overall focus.

“So for that reason we do have general guidelines for code of conduct that we provide to the schools through our constitution, but they (the schools) are responsible for developing their own code of conduct if they feel that it is appropriate and relevant,” she said.

Osburn said the NCAA does not have a bylaw that addresses legal matters of student-athletes.

“The membership has decided not to legislate with regard to the law, and so it is therefore the responsibility of law enforcement officials and institution administration to properly admonish any student-athlete who engages in criminal activity,” she said.

Student Conduct Code

Standard II:

Eastern students respect the health, safety, welfare and rights of all persons.

Violations of this standard:

b. “Intimidation, staking, harassment, coercion, verbal abuse, or any other conduct which has a direct and substantial disruptive influence on the life or educational endeavors of any person.

c. Sexual misconduct

d. Conduct which is lewd, indecent, obscene, or disorderly

Definitions:

Sexual misconduct is any physical act of a sexual nature, committed under duress or by force, or without the consent (a freely given, knowing agreement) of the individuals involved. Consent is deemed incapable of being given if the person’s physical and/or mental control is markedly diminished as the result of alcohol, other drugs, illness, injury, or any other reason.