Ohio University will not fire personnel in the Athletic Department following the recent disclosure of illegal activity among 17 football players, OU President Roderick McDavis said yesterday.
In a news conference at Cutler Hall, McDavis said coach Frank Solich will not be fired. The Executive Committee of the OU Board of Trustees did not discuss the matter Tuesday, he added.
The discussion was focused on how best to craft a policy that doesn't allow for a coach's discretion as the previous policy did, McDavis said. Kirby Hocutt, athletic director, will present a revised draft of a student-athlete discipline policy to the Board at their Oct. 19 and 20 meeting.
McDavis also said he was concerned about the negative media coverage in the past year, including a recent New York Times article about scandals at the university. He charged that the story was factually inaccurate.
The Times wrongly reported that OU currently faces a $9.3 million deficit, when, in fact, budget cuts reduced the projected deficit, McDavis said.
McDavis denied the allegation of Ashok Gupta, marketing professor, that the university's College of Business program at a college in India doled out inflated grades to push students along to graduation.
The allegation that the College of Business is wrongfully using money provided by the O'Blenness endowment is also wrong, he said.
McDavis also said a string of scandals in the past few years, including data breaches, plagiarism in the mechanical engineering department, lack of discipline on the football team and allegations of wrongdoing in the College of Business have not hurt the university's reputation.
Enrollment's up
our fundraising is up and rankings are holding steady McDavis said. We've not seen any evidence of a negative effect on the reputation of our university.
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Sean Gaffney
