Two former Rutgers basketball players and a student manager were not only stripped of their clothes but also their dignity, a lawsuit filed yesterday charges.
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The lawsuit stems from a December 1997 incident where men's basketball head coach Kevin Bannon ordered them to strip nude and run sprints after participating in a free throw shooting contest.
Bannon reportedly had team members remove articles of clothing for each free throw they missed.
Lawyers for former players Earl Johnson and Josh Sankes and former student manager Juan Pla, filed a complaint in Superior Court claiming the strip free throw event was a violation of the students' civil rights.
Sankes transferred to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. after the 1997 season, and Johnson left for Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. last year.
The lawsuit names the University, President Francis L. Lawrence, the Board of Governors, the Board of Trustees, Bannon, assistant coach Tod Kowalcyzk, athletic director Robert Mulcahy and his predecessor Fred Gruninger as defendants.
The University had not been served with any legal papers as of yesterday, but issued a response based on media reports.
"The University believes that any such lawsuit would be without legal merit, and the University will defend it vigorously," University Counsel David Scott said in a statement.
In addition, the lawsuit alleges that Bannon and Kowalczyk were guilty of similar conduct while at Rider University in Lawrenceville. The complaint charges that Bannon and Kowalczyk "employed wrongful hazing/harassment practices as part of the Rider basketball program and were unsuited to be entrusted with the emotional and physical well-being of student-athletes."
Despite this wording, the three men's attorney, Richard Winograd, said his clients are not seeking Bannon's resignation because it would only hurt the team.
"I'm not a vindictive person," Gary Sankes, Josh's father, said. "It's not up to me. It's up to the University to make that decision. I think they've already made the decision to keep him."
Gary Sankes believes the legal proceedings could have been avoided if the University had responded properly when the incident occurred.
"My son is the one who filed the lawsuit. He never received an apology from anybody," he said. "We never received any calls from the University of any kind. That's why we're following up this way."
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages as "redress for violations of the Law Against Discrimination ... Title IX ... and the Civil Rights Act."
""My son was so embarrassed about the whole situation that he never said anything to us until it hit the newspaper," Gary Sankes said. "The whole thing makes me sick. At a University like Rutgers you would never think of anything like this happening."
The lawsuit also alleges that Johnson and Sankes were signaled out because they had been recruited by Bannon's predecessor, Bob Wenzel.
"I heard from one of the other managers that some of the other players weren't made to take off their clothes, that they went back and put other clothes on, but the Wenzel players were made to take things off," Gary Sankes said. "They were watching them."
Mulcahy met with Bannon earlier this year after the story broke in local papers. He reportedly told Bannon that such an incident was inappropriate and should never happen again. No further action was taken.
"To me you have to take some sort of action," Gary Sankes said. "You can't just laugh something like this off."
Mulcahy was not accepting phone calls from the media yesterday. And Bannon's team practice yesterday was closed to the media.
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