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U-Colo. Allegedly Used Sex to Recruit Athletes

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washingtonpost.com
U-Colo. Allegedly Used Sex to Recruit Athletes


By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A03


DENVER, Jan. 29 -- Like other major football schools, the University of Colorado made big promises to recruit high school stars: a plush new dorm for athletes, fancy training meals, special tutors to help with class work and a chance to play before pro scouts. But Colorado coaches also dangled another inducement, according to the local prosecutor: sex with attractive female students.

In a court deposition reported by Denver and Boulder news media Thursday, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Keenan charged that "sex is being used as a bartering tool" at the university's recruiting parties.

"They were told they were going to get laid, we'll get you sex, sex Thursday night, they're going to get sex Friday night, oh, I'm sorry you missed it Thursday night, we'll make sure you get it tonight," Keenan said, according to a report in the Boulder Daily Camera. "Come here, we're the Big 12 champions, it's like this all the time."

University officials have conceded that football players and recruits did have sex with female students at recruiting parties in December 2001. But they said the sex at those affairs was consensual. Similar charges were raised after another recruiting party four years earlier.

At a news conference Thursday, university Provost Phil DiStefano said, "We strongly dispute the claim . . . that sex is used as a tool in athletic recruiting." Head football coach Gary Barnett said, "The accusations are wrong, inaccurate and false."

Three former Colorado students have sued the university, charging that they were raped by Colorado athletes and high school players who attended the 2001 parties. The parties were organized by the football team and paid for by the athletic department. The plaintiffs allege the university put them in peril by telling the high school recruits that the female students at the party wanted to have sex with them.

In her deposition, Keenan, the county prosecutor, agreed with the plaintiffs' assertion. The Daily Camera quoted Keenan as saying the high school students "had been built up by the players to believe that the situation they were going into was specifically to provide them with sex."

One woman went to the prosecutor charging rape after the 2001 party. In her deposition, Keenan said she finally decided not to bring a criminal case because the two high school players accused had been told that the women at the party consented to sex.

Keenan said Thursday the description of recruiting practices in her deposition was accurate. "I took an oath to tell the truth," she said in an interview. "They started asking me about those parties, and that's what I did." Keenan said she had been deposed by university lawyers as part of their defense against the civil suits. "But I don't think they got what they were expecting."

The University of Colorado has 29,000 students on its main campus in Boulder. To the consternation of its top administrators, who are seeking to emphasize the academic credentials of the big state school, Colorado was voted the nation's No. 1 party school last year in a student survey published by the Princeton Review, a college rating organization based in New York.

Colorado plays football in the Big 12, one of the nation's toughest leagues, with such formidable rivals as Nebraska and Oklahoma on the schedule every season.

In the heated dispute flaring about football recruiting at Boulder, all sides agree on a few points. The university had a recruiting weekend each fall at the end of the football season to attract high school prospects. This gathering generally included a big party, with many undergraduate women on hand. Some female athletes on scholarship were asked by their coaches to attend the party and help recruit the high school players.

In December 2001, the football team sponsored a party for recruits at a Boulder hotel, where some recruits had sex with female students. The next night, a crowd of football players and recruits went to an apartment shared by some of the women who had attended the party, and group sex occurred.

After their complaint of gang rape did not lead to criminal charges, two of the women who said they had been forced to have sex filed suit against the university. A third plaintiff filed a similar case late last year, charging that she was sexually assaulted at the parties and then lost her soccer scholarship when she complained to the university athletic department.

All three women sued under Title IX of the U.S. Education Act of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender by educational institutions. The suits are pending before a federal magistrate in Denver.

The university has sought to dismiss the case.

As part of the suit against the university, the plaintiff who had originally reported the rape deposed Keenan, the Boulder County prosecutor, to ask about her investigation of recruiting practices at the university. In the deposition, Keenan said she had found that football coaches promised recruits "we'll get you sex" if they agreed to play for Colorado.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company