ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in relation to the deepening hazing scandal at Northwestern, where Phillips served as the athletics director from 2008-2021.
Attorneys Patrick Salvi II and Parker Stinar discussed the cases involving the school at a news conference in Chicago on Wednesday.
“It’s not just one coach. It’s an athletic department, possibly a president, that allowed this to go on for years and failed to take appropriate action to protect young individuals from traumatic events in their life,” Stinar told reporters.
The allegations of years of systematic sexualized hazing in the Northwestern football program led to the July 11 dismissal of long-time football coach Pat Fitzgerald, who was formerly a star player on the Northwestern football team.
The school has also since fired baseball coach Jim Foster, who was only on the job for one year.
There are now, on top of those issues, new allegations of wrongdoing involving the school’s softball, volleyball and cheerleading programs.
Specific to why Phillips is being named a defendant in suits filed over the scandals, “Certainly his tenure as athletic department head overlaps with the allegations that were made,” said Salvi, who alleged in the press conference that Phillips failed to appropriately respond to allegations of racial discrimination brought to him by a group of Black Northwestern football players, and that he failed to respond to allegations of sexual harassment brought to him by Northwestern cheerleaders.
Former cheerleader Hayden Richardson sued the university in 2021, saying she had been “sexually exploited” and subjected to ongoing “groping, harassment, and sexual touching” by alumni and “intoxicated football fans.”
Richardson later settled with the school.
Phillips wasn’t named in Richardson’s suit, but Salvi suggested that a climate of sexual misconduct against cheerleaders was rampant, and that the athletics department turned a blind eye.
“This has been a difficult time for the Northwestern University community, a place that my entire family called home,” Phillips said in a statement Thursday. “Over my 30-year career in intercollegiate athletics, my highest priority has always been the health and safety of all student-athletes.
“Hazing is completely unacceptable anywhere, and my heart goes out to anyone who carries the burden of having been mistreated. Any allegation that I ever condoned or tolerated inappropriate conduct against student-athletes is absolutely false. I will vigorously defend myself against any suggestion to the contrary.”
Phillips was hired by the ACC to take the commissioner post in 2021, and earlier this year, his original five-year contract was extended through 2029.
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Chris Graham
