Pokey Chatman Update

Thank heaven for the anonymous comment function. A report just in from Baton Rouge (I think -- the writer seems familiar enough with the campus) adds nuance to the picture of the Pokey Chatman resignation. This short essay was originally posted to the comments section of my previous article, but it has enough of a new perspective to deserve a more prominent place on the blog. Tiger321 writes:

"Along with remembering that most of what's been reported is based on rumor, we should also keep in mind that the media doesn't (and perhaps can't) give the whole story. One aspect that's been mostly left out in the coverage of this saga is that there are in fact people who are supporting Pokey. LSU's campus newspaper today included an article in which a former player (who remains anonymous) does--however tactfully--defend Chatman. Also in the news today, Sylvia Fowles's comments to the press following the NCAA Selection Show last night were nothing if not supportive of Pokey. And Fowles and the anonymous former player are joined by numerous fans, at LSU and in Baton Rouge in general, who have no direct contact with the media and so, naturally, wouldn't be included in the coverage.

"The other thing that seems to be (completely) absent from the issues raised by the media and blogging communities like this one is that, should the rumors prove to be true, there is still no basis for LSU 'forcing' Pokey to resign. If her resignation was indeed of her own accord, fine--that is a separate issue. But, if her resignation was, as the rumor goes, the result of the report of her having a sexual relationship with a player and the subsequent investigation, then a different problem arises. I'm not going to jump in on the debate over the ethics of sex with students/players. I will, however, point out that LSU does not have a non-fraternization policy (though they are now working on creating one). I know of university professors here who have had 'relations' with both graduate and undergraduate students. I also know of LSU graduate TAs who have had sexual relationships with undergraduates. While these relationships are all 'frowned upon' by the university, they are not prohibited. I've looked, fruitlessly thus far, for an NCAA policy prohibiting fraternization, which could, in a pinch, explain (logically) LSU's handling of the matter. But without such an excuse, I'm inclined to believe the 'conspiracy theory'-esque lines of thinking that Pokey is no longer at LSU because she is a woman, or because she is black, or because she is gay, or perhaps all three."

Let me say too that this Radical has always been against policies that prohibit fraternization (a fabulous euphemism) for two reasons. The first is I am against policing in situations that are not inherently criminal: because a relationship *could* harm someone is not a reason to prohibit it, particularly when everyone involved is sexually mature and the pleasure in the relationship is mutual. People are routinely harmed by being married to the wrong person...oh don't worry. I won't start again. But I think it is one of the bad lessons of feminism that power imbalance in a relationship makes the person of lesser power inherently incapable of previous knowledge about the situation s/he is entering into, choice or reasonable consent. Or that the heartbreak suffered at the end of the relationship is inherently more painful and damaging than in a relationship where equality reigns.

But the other, more important, reason is: research shows that overwhelmingly, those who are disciplined under such regulations are lesbians and black men, and that the regulations themselves become as great a site of injustice and inequity as the relationships they are supposed to discourage. So putting such regulations in place creates yet another arena for letting another, possibly more pernicious, set of power relationships to play out, with permanent consequences for livelihoods and reputations.

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Relevant update on my Atlanta bed and breakfast: I was discussing the Chatman situation last night with the gang at the inn as an alternative to talking about history and/or the President. And the innkeeper, a woman who is nearly sixty, told me that she had an affair with her dissertation advisor thirty years ago. Subsequently they were married, but they continue to live in separate houses to this day. Hence, the former dissertation director was not there to explain his torrid past.

Is It Still The Children's Hour?

If you have not done so already, read what you can about Pokey Chatman's resignation as head coach of the women's basketball program at LSU. Chatman was, until she announced her immediate resignation yesterday, the head coach of one of the top programs in the nation, a program that trounced powerhouse Tennessee in the SEC tournament and was expected to go to the Final Four this year. A former LSU player and the protege of Sue Gunter, one of the true greats in women' basketball, Chatman is considered by many to be the best women's basketball brain, and the finest recruiter, in the nation.

And now she has resigned to "pursue other career options." This phrase sets off the homophobia alarm for me: it's equivalent to the sentence that politicians toss out when they have been defeated for re-election: "I'm looking forward to spending more time with my family." Uh-huh. Sure.

Actually, the first thing that set off an alarm bell for me was the New York Times reassuring us that Chatman had not "struck" one of her players. So who thought she did? Anyone who has ever seen Chatman on the sideline, as opposed to Pat Summit or that very successful termagent Jody Conradt who coaches at UT-Austin, could pretty much guess that she is the consummate professional. Not that Summit or Conradt do hit their players, but myself, I would stay out of reach during a tight game if I saw that kind of look on my coach's face. Now allusions to a "relationship" with a former player have begun to appear, something Chatman probably hoped to avoid by resigning, but no dice. Since everyone else is talking in euphemisms, your Dr. Radical will be blunt: she is being fired because she is a lesbian, and she probably wouldn't have been anywhere near so vulnerable (there are a great many top college basketball coaches who are known to be lesbians, at least one of whom is married to a gay man and whose long-term partner is an assistant on her staff) if she weren't black. And more precisely, she is not being fired because she is a lesbian, but because now that someone talked, she has now been publicly *named* as a lesbian.

And nobody -- but nobody -- is standing up for her. Not a single head women's basketball coach has spoken up for her, not anyone at LSU gay or straight, not a former player. Nobody.

If athletics -- the top career choice for real or for fantasy of many lesbians -- were not so damn homophobic this wouldn't be a problem either. Chatman has been regarded as the best recruiter in the nation up until now, but as a heterosexual friend who is a crew coach at a D-I school once explained to me, in the recruiting season, other coaches (some of whom are also lesbians but in the closet) will say to parents some version of the following: "Look, do you want your daughter to play for me or The Lesbian? Because that's the choice here." Hence, Renee Portland's famous edict that no lesbian would ever play for her Penn State roundball squad, was not "just" homophobia. It was a recruiting tactic tacitly or explicitly supported by the athletic department at Penn State, and possibly a smokescreen for hiding some feature of her own private life. And what did Penn State do when a player finally sued for being relentlessly harassed about her sexuality, including being ordered by Portland to "prove" her heterosexuality by dating men or be cut from the squad? They fined Portland (a woman who probably makes between 300k and 400k a year) $10,000. Now there's someone who should be barred from any contact with the young because she's dishonest, manipulative and cruel.

That Chatman should even have to consider "other career options" when she is so brilliant at what she does breaks my heart. And you know what? Bobby Knight does hit and physically manhandle his players, is incredibly verbally abusive to them and to everyone around him, and he is still a head coach of a powerful program. According to Slate Knight's transgressions have included berating cheerleaders and stuffing a fan in a trashcan on national television.

So if she were a violent man, or if she were a demonstrably homophobic woman, Pokey Chatman would still have her job and a bright career in women's basketball ahead of her. But she's not: she's a smart, black lesbian, and she has got to go.

Bonus question of the day: name at least one R-One history department where it is widely known internally and externally that most second wives of male faculty are their former graduate students? For extra bonus points, name the department where tenured faculty in search of a partner are actually told that the department does not frown on choosing a mate -- homo or hetero-- from the ranks of the graduate students. Not that I think that's a bad thing! Graduate students need love too! And contrary to popular wisdom, I still believe that men and women in their twenties are capable of consent in relationships with older people. But I am also saying: if Pokey Chatman were a tenured professor at LSU, she would not be looking for other career options today, even though she might be nursing a good case of public embarassment.