Admin discusses sexual assault issues

About 230 students and employees attended an 11 a.m. all-campus meeting Friday called by CSC President Randy Rhine in response to news articles related to sexual assault cases involving a former student and a high school football recruit.

About 100 people gathered in the Student Center Ballroom and another 134 attended via Zoom to hear Rhine address issues related to the recruit, convicted of sexual battery as a juvenile, and a former student who was arrested March 22 in connection with an off-campus sexual assault.

Rhine addressed an article about the football recruit, published March 24 in The Eagle, confirming that the recruit will not be attending CSC. He declined further comment on details related to the case.

Multiple emails sent from The Eagle seeking comment from the recruit’s father about CSC’s decision went unanswered as of press time Wednesday.

Head Football Coach Jay Long, invited to speak at the meeting about the situation, was unable to attend because he was traveling Rhine said.

Rhine also addressed the arrest of former CSC student Malik A. Ahmed-Hosie. (See related article, Page 4). 

In a March 24 Chadron Police Department press release, Ahmed-Hosie was arrested on a warrant accusing him of First-Degree Sexual Assault, a class II felony.

“As we continue to work through issues like these that arise, it’s important for you to remember there are policies and regulations that are in play and situations are often complex,” Rhine said at the meeting. “As we work toward solutions, it takes time and patience. We are dealing with people’s lives. We must be accurate, we must be supporting, and we must rely on establish processes and procedures.”

Rhine said that the recruit was an outlier, and cases like this aren’t seen very often. He also stressed that this is not a unique thing to the athletics department because with the college’s admissions and student conduct policies and procedures there are things that can and cannot be asked.

“So, you know if we need to review those policies, then certainly we will need,” Rhine said. “We will do that. But there are reasons why those policies are built the way they are and that not going to keep somebody from not being honest with us. But don’t think that this is just an athletic problem because it’s not.”

With the procedure, Joel Smith, CSC’s athletic director, said there are interviews with coaching staffs at prospective institutions, but they don’t get the full picture while trying to vet through candidates.

“We don’t do criminal backgrounds on every recruit that we do,” he said. “That’s just not possible for us to do, neither does the institution. What I can tell you is, we will never purposefully jeopardize anything on this campus.”

Along with a handful of questions from CSC students, Mary Clai Jones, English associate professor, responded to Rhine with a suggestion that had been discussed by the Diversity, Equality, Inclusion Committee, to create a safe place for students, including a women’s center, in the basement of the library as a part of the new inclusivity, diversity, equality and access (IDEA) Space.

“Women need a space on campus to feel safe and not feel victimized or blamed, Jones said. “Currently, the only space they have to go to is Title IX, that is an excellent resource we have on campus, but one of the by-products of the Title IX passing in 1972 was a fusion of women centers around the country and we’re a little bit behind the times in this, so I would like for all of us to come together and advocate to have this phase dedicated as part of the IDEA space on campus.”

Through discussions of implementing background checks and questions about previous cases, Rhine answered his last question with his own lengths to provide a safe campus, willing to go as far as necessary to accomplish that.

“I want to go as far as it takes for the women on this campus to feel safe,” He said. “I want us to go as far as it takes so that I don’t have to stand up here in front of you and talk about broken lies and talk about people that have been damaged in the process. Nobody wins. So that’s how far I’m willing to go.”