XPost: alt.niggers, talk.politics.guns, rec.sport.olympics   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: nigger-lovers@disney.com   
      
   At Lenoir-Rhyne University, what was said in the locker room   
   didn’t stay there.   
      
   Last fall, the varsity women basketball players at the small   
   private school in Hickory held a members-only symposium on race   
   and social justice that was designed to unite the team.   
      
   Instead, it helped gut it.   
      
   Discussions intended to breach any divide among the players over   
   the explosive subjects of systemic racism and the police   
   killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor soon gave way to   
   teammates accusing other teammates of making racist comments,   
   eventually leading to campus protests, according to published   
   reports and some of the players’ social media pages.   
      
   In March, eight players and the student manager left the team,   
   leading the school to pay for an outside investigation by a   
   prominent Charlotte law firm into whether first-year coach Grahm   
   Smith had promoted a racially hostile atmosphere in his Division   
   II program.   
      
   One player, Laney Fox, released an audio recording of a Zoom   
   meeting in March during which Smith said he did not want her   
   back. Fox, who is white, later posted an angry four-page letter   
   on Facebook accusing university President Fred Whitt of “failing   
   Black students and athletes on this campus.”   
      
   Now, the divisions within the Lutheran-affiliated university   
   have surfaced 60 miles away in the Mecklenburg County courts as   
   a $26 million lawsuit pitting the departing student-athletes   
   against their former coach and school.   
      
      
   In their complaint, the players — including Butler High graduate   
   Michaela Dixon of Matthews — say they were either thrown off the   
   team or pressured to quit in retaliation for their stands   
   against racism and police violence and in support of social   
   justice. Five of the plaintiffs are white; four are black.   
      
   The lawsuit, which is being handled by the prominent Winston-   
   Salem legal tandem of Harold and Harvey Kennedy, was filed   
   within days of the school’s release of a report by two law   
   partners at Parker Poe, which found “no evidence that the   
   current women’s basketball staff promotes or facilitates a   
   culture of racial insensitivity.”   
      
   Smith’s roster decisions involving his players, according to the   
   investigators, “were motivated by legitimate reasons unrelated   
   to race or social justice issues.”   
      
   The Charlotte lawyers did not talk to the departing players,   
   who, according to the school, refused multiple requests for   
   interviews.   
      
   Through a university spokesman, Whitt and Smith declined comment   
   for this story.   
      
   In April, days after a former Minneapolis police officer was   
   convicted of murdering Floyd, Whitt said in a video message to   
   the campus that he and the school were committed to racial   
   justice and the free exchange of opinions, and would get to the   
   bottom of the allegations of racism in the women’s basketball   
   program.   
      
   “I believe we all want the same things — for Lenoir-Rhyne to be   
   a welcoming and inclusive place to live, to learn and to grow as   
   a community. It is who we are as a university ... It is who I am   
   as a person,” Whitt said.   
      
      
   Yet, the players’ lawsuit not only names the president as a   
   plaintiff, it also targets him with a $5 million libel claim   
   stemming from a public statement in April in which Whitt   
   challenged Fox’s “false claims on social media” that she had   
   been thrown off the team “for speaking out against racism and   
   advocating for social justice.”   
      
   Fox’s dismissal, the president said at the time, resulted from   
   “a legitimate coaching decision, and suggestions to the contrary   
   are simply false.”   
      
   The Parker Poe report later concluded that Smith cut ties with   
   Fox due to “a loss of trust and what he perceived to be her lack   
   of commitment and buy-in to the women’s basketball program.”   
      
   After Whitt issued his statement on April 17, Fox fired back on   
   Facebook the next day.   
      
   “Declaring me a liar without even investigating my claims is an   
   act of retaliation, not an act of sincere concern for me or any   
   of the athletes,” she wrote.   
      
   In a similar vein, the libel claim within the players’ lawsuit   
   describes Whitt’s comments toward Fox as “malicious and   
   willful,” subjecting the student to “public hate ... contempt,   
   ridicule and infamy.”   
      
   The complaint against the school, Whitt and Smith also calls for   
   millions of dollars in additional damages for breach of contract   
   and negligent representation, among other claims.   
      
   Harold Kennedy said neither he nor his nine clients would   
   comment about the case.   
      
   https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21011195/whitt-letter-to-   
   lr.pdf   
      
   ‘We have a voice’   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)