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| | Wednesday, May 17 Hearing cancelled after new legal motions | |||||
| Staff and wire reports KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- A former University of Tennessee football captain who is attempting to prevent the release of his and other athletes' records to the NCAA earned a preliminary victory, as the NCAA apparently has postponed its Tuesday meeting with English professor Linda Bensel-Meyers. In a related matter, the player, center Spencer Riley, dropped the NCAA from a lawsuit he had filed Monday against the NCAA, University of Tennessee and Bensel-Meyers, who was scheduled to meet with NCAA investigator Ron Barker to review records that she says reveal a pattern of academic abuses with athletes. A temporary injunction hearing asking to stop Bensel-Meyers from turning over the records was scheduled for Wednesday morning, but cancelled after the legal filing. "I think the NCAA is waiting to see what happens in court," said David Buuck, attorney for Bensel-Meyers. The NCAA does not comment publicly on its investigations. Buuck said he learned of the NCAA's postponement from attorneys representing Riley, who in 1995 was at the center of dispute between athletic and academic officials about the accommodations provided for athletes diagnosed with learning disabilities. Bensel-Meyers, while skeptical at how seriously the NCAA would act on her records, was not pleased with the NCAA's decision to wait before meeting her. "This just gives the administration more time to rationalize the records problem," Bensel-Meyers told The Tennessean in Nashville. "I don't really care about what the NCAA thinks. The thing I do care about is whether a real review, an open, objective review will be conducted into whether there are violations of academic policies on this campus. "I don't think anybody is going to look into that. I think the only thing they're going to look for are NCAA violations in a very narrow way." Riley, who allegedly received excessive help from an athletic department tutor on a paper, is accusing University of Tennessee employees of illegally releasing his academic records to the news media. A center on the 1998 national championship team who played his senior season last fall, Riley also seeks to have the lawsuit declared a class action on behalf of all former, present and future UT students. Riley's attorneys also filed a motion seeking to amend their complaint to list as defendants "all employees of the University of Tennessee." Attorney Robert H. Watson Jr. said the filing was necessary because of Bensel-Meyers' statement Monday that she has not released Riley's name. The Knoxville News-Sentinel reported that it obtained Riley's records from the athletic department's office of student life, which is headed by Carmen Tegano. ESPN.com had reported in September that over a five-year period, Bensel-Meyers and other faculty members had expressed concerns about plagiarism and excessive collaboration involving athletes and their tutors, and that mid-level athletic department managers failed to properly investigate the claims. The university cleared itself of any wrongdoing, and the NCAA checked out their investigation but took no action. After Bensel-Meyers reviewed the transcripts of 39 athletes and made a new set of allegations last week, Barker arranged for another meeting to look at her new records. Tennessee President J. Wade Gilley and the school's faculty senate have also launched new investigations in response to Bensel-Meyers' latest allegations, which, among other claims, cite large numbers of incompletes and other grade changes being given to football players. Bensel-Meyers, who oversees the English composition tutors and is in charge of handling plagiarism cases, met with FBI agents Monday on claims that her office was broken into, her phone tapped and that she has received threatening mail for raising the allegations. She told them that in addition to four earlier office break-ins, someone got into her office over the weekend and left open the CD-ROM carrier in her computer. In other action Tuesday, Buuck said he learned from the university that it would not represent Bensel-Meyers in the Riley lawsuit, or pay for her legal representation. "It angers me that the university administration won't stand behind their faculty," Buuck said. "They say their interests are adverse. I don't think so -- I think we all want quality education. We're in the same boat." | ALSO SEE UT professor says office was broken into again FBI interviews UT professor in academic fraud case UT professor who alleged fraud reports threats against her Tennessee panel promises closure to allegations  | |||||