Faculty members and media figures continue to pressure Rutgers to oust top university administrators after men’s basketball coach Mike Rice was fired Wednesday for verbally and physically abusing players at practices.
Penn has several connections to the scandal, which broke when ESPN aired video footage of Rice hitting and taunting players, at times yelling homophobic slurs.
Rutgers President Robert Barchi, who finds himself under heavy scrutiny for retaining Rice even after learning of the video four months ago, was provost at Penn from 1999 to 2004.
Barchi began his academic career at Penn as an assistant professor in 1974. From 1983 to 1996, Barchi served as director of the Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences, founding the Department of Neuroscience at Penn and serving as its head until 1999.
In 1999, Barchi — who received both his Ph. D. and M. D. from Penn — was named the University’s provost and chief academic officer.
“When University Provost Robert Barchi vacates his post this summer to become Thomas Jefferson University’s next president, he will leave behind an era of academic growth and development for the University,” The Daily Pennsylvanian wrote in June 2004.
Then-Penn President Judith Rodin also told The DP, “We were evaluated for our bond upgrade … [and] one of the comments that they made was that they had never seen … something that so strategically linked the financial decision-making to the academic and intellectual decision-making. That was really Bob’s leadership achievement, I think.”
Barchi took over as the 20th president of Rutgers on Sept. 1, 2012 after an eight-year stint as president of Thomas Jefferson.
But now more than 50 Rutgers faculty members are demanding Barchi’s resignation, crafting a letter to the school’s trustees and Board of Governors that calls his handling of the “homophobic and misogynist abuse”unacceptable.
Barchi said in a statement Wednesday that he learned of the video in November and decided to suspend and fine Rice in addition to sending him to anger management counseling. He also claimed that he only saw the video this week and, after seeing it, agreed that Rice should be fired.
Former Penn basketball player and 2003 College graduate Andy Toole served as an assistant under Rice from 2007-10 at Robert Morris University, a span during which the Colonials made two consecutive NCAA tournament appearances.
Toole succeeded Rice as head coach in 2010 when the latter left for Rutgers.
On Tuesday, Toole retweeted a tweet from former Robert Morris player Mezie Nwigwe reading, “Man I don’t care what the media say Rice was cool in my book, a lil crazy, but cool. At the end of the day he got us to win championships[.]”
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