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Syracuse claims it’s fighting against systemic injustice. After Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, SU Director of Athletics John Wildhack released on June 11 a powerful statement about systemic racism that said, “I commit to being better, I commit to our Athletics Family being better.” One month later, SU Athletics hired Salatha Willis, the first associate athletic director for diversity, culture and climate.

But Syracuse has also scheduled and maintained its matchup with Liberty on Saturday. It’s the second of three scheduled meetings between the two teams, a series that shouldn’t have originated to begin with. 

Two Liberty football players announced in June that they were transferring from the program due to racial insensitivity and “cultural incompetence” they felt at the school. One player, Kei’Trel Clark, said the decision was “bigger than football.” Asia Todd, a women’s basketball player, also transferred. 

“Sports is at the center of the toxic culture at Liberty, and athletes are becoming more and more aware of that,” said Caleb Fitzpatrick, a former member of student government and a 2019 LU graduate.

Syracuse shouldn’t be playing games against Liberty, and the optics of doing so are even worse in a year that has featured athlete activism across the country. SU’s rhetoric about creating an accepting culture within its athletic department and on its campus doesn’t match its action of scheduling a school that routinely insults the ideas of racial sensitivity and inclusion. 

Herman Frazier, SU’s assistant athletic director, said the university didn’t consider any of Liberty’s history when scheduling the game. 

“When we first scheduled them, no, we didn’t think about some of the things you just mentioned,” Frazier said in June. “As we looked at the dates they had available, versus the dates we had available, it was going to be a perfect marriage for us, and we decided to go ahead and do it. We’ll look at somewhere different going forward.”

In August, then-Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr. criticized Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s mask requirement by tweeting a photo of a person in Ku Klux Klan hood and another in blackface from Northam’s college yearbook. More than 30 Black alumni called for his resignation. Even though Falwell Jr. later resigned over a different scandal, the campus culture is still an issue, said Dustin Wahl, a 2018 graduate.

Wahl is one of Save 71’s founders, a nonprofit group of Liberty alumni who are pleased that Falwell Jr. is no longer the president of LU but are concerned that’s not enough. Their mission is to restore the parts of the school that “used to be healthy” at its founding in 1971. 

Liberty’s administration has frequently stopped freedom of speech demonstrations, Wahl and Fitzpatrick said. Falwell Jr. went on television to call students “irreverent” for pushing for campus change. He also had campus police remove a visiting pastor and threaten him with arrest for planning a small prayer session in front of the school’s library after the pastor was critical of the university, Fitzpatrick said. Falwell Jr. said in a statement that the pastor threatened on Twitter to organize a protest disguised as a prayer session, according to WSET-TV.

Falwell Jr. would censor the school’s student run newspaper, The Liberty Champion by editing or censoring students’ articles, Wahl said. Protests and petitions critical of university policies or views weren’t allowed. Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell III, is still the university’s vice president. 

At Syracuse, though, left guard Chris Elmore said the game against Liberty was not a reason that the Orange’s players sat out multiple practices during preseason training camp. This is the first time I’ve heard about (Liberty’s issues),” Elmore said Tuesday night.

Elmore said the Orange are treating the Flames like any other opponent, and he’s right to do so. The players don’t make the schedule. That decision comes from above, and Wildhack invoked other schools’ decision to play LU as an excuse. 

“There are a number of ACC teams who have scheduled series with Liberty, Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, North Carolina State, SEC schools,” Wildhack said. “We are in no conversations to play beyond the current contractual arrangement with Liberty.”

Wildhack has spoken about SU becoming a positive influence on diversity and inclusion. Between the Theta Tau videos controversy, the #NotAgainSU movement and the acceptance and second chance given to Charlotte de Vries, SU has been mired in controversy and moments of intolerance. Racism and inequality have plagued both the university and its athletic department, leading to campus-wide protests from students. 

SU Athletics deserves some credit for facilitating multiple student-led initiatives, such as Project 444, whose goal was to get all eligible SU athletes registered to vote. Another group, featuring athletes from every sports team, launched this summer and is trying to promote more diversity and inclusion within the department, women’s lacrosse player Lila Nazarian said. 

But this game in the Carrier Dome on Saturday is a black eye on that progress. It’s a blemish that serves as a constant reminder of how far SU still has to go. 

If SU Athletics really wanted to make a step toward real and systemic change, the school would condemn the controversies at Liberty, apologize for the scheduling of the game or ensure that its players were aware of the controversies at LU. None of that has happened. 

It’s good that Wildhack said Syracuse doesn’t plan to have any more conversations with LU about future matchups after 2021. But those initial conversations should’ve never happened in the first place. 

Anthony Dabbundo is a senior staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at amdabbun@syr.edu or on Twitter @AnthonyDabbundo.

Published on October 15, 2020 at 1:07 am