A&T athletics are in the news again for all the wrong reasons.
Inaction is action.
That’s the current sentiment on the campus of North Carolina A&T as WFMY News 2 in Greensboro has obtained documents that two of the school’s women’s basketball coaches are currently under investigation for failing to report a sexual assault that happened to one of their players.
“If he cared, he would have reported my situation. If he cared, he would have helped me, but he didn’t. So, I had to help myself,” said Morgan Batie, a junior at A&T who says she was assaulted last summer off campus.
“He came in, forced me, tried to fight me, had his pants down and everything, good thing I could defend myself,” Batie stated.
Batie revealed her experience to one of her coaches by text in December.
“I told {one of my coaches} about the assault and everything, and she was like, vague,” Batie explained. “She was like sorry that happened to you basically, she said ‘you need to get help’ but they didn’t really help me or offer me guidance or anything.”
According to Batie, she didn’t tell her parents or friends because she believed her coaches would handle the situation. She is seeking an apology and wants both coaches gone, as she had to report the incident to Title IX herself in April.
“I never got a call from a detective, police, anything like that,” said Batie.
“We cannot speak to individual investigations involving students, or employees, due to federal and state laws that protect their confidentiality,” read a statement from the university.
Back in February, a similar situation took place at the school when Adjoa Botwe-Rankin and Wenalyn Glenn resigned from their positions as co-head coaches of the cheerleading team after Raina Gee claimed that the coaches never reported her rape allegations.
“It was so exciting, I know you shouldn’t celebrate someone resigning but it’s a different type of situation like we had to see some changes and for this to happen it was just amazing,” said Gee when the resignations were announced. “I wish them the best but I think this was the right decision that was made.”
The school’s spokesperson said they could not discuss personnel matters when asked if the resignations had anything to do with the investigation, but it’s pretty easy to connect the dots.
The school’s mission states that “North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University advances knowledge through scholarly exchange and transforms society with exceptional teaching, learning, discovery and community engagement.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like that’s happening right now as two incidents have already been in this news this year. HBCUs have always, and will always, have their issues. But that has never taken away from how invaluable they are to this country, the world, and black people.
We know that with great power comes great responsibility, and with A&T being the largest public HBCU in the nation, we need them to be more proactive and better address these situations as they are a reflection on the HBCU community, and us as a people.
