Statement from the staff: This opinion piece reflects only the cross country members who have signed and written the letter, not the entire team. For privacy, the names of the signed student-athletes have been edited out, and the other student-athletes mentioned.
“Some people have been asking, ‘Why have the Haskell Cross Country student-athletes been silent?’ — Haskell administrators have barred us from speaking out, berated us, and intimidated us into remaining silent. Today, we are demanding our voices are heard.
Problems within our athletic program began last fall when four student-athletes (who ran under former Cross Country coach Al Gipp and former Assistant Cross Country coach Judith Gipp) began meeting with Sports Information Director Aja McCormick. These four students went to apartments and dorms of other student-athletes, unannounced, persuading others to join McCormick in making complaints. If we didn’t join we would be met with bullying and intimidation –taking place in-person and through technology– sometimes degrading our characters and ways of being.
On November 4, 2021, Vice President Tonia Salvini called the Cross Country team into a mandatory meeting. Within this meeting, Salvini addressed herself as the ‘Acting President’ and stated we had to sign a contractual agreement. As a part of the agreement, we would no longer be able to see, talk of, or to our coach, and we were to remain silent due to an investigation into complaints against Mayes. We were expected to follow it or be reprimanded and told there would be no grievance process available for our concerns; essentially, we had no forum to express our concerns and knowledge. We were prohibited from discussing these issues with anyone, even our families. After this meeting, nearly all of us felt intimidated into conforming and following their commands.
When Spring 2022 rolled around, several new Cross Country student-athletes were also mandated, intimidated, and threatened to be reprimanded as a Haskell student-athlete.
During the spring semester, Judith Gipp and McCormick created three mandatory meetings within four days, lasting multiple hours. We were told we could not meet with, talk to, or about Mayes. We were also told Gipp had allegedly reported us to the NAIA for running a one-mile community road race. We were banned from social runs without Gipp’s consent or a coach of her approval present. We were told we would face removal from Haskell both as a student and as an athlete. Gipp threatened us repeatedly with severe consequences for expressing any concerns; citing everything we did was wrong while making rules up on the spot, demanding we remain silent.
Since then, Judith Gipp had assigned the men’s basketball coach to coach the cross country team. Not long after, we were randomly encouraged to talk to them about transferring out of Haskell if we disagreed with any of their demands.
We were recently made aware that the complaints McCormick allegedly created served as justification for an investigation that prevented practices for six months, denied fundamental rights, and used aggressive tactics to go after others. Such alleged complaints included:
- Makes False Promises
- XC jerseys, not Nike
- Has runners competing to be his favorite
- Mayes referring to Judith Gipp as a sociopath
- Mayes athletes, “Tim doesn’t know what he’s doing”
All complaints are both unjustified and inexact. It is our collective conclusion these allegations are disproportionate to the investigative response. Under no circumstances should these allegations have resulted in an investigation ongoing for over half a year. As well as, the uniformed termination of Mayes’s contract and denial of his response. These allegations should never have impacted our ability to communicate, have a voice, and receive coaching from Mayes during the investigative process. We are concerned this process irreparably impacted a significant part of our time at Haskell.
All these problems stem from a corrupted investigative process involving Judith Gipp, McCormick, Salvini, and Mona Gonzalez. Gary Tanner, former acting Athletic Director, informed us that Gonzalez (a former Human Resources employee, then at the time “Special Assistant to the President”) initiated the investigation about the outlandish complaints McCormick and four student-athletes allegedly made. Meanwhile, Gipp, McCormick, and Salvini demanded we follow the contractual agreements to remain silent despite all our concerns. They made us believe they could succeed at expelling us from Haskell.
At no point during this investigation did Haskell allow us to express an opposing view nor report any of the countless violations made by their faculty and administrators. We have reached out with multiple emails and a mailed letter to:
- Former University President Tamarah Pfeiffer
- BIE Director Tony Dearman
- Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland
Our concerns have gone unanswered–we have yet to obtain even one response–and our concerns for the future of the Cross Country program go beyond the corruption of this investigation.
For example, we were informed by other student-athletes and faculty members that Haskell’s Athletic Trainer, Tim Kriley, was allowed to be on the hiring board for the Athletic Director position during the entirety of last Fall; while Tanner served as Haskell’s Athletic Director. Kriley, Judith Gipp, and McCormick were regularly seen socializing in the Coffin Complex for multiple hours during various work days. As far back as 2016, Kriley was already advocating for Gipp to be Haskell’s Athletic Director on social media.
Kriley’s third post out of twenty-eight on Twitter included sharing this statement:
“Bring Mrs. Gipp back as AD! #clashatcoffin.”
– Tim Kriley
We are writing this Open Letter anonymously to protect our safety, security, and welfare. In which, we believe cannot meet without transparency and accountability for the alleged violations.
We ask for further investigation on the following points:
- The Haskell employees that intimidated and silenced our team need to be investigated immediately by a non-biased third party with multiple ON-CAMPUS investigators. To protect students’ safety, wellbeing, and mental health, these individuals must be prohibited from coming on-campus during this investigation and can work from home.
- Consider and correct all conflicts of interest, particularly when family members supervise each other. Judith Gipp supervises her brother, Al Gipp, which violates our conflict of interest regulation (attached below). We expect Haskell to consider that such employees connected through family must be recused from participating in any investigation.
- Conduct an in-depth review of McCormick’s qualifications for her recently appointed “Track Coach” position as we were told McCormick was contracted as the “Sports Information Administrator/Instructor.”
- Conduct an in-depth review of Matt Downing’s qualifications for his recently appointed “Cross Country Coach” position as we were told Matt Downing was hired to coach basketball.
- Conduct an in-depth review of ALL applications submitted for the Haskell Athletic Director position.
- Was Gonzalez, involved with managing these applications similar to her initiation of the investigation?
- We have been made aware that multiple former athletic directors and well-qualified individuals’ applications were disregarded, resulting in Gipp’s appointment to Athletic Director. We need full transparency to know if the most qualified and proper individual was hired.
- Conduct an in-depth review of why Kriley was allowed on the hiring board for the Athletic Director. Before Gipp was hired–as early as 2016, Kriley stated that he would push and advocate for Gipp to be the Athletic Director via Twitter. Tim Kriley’s tweet is provided below.
- We request a review and investigation into Mona Gonzalez. Specifically, all possible motives, reasons, and her past employee record that allowed an investigation to be conducted with zero due processes. We are concerned she may have violated multiple Haskell and BIE regulations such as: conflict of interest regulation, our ethics policy, neglecting due process, nullifying our grievance process, and multiple acts of intimidation.
Although we have been facing what we feel has been intimidation, multiple threats, denied rights, and other unjustified actions–we will rightfully continue moving forward. We encourage everyone to share their voice and help make the community around them better. Everyone should pursue accountability and seek resolve for any misdeeds they experienced at Haskell. With everyone involved, it will truly help Haskell Indian Nations University become more distinguished as a pinnacle platform for our Native Community. If someone is willing to provide legal guidance or representation anyone can email us here:
HaskellCrossCountry@outlook.com
We expect accountability and complete transparency. We are more than incline to comply with any authorities for disclosure of all related information. We hope Haskell and the BIE respond as this is doing the moral and right thing for our students and student-athletes, Haskell, and our Native Community.”
-Haskell Cross Country Team
