After a Short-Lived Promotion, Northwestern U.’s Former Athletic Director Got a $476,000 Payout
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A nearly half-million-dollar payout went to a central figure in a 2021 controversy involving Northwestern University’s athletics department — the same department being roiled by a fresh set of scandals.
Northwestern’s 2021 tax filings reveal that the former Athletic Director Mike Polisky, who resigned amid controversy surrounding his involvement in a sexual-harassment lawsuit, received $476,190 in severance pay. Polisky, who had served as the longtime deputy athletic director, was selected to lead Northwestern’s athletic department in May 2021. He lasted 10 days.
Students and faculty fiercely protested his promotion, because Polisky was one of four university employees accused of sexual harassment in a lawsuit filed by Hayden Richardson, a former cheerleader. According to the lawsuit, Polisky “disbelieved and shamed” Richardson, minimizing her concerns and accusing her of fabricating evidence, which contributed to a delayed response to her Title IX complaint.
In his resignation statement, Polisky said he didn’t “want to be a distraction” to Northwestern’s athletes, adding that the “challenges” surrounding his appointment would not allow him to effectively lead the department.
Polisky came away with a total of nearly $849,000 in the 2021 fiscal year, including the $476,190 in severance pay and about $98,400 in base compensation, as well as bonuses, retirement, and deferred compensation. After he left Northwestern, Polisky worked for a year as the executive vice president of Intersport, a marketing company. Attempts to reach him through LinkedIn, which says he is president of the Association of Pickleball Professionals, were unsuccessful. Northwestern didn’t respond to The Chronicle’s requests for comment.
The news of Polisky’s severance pay comes as Northwestern is under fire for two other scandals in its athletics department. Head Football Coach Pat Fitzgerald was let go on July 10 following an investigation into hazing in the football program. Three days later, the university fired Jim Foster, head coach of the baseball team. While the university didn’t initially explain the reasoning behind Foster’s dismissal, the Chicago Tribune and 670 The Score have reported that Foster allegedly engaged in bullying and abusive behavior.
Fitzgerald earned over $5.9 million in total compensation in the 2021 fiscal year, including about $375,000 in bonus pay, according to the tax filings. Foster’s compensation is not included in the records, since he was hired in June 2022.
A lawsuit said cheerleaders were “presented as sex objects’’ to powerful donors at university-sponsored events.
An anonymous former football player filed a lawsuit on Tuesday that named Fitzgerald as a defendant, along with Michael H. Schill, the president; Morton O. Schapiro, the former president; Athletic Director Derrick Gragg; and the board of trustees. The lawsuit says Fitzgerald and the other defendants dismissed concerns about sexual misconduct and racial discrimination, and it accuses the group of “systemic abuse” of athletes. At least 15 former players, including former football, baseball, and softball players, have obtained legal representation from Ben Crump, a civil-rights lawyer, according to news reports.
In response to the hazing investigation, Schill announced that the university increased monitoring in the football team’s locker room, established anti-hazing training, and created an online reporting tool for athletes to file complaints. Schill said on Tuesday that the university would also hire an outside firm to “evaluate the sufficiency of our accountability mechanism” in the athletic department and its “ability to detect threats to the welfare of student-athletes.”
‘Alarming Parallels’
The dismissals of Fitzgerald and Foster felt all too familiar for some Northwestern community members who have pointed out similarities between the university’s handling of the 2021 sexual-harassment lawsuit involving Polisky and the recent hazing allegations.
“The more news we learned about the football hazing, the more we sensed a set of alarming parallels with what happened in 2021,” said Caitlin Fitz, an associate professor of history at Northwestern.
The lawsuit that named Polisky said Northwestern did not sufficiently respond to Hayley Richardson’s Title IX complaint. Richardson’s lawsuit said cheerleaders were “presented as sex objects’’ to powerful donors at university-sponsored events, where she said she was groped by drunken alumni and fans.
Northwestern filed a motion to dismiss most of the claims in Richardson’s lawsuit in May 2021; the motion is still pending.
When Polisky was hired in the spring of 2021, more than 200 campus-community members protested on the lawn of then-president Schapiro, the university’s student newspaper The Daily Northwestern reported. Fitz and five other female faculty members wrote in an open letter that they were “alarmed” and “embarrassed” by the decision to hire Polisky in the wake of the pending lawsuit against him, adding that the university provided no evidence that the charges against Polisky lacked merit.
Last week, Fitz and the same five faculty members wrote another open letter in a USA Today opinion piece. The group called on the university to release, with the consent of the victims, the full report of the hazing investigation of the football program; to set up long-term oversight of the athletics department; and to halt the promotion of the university’s plans to rebuild its football stadium until the department fixes its internal issues.
A separate letter signed by over 250 faculty members reiterated the same demands. “We need to get the existing house in order before expanding it,” they wrote.
Dan Bauman contributed to this report.
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