The head of the U.S. Military Academy shouldered “full responsibility” in a Sunday statement for a recently reported January football recruiting trip that involved underage drinking and improper use of recruit-host funds at a bowling alley inside a New York mall.
Twenty cadets faced punishment including loss of cadet rank, two officers received suspensions from their football duties and general officer reprimands, and two coaches “were officially admonished by the Athletic Director,” according to the statement from superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen.
The statement came a day after The (Colorado Springs, Colorado) Gazette reported, citing unidentified documents, that 14 football recruits, their cadet hosts and two cheerleaders traveled south via police-escorted bus to the Palisades Mall, where at least some of the high-school-aged recruits and others drank heavily.
On the ride home, the cheerleaders kissed at least one football player and one recruit, in addition to one another, the Gazette reported.
The female cadets on the trip were invited by cadet hosts and not provided by the school, Caslen said in the statement. He also said the police escort was not of the military variety and was provided because state law mandates such an escort for buses on one of the roads between West Point and the mall.
Caslen also denied that “booster” funds were used for the trip, but said the NCAA-approved $40 per diem for hosts to spend on recruits was used in a way that “resulted in NCAA violations.”
The school self-reported the incident to the NCAA, which flagged it as a Level III violation (third-worst of a four-level scale), the statement said. The college sport governing body “had no recommendations and added no penalties as part of the recruiting process,” according to the statement.
The statement did not identify any of the cadets punished, nor did it say how many of them were members of the football team. The Gazette story said the players involved were held out of the team’s spring game, a scrimmage that concludes spring practice, and identified quarterback Angel Santiago as one of the participants.
Santiago missed that April 19 game for “disciplinary reasons,” according to a report that day from Sal Interdonato of the (Middletown, New York) Times Herald-Record. Army head football coach Jeff Monken, who took over the team a month before the Jan. 25 incident, said in the report that Santiago’s absence was “nothing major that we need to talk about.”
All cadets cooperated with the investigation, according to the statement.
“As Superintendent, I take full responsibility for all actions that occur here at West Point to include the incident on Jan. 25, 2014,” Caslen said in the statement, adding that the school has “commissioned outside consultants to review our workplace culture and policies for blind-spots and weaknesses.”
In a July interview with Army Times, Caslen made it clear that members of the football team would receive no special treatment.
“Our football players are cadets and cadets first,” Caslen said. “In order to build a winning culture, I don’t want to change who we are as an Army and as West Point.”
After a weekend off for both teams, Army (2-5), hosts Air Force (5-2) on Saturday at 11:30 a.m.
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