Sisters Sticking It To Each Other: Here in D.C., news of an employment discrimination case is getting top billing and lots of column inches on the front page of the Washington Post -- but the article by Jessica Hopp and Gregg Sandoval has a twist that you might not expect:
While head coach at the University of California at Berkeley, Marianne Stanley, now the head coach of the Washington Mystics, gave an assistant coach a choice between having an abortion or quitting, and then left the pregnant woman at a hotel during a Midwest recruiting trip. The assistant, Sharrona Alexander, was paid $115,000 two years ago by the university to settle a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit after she refused to have the abortion.
During sworn testimony for the suit, Stanley said she told Alexander that "if you are going to continue with this pregnancy, you're not going to be able to fulfill the job duties; therefore, I am then going to have to hire another coach." Had she known Alexander was pregnant, she would not have hired her, Stanley testified.
In an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday and in her deposition, Stanley denied attempting to force Alexander to have an abortion. She testified that she "never encouraged her in any way, shape or form to have an abortion." She said she did not fire Alexander as was alleged in the suit but she "asked her for her resignation."
The lawsuit and settlement, which were subject to a non-disclosure agreement, have not been previously reported.
If the charges in the suit weren't enough, the story about how Stanley broke the news to Alexander that she was fired might make you blanche. In the midst of a recruiting trip to the Midwest:
[T]he Berkeley coaching staff flew to Chicago. Alexander testified that a clerk called Alexander in her room and told her that Stanley wished to see her in the hotel's restaurant. When Alexander arrived, she noticed a list in front of Stanley that included all the items Berkeley had supplied Alexander: a cell phone, laptop computer, credit card and clothes. In addition, Alexander testified, was a note that read, "letter of resignation."
"My heart just sank," Alexander testified.
Stanley asked Alexander to return the items and write a letter of resignation, both women testified. Alexander testified that when she refused to resign, Stanley fired her. Stanley has denied firing Alexander, but both agreed Alexander was ordered to return her supplies.
"I got the briefcase, her office keys, her credit card, her university credit card, her Diners Club card and I'm not certain of the other items," Stanley testified. "It might have been a pager or cell phone."
They both say that the conversation ended with Stanley driving away.
Alexander testified that she was left with 90 cents and a rental car. "At this point I'm just basically grasping," Alexander testified. "My whole life is basically, at this point, gone."
For those of you not up on the WNBA, Stanley just completed her first season as head coach of the Mystics -- a franchise that heretofore was known as one of the weakest in the league. Under Stanley, the Mystics made the WNBA playoffs for the first time, before eventually falling to the New York Liberty in the Eastern Conference Finals.
These allegations, which went essentially unchallenged as the University of California simply settled the suit, would be damaging all on their own. That these actions were taken by a women's basketball coach are far more damaging. The reason: whether one likes it or not, the development of women's sports in this country has been inextricably linked to issues of sexual equality since the early 20th century. To have news like this surface around one of the WNBA's most prominent franchises, creates the sort of cognitive dissonance that drives both marketers and political activists equally batty.
It's also important to point out that the Mystics owner, Abe Pollin, is not only known to be active in local and national democratic politics, but is also the kind of owner who takes issues of "social responsibility" a little more seriously than many of his peers. It was only a few years ago that Pollin changed his NBA team's name from the Bullets to the Wizards, because he felt that the name glorified violence. News like this can't exactly be welcome inside the Pollin camp either.
Let's not make one mistake though. For some reason, I believe that if a male coach ever did this (and there are a number of men who coach women's basketball at both the college and professional level), it wouldn't be long before they got run out of town on a rail. I have to wonder out loud if Stanley will get the same treatment.
POSTSCRIPTS: The D.C. area is pretty familiar with cases like this one. It was only a year ago that a number of female recruits for the Washington, D.C. Emergency Medical Services unit were told that they had to abort their pregnancies if they wanted to stay employed with EMS. At last report, litigation in that case was still pending.
It's also important to point out that before the season began, the Mystics hired University of Tennessee women's basketball coach, Pat Summit, as a consultant to the team. Summit, generally considered the greatest women's basketball coach of all time, has won six NCAA titles at Tennessee, second only to John Wooden's ten titles at UCLA.
