There’s a story making the rounds today about Coastal Carolina University suspending their cheerleading squad pending a conduct investigation, per this WMBF news story.
This suspension is costing the squad an opportunity to compete in a national competition in Daytona Beach, FL next week.
Let me go ahead and give you some quotes from the story so you have an idea of what’s going on:
A cheerleader who spoke on the condition of anonymity said an investigator with the CCU Department of Public Safety came to their practice Wednesday night. The cheerleader said the investigator explained to the team an anonymous letter was mailed to school president David DeCenzo on March 7 alleging that team members were involved in “a long list of things,” including prostitution, purchasing alcohol for underage team members, and paying others to complete their homework assignments.
According to the cheerleader, the team was met by police outside the HTC Center after practice, who called the names of individual team members, and took them to CCU’s police station for questioning. During the questioning, the cheerleader said police searched through their cell phones. She said officers then told them they could leave around 11 p.m., after telling them they did nothing wrong.
So, according to police, they did nothing wrong, but the school still has the team suspended?
Explain to me how this makes sense. The police did an investigation, questioned several specific girls, and then let them go and said everything was good, but they still cannot compete?
The school went so far as to take their squad off the university website and has canceled all of their events.
On top of that, the school did all of this based on an anonymous letter? Give me a break. There’s an issue here where the university is wanting to make sure and cover themselves, even though the police department has already cleared the girls. But seriously – prostitution? From an anonymous letter? Anybody could send anybody anything – but if you’ve already gotten police involved and they cleared the girls, then why are we even still discussing this?
C’mon guys. Get your crap together and let these girls off suspension.