Much like the ordeal with its fired men's basketball coach, the controversy over its new athletic director also seems to increase in depth with each passing day.
One day after Julie Hermann and Rutgers president Robert L. Barchi issued statements through the University involving allegations of abuse aimed at Hermann from her time as Tennessee volleyball coach in the mid-1990s, the New York Times is reporting that Hermann also was at the center of a sexual discrimination lawsuit in 2008, when she was a senior athletics administrator at the University of Louisville.
According to the Times, an assistant track and field coach at Louisville claims that she went to Hermann with a complaint of "sexist behavior" and "discriminatory treatment" toward her by the head coach.
The assistant, Mary Banker, was fired less than three weeks after lodging her complaint to the school's human resources department, the report said. In the lawsuit, Banker blames Hermann to a large degree for her ouster.
Hermann has spent the last week denying knowledge of a letter that former Tennessee volleyball players sent to the school's athletic director, alleging that she had called them "whores, alcoholics and learning disabled," and they accused her of making the team endure "mental cruelty," a story originally published in the Star Ledger of Newark.
Rutgers hired Hermann in May after firing men's basketball coach Mike Rice and athletic director Tim Pernetti over fallout from video evidence that Rice threw basketballs at his players and physically manhandled them during practice. Rice also reportedly used gay slurs toward his players.
Pernetti, who originally suspended Rice for three games and fined him $50,000, was fired shortly after Rice amid an outcry that Pernetti should've fired Rice immediately.
The New York Times added that New Jersey state legislators other critics have argued that Rutgers should not have hired Hermann because of the allegations of her treatment toward the Tennessee volleyball team.
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