As Saint Mary’s University is fighting an expensive and public lawsuit to play a football game in 2017, the University of Halifax has hired a senior public relations firm to get advice on how the institution can improve its public image.
The player’s eligibility dispute raged in courts in Nova Scotia and Ontario and included a hearing on Remembrance Day hearing on whether the Atlantic Championship game, known as the Loney Bowl, would continue, leading to legal bills nearly $ 500,000. university.
CBC News received documents in a request for access to information, which took almost four years to respond to the university. The recordings reveal details of the frustration experienced by officials and the university’s public relations approach, which included locking the gates of a team training session to prevent the media from talking to players and coaches.
“We need to keep the gates locked,” Margaret Murphy, vice president of foreign affairs at the university, wrote in an email on November 13, 2017, to several school staff.
“I will go down to run the media. We will let the media take pictures of the team from a distance. After all, I will be the only one interviewing the media.
Football fans at a match on November 14, 2017 in Wolfville, NS, raise a sign aimed at Archelaus Jack. (Colleen Jones / CBC)
“Coaches and players need to focus on the game and we want to keep the comments on what we agreed on yesterday.”
The CBC requested invoices and records in 2018 related to Archelaus Jack, who was eligible for the St. Mary’s Huskies in the 2017 season. 2016
The issue of eligibility led Atlantic University Sports (AUS) to cancel the Loney Bowl game between Saint Mary’s and Acadia University just days before it took place. Saint Mary’s took AUS to court, and a judge from Nova Scotia’s Supreme Court later ruled that the game should continue. The game took place on November 14, 2017 and the Huskies lost 45-38 after extra time.
In 2018, the university initially provided CBC News with legal invoices related to the case, but did not provide any of the other requested records. The CBC turned to the provincial information and privacy commissioner, and the university began publishing records last fall, of which there were about 1,000 pages, many of which were edited. Since then, employees have released more and more of the previously edited material.
In an interview with CBC News, Murphy called the process of accessing information a “learning experience.” The university had three different information officers working on the file, the latter being a university lawyer.
Murphy said the lawyer had a better understanding of what should be provided by law. She expects this to lead to the issuance of more documents from the university for future requests for access to information.
Margaret Murphy led the communications efforts at St. Mary’s University during the Archelaus Jack affair, which involved ordering the gates to the football field to be locked for practice to prevent the media from questioning coaches and players. (CBC)
When the admissibility dispute first became known on November 3, 2017, university officials and one of the outside attorneys working on their behalf considered how to respond to a request for comment from a CTV reporter.
Officials agreed with a 30-word statement saying the university was diligent in its response and had no problem.
“The less you say, the better”
McInnes Cooper’s lawyer Robert Belivo, who helped represent the university, said in an email to several of his staff that “the less you say, the better.”
The documents show disappointment in the community of St. Mary.
“I’m really tired of this,” wrote Karen Oldfield, then chair of the university’s board of directors, in an email dated November 13, 2017, to the school’s president and one of the university’s lawyers. on behalf of.
“I think we need to go on a full attack.
In a report on November 17, 2017, three days after the Loney Bowl, National Public Relations recommended that Saint Mary suspend media interviews on the case and provide statements only by email.
Karen Oldfield, president and CEO of Nova Scotia Health, was chairman of the St. Mary’s Board of Governors during the Jack case. She believed that the university “should launch a full attack.” (health of Nova Scotia)
National has also proposed that Saint Mary’s restore its profile by continuing the “key storylines” for University President Robert Summerby-Murray, leading to the 2017 and 2018 holidays, which include more interaction with students and campus. festive moments, etc. “
“Think of a good background, create videos on it” in conversation “with others. Use more active and stronger / prouder language on social media posts to demonstrate leadership and influence. ”
The report notes that the case of Jack “led to a story that suggests that SMU did not act honestly or in accordance with its own core values or the core values of AUS.”
Saint Mary’s spent $ 2,067.75 on the National report.
Later, the company also helped review the statements in the media from Saint Mary’s.
The eligibility dispute focused on language, including how long former CFL players have to wait before playing at university level.
The 2017-18 rules say that former CFL players who have been on the roster after August 15 of a year must wait a year before being able to get on the university team.
Saint Mary’s interprets the one-year waiting time as one academic year, not a calendar year.
How the court battle began
The court battle began in private, but then became public.
Saint Mary’s reached an agreement on October 27, 2017 with U Sports, the governing body of university sports in Canada, that there are no unresolved issues with the eligibility of players.
According to court documents from Ontario, the agreement was reached after Saint Mary’s threatened U Sports with a lawsuit. In return for the university’s failure to take legal action, U Sports agreed not to investigate the admissibility issue, according to a written decision by Ontario Supreme Court Justice Todd Todd Archibald, after Saint Mary’s took U Sports to court to enforce the agreement.
Documents received from the CBC show that even when the court battle is being fought privately, U Sports told Saint Mary’s on November 2, 2017 that no matter how the Jack case is resolved, it will change its policies “to reflect explicitly and unequivocally the position of our national office and membership, which is that student athletes in these circumstances should not be eligible to compete in U Sports until they have been out for 365 days from the date of participation in the CFL. ” That’s what the guidelines say now.
University feared “serious damage to reputation”
Saint Mary’s court documents show that the university was concerned about “serious damage to its reputation”. They have heard from alumni and administrators who “express serious concern about the effect of these events on fundraising, alumni relations and future student recruitment.”
The lawsuit then moved to Nova Scotia after the athletic directors of four Atlantic University (AUS) sports schools filed a complaint with the AUS Judicial Commission on November 1, 2017, regarding Jack’s eligibility. The problem became public within days.
Joe Taplin, who was the coach of the football team’s internal defenders at the time, was not happy about that.
“It hurts me when the four other institutions [sic] “We are cooperating behind our backs, mainly through jealousy, in order to humiliate our school,” he wrote in an email from November 16, 2017 to several school officials.
Saint Mary’s spent $ 475,973.49 on legal accounts in Ontario and Nova Scotia for the case. For the university’s fiscal 2017-18 and 2018-19 fiscal years, the university received $ 36.25 million and $ 37.8 million, respectively, from the province, according to data provided by Saint Mary’s.
This provoked the condemnation of Tim Houston in 2019, who was the leader of the official opposition in Nova Scotia at the time and is now prime minister.
“It is also important to us that we are a province that provides higher education to a number of students, but at the same time the money invested by taxpayers is for the purpose of educating people,” he said at the time.
How many other countries have spent on attorney’s fees
Other institutions have amassed legal accounts as part of court battles:
- Acadia University – $ 26,254.48.
- Sports at the University of the Atlantic – $ 44,000.
- U Sports – “Just over $ 100,000”, plus a “significant” amount of unpaid legal services, said Graham Brown, president and CEO of U Sports.
On March 2, 2018, the president of SMU Summerby-Murray wrote in an email to Mike Mahon, president of the University of Lethbridge and chairman of the board of U Sports, that the university went to trial only after U Sports “violated our mutual agreement” and “undermined an agreement negotiated through collegial negotiations.”
“Having said that, I am committed to ensuring that Saint Mary’s improves its internal processes to comply with U Sports rules in the future.”
Murphy said the university has reviewed its eligibility procedures for players. She cites the hiring of athletics and recreation director Scott Gray at the end of 2017, as well as detailed daily follow-up of eligibility issues for current and hired students, as well as conducting presentations on eligibility education.
“It certainly gives us a solid foundation for eligibility, and it’s one of the big improvements made in the future,” she told the CBC.
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