All 11 Brandeis women’s basketball players will leave if coach does not resign, letter says

“The team is in shambles,” said junior Lulu Ohm. “People are stressed out of their minds because there’s a pressure on us to make things right because, unfortunately, the university has not really been hearing us until we started showing them how much we need to be heard.”

Simon did not return phone calls and emails requesting comment.

In response to a lengthy set of questions from the Globe concerning Simon’s employment status and numerous student complaints about Simon and the school’s handling of the complaints, the university issued a statement that did not mention Simon by name.

It said that while the school does not share details of investigations or personnel matters, it does not tolerate any form of discrimination and will investigate and take “appropriate actions” if a school policy is violated.

Ohm said that while she would love to play for the school as a senior, “I’m willing to personally sacrifice the rest of my basketball career to stand with my teammates who are so upset by this and don’t feel safe.”

The letter, obtained by the Globe, includes notice to Simon that “incoming first-year students have been informed of the situation as transparency is critical in fostering a healthy team environment.”

The formal request for Simon’s resignation came after students and their families were notified in a March 28 Zoom meeting with a Brandeis administrator that an investigation of Simon, who was on a yearlong paid administrative leave and did not coach the team this past season, had concluded.

The team was told the investigation revealed no violations of school policies by Simon and that she would be reinstated as head coach.

After what felt like a minute of complete silence, “everybody broke down and started crying,” said sophomore Abby Kennedy.

“This had been going on for so long, I had gotten in such a headspace of I didn’t think that she was coming back, I thought this was going to be ‘she’s being fired, we’re going to start new,’” said sophomore Maya Williams.

At an April 2 on-campus meeting with members of the athletics department and male and female athletes from other Brandeis teams, members of the women’s basketball team read from impact statements they had filed with the Office of Equal Opportunity about their experiences under Simon and how her return presented an intolerable situation.

The impact statement from Selena Gonzalez, the sole senior remaining on the team, offered a particularly vivid account of her experience playing under Simon’s leadership.

“I am exhausted from the numerous attempts at recounting my trauma, which continue to be disregarded and ignored,” wrote Gonzalez. “From the second I’ve stepped foot on this campus, I’ve developed and expressed concerns regarding women’s basketball players, especially those of color, quitting under Carol Simon.”

Over the course of her four years playing at Brandeis, five members of Gonzalez’s class — none of them players of color — left the team. Gonzalez knew of three players of color who were not from her class who quit during her four years.

When Gonzalez expressed her concerns about teammates dropping out, she said Simon told her not to worry because, “according to her, I wasn’t like those girls, and wouldn’t have liked them myself. Needless to say, it only took a few months to realize that I was exactly like those girls, that my experience would be no different in enduring mistreatment, neglect, and a constant lack of empathy.”

Gonzalez related how Simon, without being asked, told her that she “would never recruit an all-Black team.”

She said she was forced by Simon to practice and play with long COVID during the 2021-22 season, an attempt she said led to her developing pneumonia.

In an interview Wednesday, Gonzalez said she has moved on from believing that she and her story will be understood but that “my heart is with the players that still have one or two years left of having to navigate all of this, so just even having to recount my trauma and my story, it’s for them.”

In her impact statement, sophomore Katherine Vaughan wrote, “At the risk of sounding dramatic, I have had literal nightmares about showing up to practice with Carol suddenly our coach again. I know for a fact some of my teammates share this experience.”

Williams spoke of how “Carol Simon has failed as head coach and made my past years as a women’s basketball player miserable.”

One former player, Camila Casanueva, said she has “nothing but good memories” from playing under Simon between 2017 and 2022, and that she and Simon got along well. Casanueva added she never heard or saw any racism from Simon.

That said, her sympathies lie with the experiences of the current team.

“I will say that I completely stand by them. I feel for them,” said Casanueva. “I commend them on their bravery and courage, just getting it out there and trying to tell their story, expressing their frustrations like they have.”

The fault lies with the administration, said Casanueva.

“To me, it’s more of a specific frustration with the administration of our school; it’s this feeling that the administration doesn’t really back its athletes, it’s not really even listening to them,” she said. “I think the administration really needs to figure it out and back its players and get them a new coach. They deserve to move on, they deserve that completely.

“Honestly, I don’t even think it’s necessary for me to touch on my positive experiences with Carol because I think that that’s irrelevant.”

Simon began coaching the team in April 1987. Over the course of her 35 seasons, the Division 3 team compiled a 692-647 record. Its heyday under Simon came between 2003 and 2009, when it won two ECAC championships and reached the second round and Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.

Since the team won the ECAC championship in 2015, Simon’s team finished above .500 once, by one game, in seven seasons in which they won 71 games and lost 102. This past season, while Simon was on leave, the team finished 5-20 under acting head coach Jill Latanowich and assistant coach Lauren Rubinstein.

Latanowich had no prior head coaching experience. Rubinstein had no prior coaching experience.

Players interviewed said that the season without Simon was refreshing, but that the team was understaffed, Latanowich and Rubinstein were overwhelmed, and the team underperformed.

“It was a complete lack of resources, we were kind of just put in a position to fail. It was very disappointing,” said Kennedy.

During postgame handshakes, opposing coaches would tell Brandeis players to “hang in there.”

“It was like being patted on the head,” said Williams. “I guess it’s nice to hear, but it’s not something you want to hear from another head coach.”

Players also said Simon’s coaching technique was outdated and contributed to the team’s losing records. They also reported her impatience with injured or sick players.

During halftime of one game in which the Judges were being outplayed, Ohm, who was still not cleared to return from a concussion, told Simon in the locker room, “ ‘Oh gosh, I really wish I could play,’ and Carol whispered under her breath, but I heard it, ‘Then stop telling them your head hurts.’ ”

Another former player, Courtney Thrun, shared positive recollections of playing for Simon in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.

“She came across as a good person. She’s someone I definitely had a positive relationship with. She was always nice and friendly enough,” said Thrun, who said she was asked by Simon to speak on the coach’s behalf during the initial investigation.

“I never had any issues with her outside of basketball. She treated everyone great. We’d go over to her house for a barbecue before the season, for Christmas,” said Thrun, who said Simon promoted a welcoming culture for LGBTQ players.

The vibe and culture around the team deteriorated over the last two seasons Thrun played.

“There were definitely positive experiences, most of them towards the beginning of my time there,” said Thrun. “My first year was great. The second year was kind of an in between-point, and then from the third year on, it was pretty terrible.”

Thrun said Simon’s problems mainly arose from basketball decisions in practice and games.

“As a team under her leadership, we were too comfortable with losing,” said Thrun. “A lot had to do with who she would choose to play and I think she would choose who to play [based] on who she was comfortable with — like, I don’t think Carol Simon is an outright blatant racist person. But I do think she has biases that definitely need to be adjusted if she is going to keep coaching.”

Ohm, Williams, and Kennedy all praised Simon’s ability as a recruiter, and Kennedy noted that Simon’s coaching experience and her extensive alumni connections for future internships were draws for her to play at Brandeis.

The last season Simon coached in 2022-23, when the team finished 6-19, was particularly rocky given players’ reports of an icy and dysfunctional relationship between Simon and her assistant coach.

The players were unaware that Simon was under investigation that season. Shortly after a Deadspin article in the summer of 2023 included several examples of Simon’s alleged racist behavior, Simon was placed on administrative leave.

In 2018, Brandeis fired its men’s basketball coach Brian Meehan after an investigation over discrimination complaints that included racially biased harassment allegations. The Office of Equal Opportunity at Brandeis emerged after the Meehan investigation.

Lynne Dempsey was the athletic director when Meehan was fired. After he left, she was demoted to her current position, associate athletic director.

After the Meehan firing and internal actions at Brandeis, president Ron Liebowitz wrote in a letter to the school community, “We have a responsibility to provide everyone with a safe environment. We must and will do better.”

In early March, the Brandeis women’s basketball team met with Liebowitz in part to express their resistance to Simon.

“The sense we got from the president was that he was in the dark about the whole situation,” said Kennedy. “He’s a person in power who has a ton of influence and it’s very hurtful that he didn’t know about this situation to the fullest extent.”

Dempsey played for Simon at Brandeis, as did incoming athletic director Jessica Chapin, whose hiring was announced one day before the March 28 Zoom meeting. Chapin will begin in early June.

The players believe the return of Simon would create a stifling conflict of interest for the team.

“It’s not [Chapin], it’s the name that she’s attached to and the history and the timing — it’s very icky,” said Ohm. “Who will we talk to if we have issues about Carol?”

Brandeis’s statement on Thursday began with its leadership’s recognition “that this has been an uncertain time for many in our community. Our women’s basketball team should be commended for having navigated this past season with resilience and determination.”

Michael Silverman can be reached at michael.silverman@globe.com.