The captain of the Yale basketball team, Jack Montague, was expelled by the university in February just before the team qualified for its first NCAA tournament in more than 50 years. The team’s public show of support for their senior captain after a university conduct committee found he had raped a fellow student, set off a firestorm of criticism and reignited the ongoing national debate about sexual assault and due process on campus. (Slate’s Katy Waldman wrote about the debate on Yale’s campus.) On Thursday, Montague filed suit against Yale accusing the university of breach of contract and defamation.
From the New York Times:
In the lawsuit and an accompanying statement released by a public-relations firm, the player, Jack Montague, who was once the team captain, suggested that Yale had chosen to make an example of him because of public criticism over its handling of the hot-button issue of campus sexual assault… As the complaint noted, the conversation on campus sexual assault has been particularly contentious at Yale. Last year, a study by the Association of American Universities found that nearly one in four undergraduate women at a large group of leading universities said they had been sexually assaulted — and pegged Yale’s rates as higher than the average found at the 27 colleges… In part, the lawsuit reiterated a statement from Montague’s lawyer in March, when he asserted that Montague and his accuser, a woman whose name has not been made public, had had a prior sexual relationship that included one instance of consensual intercourse, and that she later returned to Montague’s bedroom with him on the evening in October 2014 when she said the assault had occurred.
“The lawsuit is factually inaccurate and legally baseless, and Yale will offer a vigorous defense,” a Yale spokesman said in a statement.
*This post has been updated.
