Not all Calm at Stanford

What’s going on at the Stanford boathouse?

It’s a question that the New York Times recently asked in the wake of the college admissions scandal that led to the firing of Stanford’s 11-year head coach John Vandemoer. In April, Stanford’s men’s rowing coach, Craig Amerkhanian, “was mysteriously fired — late in the season, weeks before his planned retirement,” the Times said. Stanford also fired a strength and conditioning coach in April for reasons that are not clear.

The nationwide scandal was driven by college consultant William Singer, who “paid college coaches and athletic administrators to designate non-athletes as recruits for admissions purposes at elite universities.” The Times said that Stanford has been reviewing emails, phone records and computers of coaches and athletic department staff, and “has acknowledged that Singer contacted other coaches at Stanford — Amerkhanian among them. At least one parent indicted in the scandal, a Canadian businessman, also contacted Amerkhanian to discuss a recruiting spot for his son. Stanford maintains it has not unearthed any other cases of admissions fraud, however.”

The Times said that Vandemoer put the money taken from Singer into a fund that supported Stanford’s sailing program. The Times also said that Stanford’s sailing and rowing teams both struggled with the cost of competing against colleges in the Northeast. “In the 2018-19 school year, the sailing team made 15 trips east of the Mississippi River. According to Department of Education data on operating expenses, Stanford spent $182,000 on its sailing program in 2017 — more than any school other than Boston College, and nearly double what Yale and Georgetown spent. But Vandemoer said in an interview before his sentencing that his budget did not include equipment; his biggest fund-raising need was to replace a fleet of 18 sailboats — at a cost of about $120,000 — every five to eight years.”