On the afternoon of Feb. 28, 2001, University of South Florida President Judy L. Genshaft was meeting with Paul Griffin, the university's athletic director at the time, and Lee Roy Selmon, a former professional football star who would soon replace Griffin.
A USF attorney interrupted. Accounts vary of what was uttered next. But there can be little dispute that Associate General Counsel Olga J. Joanow's message marked the beginning of the end for Griffin at USF.
"We've got a problem," Joanow is said to have announced. "Hiram's talking."
Hiram R. Green used to work for Griffin. Two decades ago, he co-captained the USF men's basketball team. But Green had decided enough was enough.
Risking his professional future at USF, the 41-year-old Green went public with allegations that Genshaft and others assisted a coverup by Griffin of complaints about racists coaching women's basketball. Green has become a key witness for African-American players who claim in lawsuits against USF that their fired coach, Jerry Ann Winters, discriminated against them during campus recruiting visits, out-of-town travel, and in other ways that ultimately prevented them from enjoying the same opportunities as white teammates. So far, Green's revelations have indirectly contributed to the dismissals of Winters and Griffin. Could Genshaft suffer the same fate?
Speculation is swirling already about Genshaft's professional future. Her proposed firing of Sami Al-Arian, a tenured professor branded a threat to campus security due to alleged terrorist ties, has played poorly in academia.
Evidence emerging from the basketball lawsuits, which may require a big monetary payout if USF loses, won't help Genshaft's situation:
Green claims Genshaft refused his advice that USF launch a comprehensive inquiry into racism allegations within the women's basketball program; Genshaft placed Green in a better-paying USF job after he clashed with Griffin over the allegations, a move that Green has suggested might have been made to buy his silence;
Green contends that Genshaft and Griffin enlisted Green's good friend, current Athletic Director Lee Roy Selmon, to repair USF's relationship with the local black community after his coverup claim became public.
The basketball players are represented by Jonathan L. Alpert. A Tampa lawyer who loves gigging powerful institutions, Alpert has gotten rich splitting big court settlements with powerless clients. The barrister is generally despised by the Tampa establishment for his choice of targets and other antics.
A common gripe is that Alpert "tries his cases in the media." Well, that damned Alpert is doing it again. Alpert is sharing with Weekly Planet some of the testimony and records he has extracted from USF officials in the basketball lawsuits. The documents are part of the case that Alpert expects to put on when the suits go to trial, perhaps as soon as April.
The pretrial sparring has gotten personal between Alpert and Thomas M. Gonzalez, the ubiquitous labor attorney USF officials hired to defend them. That might reflect the high stakes of the case.
In November, Alpert accused Gonzalez of badgering Green during a deposition. Gonzalez invited Alpert to take it up with a federal judge, who has been forced to referee the more contentious pretrial interrogations.
"That's fine, Mr. Alpert," said Gonzalez. "You need to get over to the federal courthouse. I've just been there and we can go whenever you want to."
"Yeah," Alpert replied. "I saw you just lost a case over there."
"Uh-huh," Gonzalez shot back, "which means that I've lost one more case than you've tried."
Alpert said he has tried many cases over the years. "But I do think Willie Gary is a better trial lawyer than am I," added Alpert, referring to famed Stuart civil-rights lawyer Willie E. Gary, who has joined him as co-counsel for the plaintiffs.
During a Feb. 5 interview with the Planet, Gonzalez predicted Alpert will have a tough time trying the basketball case in court because he doesn't have a case.
"Mr. Alpert wants this tried everywhere but where it should be — in a courtroom," said Gonzalez, who also represents USF in the Al-Arian controversy as well as the Hillsborough County School Board in a dispute with whistleblower Doug Erwin. Gonzalez charged that Alpert furnishes portions of the record of the basketball litigation to the news media through leaks or press conferences to create a distorted picture of rampant indifference to racism at USF. (Gonzalez made some deposition transcripts of his own available to the Planet.)
In fact, Gonzalez said none of the alleged racist behavior by women's basketball coaches occurred in the presence of black players. Thus, the students did not find themselves in an environment hostile to their educational or athletic ambitions, he said. If there was segregation of black and white players, Gonzalez said it was by their choice, not by a racist coach's fiat.
Maybe so. But if Gonzalez's client is to prevail before a jury, some of the pretrial testimony and supporting documents suggest Genshaft and USF will first have to dig themselves out of an evidentiary hole.
Hiram Green has supplied Alpert, Gary and their basketball plaintiffs with one version of how Genshaft's Feb. 28 meeting with Griffin and Selmon went down. Joanow's "Hiram's talking" announcement, which abruptly shifted the focus of the meeting, proved only too accurate.
"USF aide alleges coverup" was the next morning's headline on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times.
Green said he tried as early as 1999 to get Griffin to open a full-scale inquiry into what he determined were "patterns of racial insensitivity" exhibited by Winters and assistant coach Ron Gathright. Green found instances of what was termed Gathright's "loose use of the word "nigger.'" Winters openly questioned the intelligence of blacks who played for her, according to a statement that Green took from an academic supervisor for the team.
Early on, all that resulted was perfunctory diversity training. So Green went over Griffin's head and appealed to Genshaft after she came to Florida's second-largest public university in 2000.
Winters wasn't dismissed until December 2000, following the filing of the first eight lawsuits accusing her of mistreating black players. Four more suits have been added since Winters was canned in the wake of a school probe that found she retaliated against an African-American player who complained about her.
The process that led to her termination was set in motion in March 1999. Griffin agreed to let Green look into criticism of Winters by her black players and their parents. According to Green, however, Griffin expected a whitewash.
Of all people, Green wasn't about to supply the paint. He is quite familiar with how racism can sour the collegiate sports experience.
Between stints at USF, Green was executive director of the Florida Classic for almost four years during the 1990s. The annual football clash between Florida A&M University and Bethune-Cookman College used to be played at the old Tampa Stadium. It moved to Orlando after alumni of the historically black schools were unfairly scrutinized or even shunned by white hoteliers and merchants in Tampa on Classic weekends.
Green stayed in Tampa and went to work for Griffin before funding for his USF job ran out. Green has since claimed that Griffin wouldn't find him another athletic post because he resisted Griffin's order to report falsely that racial problems on the women's team were resolved.
Getting nowhere with Griffin, Green went to see Genshaft in August 2000. She declined to accept a copy of his basketball findings but did arrange a new job for Green at the medical school.
Green, who still works there, makes $65,000 a year as health sciences development director. That is $20,000 more than Griffin paid Green as assistant athletic director for basketball, according to Gonzalez.
Last Feb. 28, on hearing Joanow's urgent news, Genshaft initially seemed surprised that Green was causing a stir after her favor for him. "I thought Hiram was happy in health sciences," she is quoted by Green as saying.
If Green is to be believed, Genshaft and Griffin immediately contemplated the political implications of his public condemnation of the university.
In an affidavit last fall, Green stated: "Genshaft and Griffin engaged in a discussion about what they needed to do to get … Selmon to engage in a public relations effort … to distract the African American community from the racism at USF and get the African American community to support USF even though USF was aware of the racism and had done nothing about it.
"Mr. Selmon in fact was given instruction or suggestion by Ms. Genshaft to do something about my going public and about the issues which I was publicly raising, which Genshaft had been aware of at least since I had spoken to her on Aug. 16, 2000."
Whatever diversion they concocted, it didn't work. Genshaft had Griffin's resignation less than two weeks after Joanow's Feb. 28 alert.
How did Green know what happened at the Feb. 28 meeting when he wasn't there?
His old friend Lee Roy Selmon informed him. That put Selmon in a jam when Alpert questioned him under oath in December. Selmon confirmed that he told Green about the meeting and largely vouched for his pal's recounting of what was said.
"Is it accurate or inaccurate that Ms. Joanow rushed in the meeting and said, "We've got a problem. Hiram's talking,' or words to that effect," Alpert asked.
"I would characterize that as being fairly accurate," Selmon replied.
Selmon confirmed the Genshaft-Griffin colloquy, too. Selmon did hedge about whether the pair sought to deflect criticism from the Tampa Bay area's African-American community, in particular. "It was a media response," he testified. "Not a public relations (response) to community this and community that."
If Genshaft disapproved of Selmon's forthright testimony, she is swift enough to realize there is no upside to tangling publicly with her new athletic director. Selmon is that rarity — a retired Tampa Bay Buccaneer in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Revered locally, Selmon has a restaurant and an expressway named after him in Tampa.
Green doesn't live in Selmon's bubble. But he has deeper ties to USF, where he has spent most of his adult life. That made it all the more painful to be the reluctant whistleblower.
In his affidavit last November, Green stated: "I am heartbroken that I have had to come forward because, although I had hoped for years that the system would work, it is now plain to me that the only way to correct USF is for outside forces to require USF to stop the coverup, make amends to the victims (including myself), and adopt policies and procedures (which it has not yet done) so that this cannot happen again." Green regretted "respecting my superiors and reporting (the racial incidents on the women's team) to them" because the Genshaft administration "deliberately has done nothing and is now attacking the girls and myself both publicly and privately."
Camile Blake, USF's equal-opportunity affairs coordinator, testified last October that Green never filed an official complaint with her office. Green did submit a written report in 1999. Under USF policy at the time, however, Blake said that Green's report alone would not have triggered a formal investigation.
Gonzalez, attempting to discredit Green at depositions, has asked why the witness reported racist conduct but not allegations that Winters harassed a player who was a lesbian. Green said Griffin asked him only to look at the racial climate on Winters' team.
What does Genshaft have to say about her Aug. 16, 2000, meeting with Green and the Feb. 28, 2001, meeting with Selmon?
At a deposition, Genshaft emphasized Green's apprehension about losing USF employment rather than his concern about Griffin's stonewalling.
"Hiram came in with a primary complaint and issue of his job," Genshaft testified. "That's why he came to see me, his job."
Green recalled the chat differently than the USF president.
"First, I talked to her about the complaints about racial discrimination in the program," Green told Gonzalez. "At the very end of that conversation, I shared with her that I thought that I had lost my job because of my investigation into this matter."
Genshaft acknowledged that Green did bring a "pile of papers with him about racial insensitivity." But Genshaft told Green that he need not leave the records with her because she believed him. "People come to my office bringing many, many different pieces of material," she told Alpert.
After hearing from Green, Genshaft said she called Griffin. "Paul Griffin said that he had taken care of the racial insensitivity because he had taken action, and that was by sending Jerry Ann (Winters) to racial insensitivity seminars."
Genshaft said she did not make any further inquiries with Blake's office. "I did not get involved in their procedures," she said.
Regarding Feb. 28, Genshaft could offer only a vague memory. "Olga came into the room," said Genshaft, "I don't remember the exact words, but that Hiram is having some difficulties or he's having some problems and he's — he's speaking to the press."
Alpert pressed on. "So if there were testimony from others that Ms. Joanow said, "we've got a problem. Hiram's talking,' you would not be able to dispute that, isn't that correct?" he asked.
"No, I wouldn't be able to dispute that."
Alpert wasn't satisfied. "And the fact is, ma'am, that everybody who has come forward about the racial allegations you've described as having problems or personal problems, isn't that correct?"
"I've never said personal problems," replied Genshaft. "If they were having issues, they were having problems."
Gonzalez said he finds it curious that Alpert has beat up on Genshaft, almost to the exclusion of her predecessor, Betty Castor, who was USF president when a number of the incidents cited in the lawsuits took place.
The implication is that Alpert, who ran without success as a Democrat for Hillsborough state attorney in 2000, prefers besmirching the reputation of Republican appointee Genshaft to sullying the name of Democrat Castor.
After Green went public, Genshaft said she lost faith in Paul Griffin's judgment as athletic director. Yet she rejected any suggestion that Green's revelations influenced her demand for Griffin's resignation.
Why, then, did you request him to quit? Alpert asked.
"Some — some — there were just — just some different issues," said Genshaft. "They were — that I don't know that I need to discuss in this situation."
Griffin has testified that Genshaft had no problem with his performance until Green spoke out.
Alpert insisted that Genshaft elaborate on why she suddenly lacked confidence in Griffin. "There is a coverup allegation," he said. "Are you aware of that?"
"There was no coverup," Genshaft said.
Contact Staff Writer Francis X. Gilpin at 813-248-8888, ext. 130, or frangilpin@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Feb 20-26, 2002.