In his first interview since firing head football coach Pat Fitzgerald on July 10, Northwestern University president Michael Schill said Monday he is neither considering the termination of athletic director Derrick Gragg nor concerned with his own job status.
"I don't just make decisions and just sort of move on to the next thing," Schill told The Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper whose detailed reporting on hazing allegations July 8 led Schill to rethink his original punishment of a two-week suspension for Fitzgerald. "I think about what I've done, and I decided after further reflection that I might've made a mistake in coming up with the two weeks. ... I think that if a leader messes up, they should own up to it, they should take responsibility. The worst thing you can do is just pretend it didn't happen. You realize you made a mistake, and you fix it and you make the right decision, because that's what a stand-up leader does."
As reported by ESPN, citing the Daily interview, Schill said the "vast majority" of Northwestern's trustees supported his decision to fire Fitzgerald three days after the initial suspension announcement. Northwestern had just finished its six-month investigation into hazing allegations.
He also said "additional allegations" and conversations with trustees and others led him to rethink the initial discipline for Fitzgerald and reach the decision to fire the coach for cause. He said no other Northwestern coaches or players have faced discipline as none were identified as culpable in the school's own investigation. He noted that longtime football assistant Matt MacPherson was named in a lawsuit Monday as having observed certain hazing activities, ESPN's Adam Rittenberg reported.
Related: New Lawsuit Claims Northwestern Coaches Privy to Hazing
As for Gragg, Schill said there is "no conversation" about the athletic director's job status and that most of the hazing allegations took place prior to Gragg's arrival in Evanston in 2021.
"We don't think it's appropriate to sweep up everybody in an allegation unless we can somehow substantiate the allegation," Schill told the Daily. "In this case, so far, we haven't been able to tie individuals [to this], but we're going to investigate if people come forward with names."
As reported by Rittenberg, four lawsuits have been filed against the university, with three of them naming Schill, Fitzgerald and Gragg as defendants.
Schill said he initially relied too much on Northwestern's investigation, which did not find evidence Fitzgerald was aware of the hazing, in determining initial punishment for the coach. He told The Daily Northwestern that he met with investigator Maggie Hickey and her associate July 10 and went over the "raw testimony" of those they had interviewed. Schill concluded that Fitzgerald had failed by not trying to learn what was happening in his program.
"When you hear it, one by one, one instance of bad behavior after another, the magnitude of it hit me even more," Schill said. "I decided that the only choice, the only moral choice, was to terminate our relationship."
