UCLA, Alexis Jeffery, gymnasts calling out athletic director

[blake]

I think it’s shitty of Jay to accept her transfer, if he in fact did, under these circumstances since it’d put his black student athletes in an incredibly uncomfortable position, plus Jeffrey isn’t even that good a recruit to risk this blowing up the way it likely will for ucla.

 

[Dex]

Waller is not handling this well however, not much is said about the behavior of Jefferey. How gros, why would any school take her into their teams, she clearly is a bad seed to have in your team.

 

[rue_des_plantes]

The situation grows more feverish, depressing, and downright bizarre by the hour. That “press conference” was USAG-level bad. Clearly, numerous athletes are not being affirmed somehow.

I honestly can’t keep track of all the follow-up posts. Anyways, I wonder if UCLA will even compete, and if they do, it seems it’ll be with Kristina and Dom?

 

[Sasha]

Assuming I’m correctly understanding the situation based on the scattered series of tweets I’ve seen (!), I feel bad for the athletes. It sounds like they tried to do the right thing, only to run into institutional self-preservation and apathy. And from an institution that has gone out of its way to “promote” and “support” diversity. How demoralising for them.

 

[rue_des_plantes]

Assuming I’m correctly understanding the situation based on the scattered series of tweets I’ve seen (!), I feel bad for the athletes. It sounds like they tried to do the right thing, only to run into institutional self-preservation and apathy. And from an institution that has gone out of its way to “promote” and “support” diversity. How demoralising for them.

Absolutely, and the main task at hand is the institutional failure at multiple levels to resolve grave athlete concerns. It’s very sad. I can’t remember such a dizzying scandal unfolding. Norah Flatley suggests this has been a 3+ month affair.

Where I’m getting lost are all the bizarre “side” posts alleging retaliation, bullying conspiracies, vandalism, and lawyers, plus a bunch of gymternet people on social media trying to make it all about themselves and their personal drama with each other. Bonus points for the pundit class saying they knew the entire time and were just waiting for the athletes to speak up.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

That sounds about right. I’ve only just picked up on this in the last few hours, and haven’t seen the press conference, but what I can discern is that it’s a shitshow.

 

[Sasha]

Bonus points for the pundit class saying they knew the entire time and were just waiting for the athletes to speak up.

Classic Twitter, can’t have a controversy without the Twitterati getting snotty about how it was obvious all along.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

That is, of course, what’s really important here. Who on twitter knew.

 

[rlayt]

Twitterati! The new peanut gallery.

 

[barefoot]

Ironically (?) Jeffrey has a TikTok post where she uses the R word.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

She sounds nice

 

[irichluck21]

I moved over all the posts pertaining to this from the Social Media Megathread since it has a separate post.
But now the earlier posts appear at the end of the thread and I am unsure how to change it to reflect the correct chronological order.

@falcon9 any assistance here?

 

[falcon9]

I’ll look and see what I can figure out.

 

[falcon9]

Ok… yes… this is weird.

 

[falcon9]

Bam!

 

[irichluck21]

 

[irichluck21]

Interesting OP-ed

Chris Waller: How NOT to Confront a Scandal

As UCLA continues to mismanage its public response to the Alexis Jeffrey transfer fallout, it raises more questions that the program mismanaged its internal response as well.

themedalcount.com

 

[rlayt]

Deny deny deny. Ignore it and hope it goes away. Nothing to see here.

I can’t think of a worse way to handle this.

 

[Dex]

Curious to see how they handle it tonight in the meet against OS.

 

[RedBirdie]

I had assumed that Jeffery would be sitting out the rest of the year at home and going to LSU in the fall, simply because of the timing. Never assume. She is at LSU now, practicing with the team and Jay Clark says she’s eligible to compete this season.

Gymnast Alexis Jeffrey leaves UCLA amid turmoil and joins the team at LSU

Leaving a UCLA program amid apparent unrest within the team, gymnast Alexis Jeffrey has transferred to LSU and will be eligible to compete for the Tigers this season, coach Jay

www.theadvocate.com