SJSU settles retaliation lawsuit, apologizes to coach

Apology letter offers no accountability from university administration

San Jose State University has quietly settled a retaliation lawsuit with swim coach Sage Hopkins and published a formal letter praising and apologizing to him, 12 years after he first brought forward the sexual harassment claims of more than a dozen female swimmers against an athletic trainer who went on to abuse more athletes over the next decade.

A laudatory posting to the school’s website and a tweet announcing the letter came after Hopkins recently reached a settlement to a lawsuit he filed against the university in April that accused Marie Tuite, the former athletic director, of a years-long retaliation effort against him and seeking to discredit his accusations against the trainer Scott Shaw.

As part of the settlement, Hopkins received a $225,000 payment and he is moved into management at the university while retaining his position as head swim coach. Hopkins said the agreement was “amicable” but did not provide further comment.

The letter, signed by interim President Steve Perez and Jeff Konya, the new athletics director, is also mandated under the settlement reached between the parties. The university leaders thanked Hopkins “for the courage he demonstrated advocating for the safety of SJSU student-athletes” and “for his commitment to do the right thing” despite “great personal sacrifice” as he tangled with his superiors over his ongoing complaints about Shaw.

Tuite and school President Mary Papazian both stepped down last year in the wake of the scandal that sent shockwaves through SJSU. The university has agreed to pay $4.9 million in two different settlements to 28 victims. Hopkins called the past years a “difficult and challenging time for myself and my family” but said the public’s focus should be on “supporting and applauding the strength of the dozens of women who have come forward and participated in the various investigations.”

The university letter praised the coach for his continued efforts to raise alarm bells over multiple claims of sexual harassment by Shaw. But it offered no accountability from the previous university administration that oversaw botched investigations allowing Shaw to continue working with female student-athletes or acknowledgment that Hopkins had faced retaliation for his whistleblowing.

“I do think it’s too little too late,” said Lindsay Warkentin a member of the 2009 swim team who complained about Shaw’s treatment. She blasted the university for not clearly acknowledging in its letter the retaliation Hopkins faced for speaking out. “I mean his life for the past 2 1/2 years, probably more, has just been hell because of this.”

Hopkins’s efforts later would be vindicated by a second San Jose state investigation in 2019 and a subsequent Department of Justice probe.

“He was put through the mud; his career was being systematically destroyed as retaliation,” said Jason Laker, an SJSU professor and previous whistleblower who sued the university for issues of covering up sexual harassment.

Shaw, who has maintained his innocence and has not been charged with a crime, is under investigation by the FBI.

Laker criticized the university for publishing the letter to its website with little public acknowledgment.

“Frankly, it should be emailed out to everybody with some commentary and a set of commitments,” he said. “Will this finally be the time that the university leadership learns? ”

San Jose State said it published the letter as a “show of support” to the coach and added that Papazian, the former president, had provided a separate letter of appreciation in October to Hopkins as part of the settlement reached with the Department of Justice.

Hopkins first raised concerns about Shaw in December 2009 after members of his swim team said Shaw had touched them under their bras and underwear in what was described to them as “pressure-point therapy.” The complaint triggered a widely discredited internal investigation that quickly cleared Shaw of wrongdoing.

Hopkins continued to raise concerns about Shaw and his access to female student-athletes and in 2019 he sent a nearly 300page dossier to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which sparked the second internal San Jose State investigation that reversed the decision to clear Shaw and led to a federal probe of the university.