{"id":447073,"date":"2020-09-19T21:38:39","date_gmt":"2020-09-20T04:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=447073"},"modified":"2020-09-19T21:38:39","modified_gmt":"2020-09-20T04:38:39","slug":"william-mary-athletic-director-admits-copying-parts-of-statement-on-swimming-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/william-mary-athletic-director-admits-copying-parts-of-statement-on-swimming-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"William & Mary Athletic Director Admits Copying Parts of Statement on Swimming Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

William & Mary\u2019s statement announcing that it would cut swimming and diving included large, verbatim passages lifted from an earlier statement regarding athletics cuts made by Stanford.<\/p>\n

The similarities were first reported by SwimSwam, which received an admission from William & Mary athletic director Samantha Huge<\/strong> as to the veracity of the claims.<\/p>\n

Stanford, citing budgetary pressure that has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, cut 11 sports on July 8. William & Mary followed suit with cuts of seven program, including men\u2019s and women\u2019s swimming, on Sept. 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many of the passages into the two letters \u2013 you can find Stanford\u2019s here<\/a> and William & Mary\u2019s here<\/a> \u2013 are extremely similar, differing only slightly in the specific numerical and conference designations particular to each school. The formatting of the two statements, right down to the same three university positions (AD, provost and president) being named atop the letter is similar, as are the titles.<\/p>\n

Both universities, in their statements, pledged that:<\/p>\n