Boston University men’s hockey has focused on more than just its on-ice questions over the last six months since the season ended.
Much of the attention has focused on the Men’s Ice Hockey Task Force, which investigated the team’s behavior and the ways in which BU gave preferential treatment to hockey players.
BU coach Jack Parker said that the task force’s recommendations were all reasonable and would benefit the program, but also that some of the controversy stirred up by a Boston Globe article on the task force was unwarranted.
“We want to take into account what the results were of the task force, what their recommendations are, and all of the recommendations can’t possibly hurt us,” Parker said. “They’re going to make us better. All of the recommendations are going to make the student body better. So we’re enthusiastically enforcing them.”
However, he said The Globe’s story, which focused in part on a celebration at Agganis Arena after the team’s 2009 national championship, was based on unreliable sources.
“Most of the things that were misrepresented did not get to the task force report, because the task force and the NCAA part of the task force that investigated found out it was baseless,” Parker said. “The problem was that somebody wrote something down in a subcommittee report that had to be investigated, and that is what was leaked … I knew that in the end they would get the story right. But in the end, they didn’t keep the innuendo out of the newspaper, and that is what caused problems.”
Former BU players, notably defenseman Colby Cohen, spoke out publicly against some of the allegations against the program, and Parker said he had no problem with them doing so.
“They have a right to express what they know to be the truth,” Parker said of those players. “I don’t think the task force was looking to bury anybody. They got information. Sometimes, they got information from people that thought they knew it was the truth. So I don’t think the task force was in any way out to get people with hidden agendas. But I think that the players who were taken aback by some of the things that were said had every right to say, ‘we were there, we were on that team, we know what happened and that’s not quite right.’”
Parker said the largest change the hockey program has made after the task force’s findings were released has been overhauling its drinking regulations.
He said players — and college students in general — were drinking liquor rather than beer more often than he realized.
Those habits, combined with the players’ attitude that they could or should drink harder on Saturday nights since those were the only nights players 21 years and older were permitted to drink, contributed to some of the inappropriate behavior described by the task force report.
Parker also said that players must be accountable for each other and keep each other from getting into trouble when they drink together.
“Of course, I’m not in the bar watching what they drink, so bystander training with regard to sexual assault is important, and bystander training with regard to how our team drinks is important too,” he said.
Overall, Parker voiced unequivocal support for the task force itself and the recommendations it made for the program.
“I don’t think it’s anything that’s going to be too demanding on their time,” Parker said of the recommendations. “I don’t think it’s going to be overwhelming to them or take their minds off school or hockey … I do think it’s a refocus for them and it gets them into the reality that people are looking at. Perceptions, reality, there’s no sense in saying ‘yeah, but’ — we’ll just change that perception [of the team’s behavior].”
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