Stanford football team hears tough talk on sexual assault

On what would otherwise have been a quiet April evening, the Stanford football team gathered for its most important meeting of the year.

The keynote speaker Thursday in the football auditorium wasn’t coach David Shaw or a famous Stanford alumnus. It was a registered nurse from Portland with a devastating story and vital message.

Over 90 minutes, Brenda Tracy told the Cardinal players and coaches how she was assaulted, sodomized and gang-raped two decades ago by four men, including members of the Oregon State football team.

She talked about staying silent and becoming suicidal, she answered questions, and she asked the Cardinal to join her in working to end the culture of sexual assault and domestic violence in athletics. Tracy calls her campaign #SetTheExpectations.

“Certain coaches draw a line in the sand that if you commit sexual violence, you won’t play football,” she said by phone Thursday. “Others don’t set that expectation, and I want all of them to get on the same page.”

Tracy has addressed approximately 30 college teams and many more on the high school level in the past year.

“It was emotional, it was real, it was more impactful than I had hoped,” Shaw said. “She reached them, and she pushed them.”

Tracy also serves on the NCAA’s Commission to Combat Campus Sexual Violence, which was formed last year and counts among its 26 members one football coach: Shaw, who was “floored” to be included.

Shaw said he addressed the players in the late fall about the culture of sexual assault and domestic violence on campuses across the country. Around that time, the Cardinal reached out to Tracy, purposefully booking her for a quiet stretch in the offseason.

Shaw said there was no connection between his efforts and an alleged 2015 sexual assault case involving one of his players. (A university disciplinary panel did not find the player responsible.) The incident was brought into the public realm in a New York Times story in December.

Stanford is the fifth football team in the Pac-12 to meet with Tracy. (The others: Washington, Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona State.) She began her address Thursday, as she always does, by recounting in graphic detail the alleged gang rape and assault in June 1998, in an apartment in Corvallis.

Tracy, who was 24 at the time, reported the incident, and four men, including two Oregon State football players and a recruit, were booked. Tracy, who said she became suicidal, never pressed charges. The players were suspended for one game for what then-Oregon State coach Mike Riley called a “bad choice” - two words that enraged Tracy.

She remained silent for 18 years, before finally telling her story to the Oregonian’s John Canzano in 2014.

Riley agreed to be interviewed for that story - “It’s pretty powerful of her to step forward,” he told Canzano - and eventually reached out to Tracy, inviting her to address his new team, Nebraska, in 2016.

That proved the launch point for Tracy’s full-time advocacy work and position on the NCAA commission. She has addressed basketball and football teams, including two with high-profile incidents of sexual violence: Oklahoma and Baylor.

Tracy recently unveiled the #SetTheExpectations campaign. After telling her story, she asks each player and coach to sign a pledge and commit to ending sexual violence in athletics.

Penn State basketball was the first to sign; Stanford became the first on the football side.

“Sports is the biggest stage in our country, and they’re on it,” she said. “They have a megaphone. I ask them to join me in the fight.”

She defines success in myriad ways. It could be the 60-something hugs she received from the Stanford players. It could be hearing that she inspired a rape survivor to report an incident. Eventually, she hopes, it will be hearing about the diminished number of sexual assaults on campuses.

So far, Tracy said, there has been no outreach from the NFL.

“Set The Expectations is aimed at college and high school players,” she said. “It can’t start when they get to college.

“The intention is to cut off the pipeline to the NFL, to stop the pipeline that funnels bad players to the NFL.”