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Discontent continues to seep out of the Yale athletic department.
Yale University’s student newspaper, The Yale Daily News, reported that eight former college coaches and athletic staff members “support” complaints shared in a letter from former Yale hockey coach Keith Allain to President Maurine McInnis.
The letter, which was first reported by PK Press Club Digital on March 23, alleged that Yale athletic director Vicky Chun fostered a “toxic environment.”
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Coach Keith Allain of the Yale Bulldogs stands behind the bench during a game against the Boston University Terriers at Agganis Arena in Boston, Massachusetts, December 13, 2016. The Terriers won 5-2. (Richard T. Gagnon/Getty Images)
“Vicky Chun is the worst leader I have ever been around in my life. She is dishonest, self-centered and inaccessible. Vicky’s singular talent is her self-promotion and has created a toxic environment within the ministry where she is isolated by a cadre of administrators whose primary task seems to be to silence all dissent,” Allain’s letter read.
The Yale Daily News reported that eight of 12 anonymous former coaches and staff members interviewed agreed with Allain that Chun created a “culture of fear.”
McInnis told the student newspaper that “many people” have sent letters about Chun as the university considers whether to renew his contract.
The status of Chun’s contract renewal became a subject of uncertainty after a series of PK Press Club Digital investigations into the Yale athletic department under his leadership. Yale did not respond to PK Press Club Digital’s inquiry about the status of Chun’s contract renewal.
The PK Press Club Digital investigative series also revealed that, under Chun’s leadership, lawyers for former Yale strength and conditioning coach Thomas Newman alleged he was unknowingly recorded and “ultimately expelled”; a female track and field athlete left her program due to an alleged “toxic culture”; and that two of Yale’s top athletic officials bought a house together a year before one of them was hired by the university, and that a former employee was allegedly pressured into retirement to open a job for one of those officials.
Yale executive assistant director/chief operating officer of athletics Ann-Marie Guglieri and assistant athletic director Mary Berdo, who hold the second and third highest-ranked positions in the athletic department under athletic director Victoria Chun, purchased a home together in Milford, Conn., in June 2018, according to the deed. Berdo was later hired by the university in April 2019.
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Yale fans watch their team’s loss in the Harvard vs. Yale college football Ivy League playoff game at Harvard Stadium in Boston, Massachusetts, November 22, 2014. (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Two former employees of the Yale athletic department claimed that Guglieri and Berdo had a romantic relationship. Other former employees alleged that a former administrator was pressured into accepting a voluntary retirement program, which then created an opening for Berdo.
Two former employees said the athletic department couldn’t increase staffing to hire Berdo at the same time it hired Guglieri. But PK Press Club Digital has learned that a former athletic department administrator reluctantly agreed to a voluntary retirement package, and then Berdo was hired shortly after.
The former senior associate athletic director reportedly had “no choice” but to accept the voluntary retirement package in fall 2018, creating a vacancy in the department’s front office prior to Berdo’s hiring, according to a former Yale Athletics employee with direct knowledge of the situation.
“A senior associate athletic director was called in October 2018 and pressured to accept a retirement package, and this person had no choice but to accept that retirement package and give 90 days’ notice, and right after the 90 days’ notice, Mary Berdo was hired,” the former employee said.
Allain told PK Press Club Digital that the former employee’s memories of the pressured retirement and eventual hiring of Berdo are consistent with what he was told by people within the athletic department.
While Yale declined to comment “on individual personnel matters,” a spokesperson for the university’s office of the president told PK Press Club Digital: “We can confirm that Yale has followed a robust set of personnel and disclosure policies.” »
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Yale’s Kira Garry and Madeleine Meyers compete on the water jump in the women’s steeplechase at the 2012 USA Junior Championships at the Indiana University Robert C. Haugh Track and Field Complex. (Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports)
Chun, a former volleyball player and later head coach at Colgate University, took over as Yale’s athletic director in 2018 after serving in the same role at Colgate from 2012-2018.
In an interview Earlier in March, with the Yale Alumni Association, Chun admitted to making a mistake that brought him to tears during his first year as a Yale AD.
“I was talking to the old football players, you know, there’s this cool helmet that I had at my old institution. And I thought if Colgate can afford it, we can definitely afford it. So I announced that we’re going to get these coolest, custom-made Riddell helmets. So my assistant comes to me and says, ‘What are you thinking? Do you know how much these helmets cost?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we had them at Colgate.'” She goes, ‘Yeah, there’s six or seven,'” Chun said in the interview.
“And I cried. Because I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be the shortest-lived athletic director,’ and, you know, here I am!”
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PK Press Club Digital reached out to Yale for additional comment but did not receive a response.
