Lawyer alleges Robert Morris administrator ordered employee to erase records of discussions to cut ice hockey teams

A lawyer who represents a former Robert Morris hockey player is alleging that a university official ordered an athletic department employee to “get rid of” text messages and emails about the school’s decision to eliminate the men’s and women’s ice hockey programs.

In a series of interviews with TribLIVE.com, Cleveland-area attorney Kevin Spellacy said the employee told him that he would be willing to testify under oath. Spellacy said the employee defied the order and kept the evidence intact.

“The source said, ‘I have this stuff. I didn’t delete it. I kept it. I thought what they asked me to do was wrong,’” Spellacy said of the employee.

Robert Morris officials on Monday declined to comment.

Spellacy represents his son Aidan, who transferred from RMU for a lesser scholarship package at St. Cloud State shortly after RMU administrators folded the men’s and women’s ice hockey programs on May 26.

Jeffrey Kessler — a highly regarded sports attorney who helped Stanford athletes get some eliminated programs reinstated during a similar situation last spring — was also retained by a different coalition of RMU players. Kessler and Spellacy have been advising players of their legal options and have been monitoring how RMU officials went about eliminating the programs.

Both attorneys sent separate letters to RMU in June questioning whether the school willfully hid plans to eliminate the teams. Their concerns are that players may have bypassed transfer opportunities and recruits may have signed to play at a school that would soon no longer have a program.

“…the University was apparently preparing to make the student-athletes on these teams the casualties of a covert plan to eliminate their programs,” Kessler wrote in his letter. “This secrecy induced the student-athletes to believe that their teams would continue, and they relied upon this misrepresentation in making their decisions to attend the University in the first place, as well as to remain at the school without seeking a possible transfer.”

Athletic director Chris King told the hockey players during a Zoom call that he had known at least two weeks earlier of the eventual announcement that the teams were going to be eliminated.

Spellacy said his source can cite conversations about plans to eliminate the teams as early as October 2020.

“That’s the earliest I can confirm from my source,” Spellacy said. “That’s disingenuous to all the donors. I was one of them. I donated $10,000 to the hockey program last year, and they courted me to donate more money. That was completely ludicrous in hindsight.”

In the wake of his initial correspondence with Robert Morris in June, Kessler told TribLIVE, “During that period, when this was actively being planned, students were misled. They passed on transfer opportunities. Some decided to come to the school on false pretenses. And this failure to disclose what we call ‘material information’ is unlawful in Pennsylvania.”

Spellacy said the athletic department employee told him that, in advance of the university’s May 26 announcement to eliminate the teams, the university official told him to “get rid of” any texts and emails involving discussions about the hockey programs’ future because they could be “discoverable” in a potential legal action. The employee told Spellacy that he was instructed to take such action during a phone call.

That’s an act Spellacy considered tantamount to “spoliation of records.”

The employee said there was a second order “to only communicate verbally and no longer with texts and emails because it would be discoverable,” according to Spellacy.

Spellacy wouldn’t name the Robert Morris official who is accused of giving the directive. He did say it wasn’t King or any other athletic department executive. He also said it wasn’t an RMU board member or university President Dr. Chris Howard, offering only it was someone in administration “a couple of layers below Howard.”

In June, Spellacy’s firm requested that Robert Morris officials share all correspondence between Howard’s office and the athletic department as well as with the NCAA regarding men’s and women’s ice hockey from the past two years.

Spellacy also asked for Howard’s cellphone records, his emails and records of any social media accounts Robert Morris monitors or maintains relating to men’s and women’s hockey over a two-year period.

Spellacy said the school did not cooperate and participated in only two conversations with him from that point forward.

After announcing the cuts, RMU officials told players that they would be given the same scholarship funding rate they were getting before the teams were cut if they chose to remain enrolled. But if those student-athletes wanted to continue playing hockey, they’d have to go elsewhere.

On July 14, Robert Morris announced plans to resurrect the teams if they could hit fundraising goals. But earlier this month, the university announced that fundraising wasn’t tracking fast enough to resurrect the programs for the coming season so they would be paused for a year with an intent to focus on fundraising and a potential reinstatement for 2022-23.

Spellacy said he was weighing his next move. His objective could be to recover civil damages and financial losses for players who aren’t getting the same scholarship assistance upon transferring elsewhere.

“Economic damage. Personal damage. Psychological damage. I’m going to figure out what I’m going to do next,” he said. “Aidan was going to be a full scholarship player at RMU next year. That’s room, board, tuition, the whole deal. I can just say (his current package is) not the same where he is now.”