“Jussie Smollett On A Volleyball Court.” Investigation Finds No Evidence Of Racial Slurs During Duke/BYU Volleyball Game

My husband and I both attended Brigham Young University and we met working as campus security. So this Duke/BYU volleyball game racial slur story means a little something extra to me. As Clay Travis described it, this story is “Jussie Smollett on a volleyball court.” Apparently, we didn’t learn from the first Smollett hate crime hoax. If you haven’t been following this whole drama, click on the tweet below and scroll through the thread to catch up with what you’ve missed. This is the best collection of information in an easy-to-follow timeline that I’ve found.

If you’d rather not go through the thread, basically what happened is that Duke women’s volleyball player Rachel Richardson played in a volleyball game at BYU with her team in August. Shortly after the game, Rachel’s godmother, Lesa Pamplin (who is currently campaigning for an elected political position) and Rachel herself took to Twitter with some pretty serious allegations of racism against a BYU fan. BYU kicked into full PR cleanup mode, banned the fan who had been identified by Richardson during the game, and immediately launched an investigation.

The all the mainstream establishment media organizations took Richardson’s accusations at face value and blew it into a national racism firestorm. They were judge, jury, and executioner despite the total lack of any supporting evidence. As days passed, local news outlets revealed that the lack of evidence had instead turned into evidence directly contradicting the accusations. Students, sports officials, law enforcement officers, high-tech surveillance cameras, and even Richardson’s own teammates were unable to substantiate the allegations. There was not a shred of corroborating evidence, and there was even some evidence directly contradicting the accusations. Will Cain talked a little about the evidence as it was being brought to light.

Today, BYU’s official investigation into the matter has come to a close, ultimately finding no evidence supporting Richardson’s allegations of racist slurs being hurled during the game. Now, I often make fun of the self-investigation thing. Politicians do it all the time: “Oh, we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing on our part, and we’ve reported our findings to ourselves as the leaders of the investigation. Case closed.” Doesn’t seem totally reliable. But a student news and information organization called BYU Conservatives, Deseret News, and the Salt Lake Tribune all came to the same conclusion that there’s no evidence of it happening. And if you know anything about politics in Utah, you know that the Salt Lake Tribune was definitely going into their investigation looking for anything that could substantiate Richardson’s racism allegations. So the fact that they basically admitted that nothing seems to have happened is a big deal.

Additionally, there were a ton of witnesses who have all been extremely cooperative. It was a super public and televised event with lots of people around, and lots of people using their phones to record. The location where the incident occurred was also right by a group of BYU basketball players who happen to be African American, who denied hearing any such language used. Considering it would have been as hurtful to them as to Richardson, they certainly wouldn’t cover something like that up.

Additionally, I have a little bit of insider knowledge because of my time working with BYU campus security. The cameras they used at BYU are incredible high tech and allow for crystal clear zooming capability. With multiple camera angles, they can zoom in on the student section, identify a single individual, and see every single detail of everything they do and say. I’ve seen it. I’ve even been part of an example training on the abilities of the cameras. If someone was screaming the N-word numerous times over the course of several sets, loudly and clearly enough for Richardson to hear many times, then one of the many cameras would have seen it.

The bottom line is that the whole thing was a hoax, just like Jussie Smollett. The fact that Richardson’s godmother, who is currently campaigning for an elected office, was the one who initially started spreading the allegations means that the hoax has an element of political motivation. The controversy gave Pamplin increased exposure for her campaign and was a major talking point she could push. The media and elitists were eager to spread the story despite the complete lack of evidence. They certainly didn’t do their due journalistic diligence before spreading an unsubstantiated story that did very real public damage to BYU.

I’m not sure whether Richardson intentionally concocted this hoax or whether she simply misheard and then was pressured to exaggerate her accusations. But this hoax had very real consequences for the schools, the teams, and the fans. This has once again shown us the damage that our mainstream media can and will do for a story they think fits their narrative. The truth literally doesn’t matter.