City Cracks Down on Dorsey

The CIF City Section’s rules committee said “Enough!” to Dorsey High officials Monday, banning the boys’ basketball team from this season’s playoffs and handing out sanctions that will run through 1999 as punishment for what several members called “adult-caused problems.”

The committee also accepted the school’s belated determination that guard Lamont Frazier was academically ineligible and forfeited eight victories in which he played. That changes the Dons’ record from 13-4 to 5-12. They are 4-2 in the Southern Pacific Conference.

It was determined that Frazier, a senior, had less than the required 2.0 grade-point average on Nov. 13, the date to verify grades for eligibility, and that one of two subsequent grade changes, as outlined in a story in The Times on Jan. 4, was done improperly and could not be taken into account in trying to raise his average to allow him to play.

The Times’ story centered on an allegation of coercion made by government teacher Mike Liskey, who said that Coach Kevin Gibson had tried to pressure him to change Frazier’s grade from an F to a C. The Times also published documents apparently showing that two grades were improperly changed.

Gibson denied trying to pressure Liskey, who said Monday he was told by one administrator that he will be laid off at the end of the semester, Feb. 2, because of a drop in enrollment.

Last Wednesday, Liskey said Principal Jerelene Wells told him she was considering reprimanding him for grading Frazier unfairly and for talking to a reporter on school grounds. Liskey denies the charges.

According to Liskey, Wells had told him earlier in the school year that the administration liked his work and that he would be asked to stay for the entire school year.

Wells was out of town and not available for comment, but James Alther, assistant principal in charge of athletics, said Monday that Dorsey was about 100 students below the 1,700 with which it began the school year. The drop, he added, was not unusual and necessitated a corresponding decrease in faculty in the first month of the new semester.

“Generally that’s done on a seniority basis,” he said. Liskey is in his first year at Dorsey.

The grade changes examined by the rules committee involved Frazier’s physical science and geometry classes. They were made between Nov. 17 and 27, after marks had been submitted and verification forms--given to teachers to be sure grades were properly recorded--were returned to the Dorsey front office. Report cards had also been sent to students before teacher Glenda Pepin raised Frazier’s grade from a B to an A in physical science and John Turner raised Frazier’s grade from a C to a B in geometry.

The changes gave Frazier a 2.0.

“What they are saying is that one of the teachers involved in changing the grade did not follow the correct procedure,” City Section Athletic Director Barbara Fiege said.

Alther said that the grade had been changed without the permission of Wells.

He would not say which grade was improperly changed but sources said that it was Turner’s.

In the wake of Liskey’s accusations, Dorsey administrators began investigating all of Frazier’s teachers, according to Alther.

But Liskey said that he felt as if the school’s investigation was centered on him. He believes the mission of the investigation was to discredit him.

A survey was also done by the Dorsey administration, and of 80 teachers who responded, 10 said they had been approached by coaches during the school year, most with legitimate inquiries about an athlete’s progress.

But other Dorsey teachers told The Times that they had been asked to change grades, though none pointed to Gibson and all asked that their names not be used.

Dorsey has had a checkered school year, beginning in September when officials appeared before the rules committee to answer questions about last year’s soccer team. The Dons--who have a co-ed team, coached this year by Liskey--were banned from this season’s soccer playoffs after it was determined that last season’s team had included four ineligible players, some as old as 22.

High school eligibility ends at 19.

The committee put Dorsey on two years’ probation in November when it found that an eligibility form submitted for the football team had the names of seven eligible players missing. It was, said Alther, a clerical error.

“A student copied the names from a computer list to a manual list,” said Alther, who certified the form before it was submitted to the City Section. “He left off some players, and we got probation for it.”

The Dons also won the City 4-A Championship, defeating San Pedro in the title game, 10-8.

Gibson and Alther told the committee Monday that it was unfair to punish the Dorsey basketball players--City runners-up in two of the last three seasons--for the actions of adults, but several committee members said that apparently the school hadn’t gotten the message from being put on probation and that maybe that punishment wasn’t severe enough.

“I think we blinked last time,” committee member Gary Cordray, football coach at South Gate, said. “Maybe it was because it was such a high-profile program.”

Fiege agreed.

“You need to do something with the administration at Dorsey High because it’s not working,” she said.

But the committee stopped short when one member proposed banning all of Dorsey’s teams from postseason competition for a year.

“If we do that and there is another violation, we’re going to see ourselves eliminating an entire program at a school, and we don’t want to do that,” Garfield Principal Maria Tostado said.

Instead, Dorsey was also docked two preseason basketball tournament opportunities next season--rules allow a team three--and directed to contact directors of three tournaments in which it played before this season that an ineligible player was used.

A two-year probation, handed out in November, was extended two more years, through 1999.

Also, in testimony before the committee Monday, Alther indicated that he had not checked the eligibility of the school’s girls’ basketball players for the period between Nov. 6, the start of preseason practice, and Nov. 13. He was told to do so by Feb. 9, the day before the postseason tournament seeding meeting, and committee members directed Fiege to consider banning the Dons from the playoffs if it is found that academically ineligible girls practiced.

Dorsey has the right to appeal the punishment to Dick Browning, the city’s director of senior high school instruction, but Alther said he did not know yet whether that would be done.

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The Sanctions

CIF City Section rules committee sanctions against Dorsey High in its grade-changing case:

* The team is banned from the 1996 boys’ basketball playoffs.

* Eight Dorsey victories are forfeited.

* Dorsey is required to notify three tournament directors and schools that participated in the events that it had used an ineligible player.

* The section accepts Dorsey’s determination that Lamont Frazier has been ineligible since Nov. 13.

* Dorsey’s athletic probation is extended until 1999.