The day following Notre Dame's victory over Army at Yankee Stadium, coach Brian Kelly was questioned over a controversy involving a St. Mary's College student and a Notre Dame football player.
St. Mary's freshman student, 19-year-old Elizabeth Seeberg, suffered short periods of depression before dying from an overdose on prescription pills on September 10th last. According to the Chicago Tribune the college student told Notre Dame police that weeks before her death she has been sexually assaulted by a Notre Dame football player.
The identity of the player has not been revealed as he has not been charged with a crime and remains a team player of the Fighting Irish side.
Brian Kelly respond to the incident by saying it was "a university matter".
"I'm not going to get into the specifics," Kelly said during his Sunday teleconference. "From my standpoint, as the head football coach, I think it was made clear that the university is going to deal with any matters of this nature. And that for me, one of the reasons why I came to Notre Dame is I have the same standards that our university does. We are in lockstep relative to the standards that we hold here at the University of Notre Dame. That's all I can give you relative to specifics."
He was asked about the list of commandments in the locker room including the treatment of women with respect. The coach said that he has a daughter so the commandments are important to him.
"Absolutely, we have those commandments in our locker room," he said. "You know, I'm a dad, I'm a father, I have a daughter -- those are very, very important things to me and very, very important to the culture within our football program,” he added.
ESPN have reported that the Seeberg family have enlisted the help of former federal prosecutor Zachary Fardon to investigate the allegations and Notre Dame's handling of the complaint.
When Kelly was questioned as to why he didn't suspend the player in question, he said that certain incidents are for the university to deal as they have a process in place.
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