NELSONVILLE, Ohio — Hocking College received numerous complaints about its former athletic director, including multiple complaints he claims the college never revealed to him.
Former athletic director Cary Campbell was responsible for supervising Caden Cox, after Cox’s family asked the college to remove Matthew Kmosko as the supervisor.
Cox, who has Down Syndrome, made national headlines in 2021 when he became the first college football player with the syndrome to score a point in an official game.
Earlier this month, Cox’s family filed a lawsuit against Hocking College’s board, school president Betty Young, multiple staff members and Kmosko. Cox’s claims against the college have brought nationwide attention to the Nelsonville-based school.
The suit alleges harassment, discriminatory conduct and assault by Kmosko as well as a lack of follow-up and retaliation from the school. The lawsuit alleges that the college did not conduct a background check on Kmosko, and that the college failed to adequately address and investigate complaints against Kmosko.
After Campbell began supervising Cox at Hocking’s student center, the lawsuit alleges, Kmosko was still allowed regular contact with Cox. It is unclear whether this was Campbell’s responsibility. Cox’s lawyer declined to comment for this story.
Campbell became athletic director in July 2021. He began serving as Cox’s supervisor in January 2022. He resigned as athletic director on Dec. 8, 2022, one day after the college administration received a report that found Campbell had mismanaged funds from athletic event ticket sales.
Hocking College records obtained by the Independent don’t show follow-up investigations for most complaints against Campbell. Additionally, Campbell told the Independent in a January interview that he had not previously heard about some of the complaints in his file, including a Title IX complaint.
Of the complaints Campbell had heard about, he said, “I’ve never had more than five-minute meetings on these topics, so they really weren’t that significant to me.”
Young told the Independent in an email, “Hocking College evaluates every complaint made and based on that evaluation we follow our procedures to address the complaint. All complaints are addressed.”
In her response to the Independent’s inquiry on Campbell, Young also stated, “There is a group of former disgruntled employees who have formed a strategy to harm Hocking College through use of the media including social media.” Young’s statement appears to refer to a Facebook group of current and former employees which has organized against the Hocking College administration.
Title IX complaint
On Oct. 20, 2022, three separate reports were filed with the Hocking College administration: two Human Resources complaint forms and one Title IX/sexual misconduct complaint form. One report reads that Campbell “was seen taking pictures” of female volleyball players on the sidelines during a match, which made “a few girls uncomfortable.”
According to the report, one player felt targeted and believed Campbell was “only taking photos for his own personal gain on his cell phone.”
A Hocking College administrator filed a report about the incident as well, and requested that an investigation into the incident be conducted. An unknown party also filed a Title IX complaint, which referred to one of the other complaints.
The Independent requested public records for “investigations into any allegations of [Campbell’s] misconduct.” The college did not provide any record of investigation into the Title IX claim.
Campbell said the complaints were “never brought to my attention.” He said he frequently photographed athletic events at the request of the college administration and with the support of team coaches.
Under federal rules, “Schools must respond promptly to Title IX sexual harassment in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent,” according to a summary from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Hocking College’s Title IX procedures require “an adequate, reliable, thorough and impartial process conducted by individuals free from conflict of interest and bias” in response to “any report, complaint, [or] investigation.”
Michigan-based attorney Elizabeth Abdnour, a Title IX investigator and advisor, said that just because a Title IX complaint is submitted doesn’t necessarily mean the college would have to investigate it as a Title IX case. She noted educational institutions have various options for dealing with complaints that it determines don’t meet the criteria for Title IX violations: “They really do have to do some triaging.”
In Campbell’s case, Abdnour said, “There’s definitely room for flexibility in a case like this, where it might be based on sex or it might be sexual, it might not — it would be within the realm of their discretion to decide, ‘We don’t think this rises to the level of a Title IX investigation so we’re not gonna do a Title IX investigation.’”
However, Abdnour added, “I definitely think [the alleged incident with Campbell is] gross, and I certainly — if I were the Title IX coordinator — would want to investigate it, but I think they certainly would have an argument that they didn’t have to and that they could have addressed it some other way.”
Jacqueline Hagerott, Hocking’s Title IX coordinator, referred a request for comment about whether investigations were conducted to the college’s marketing office.
In a statement, school president Young wrote, “The person making the complaint may use language that infers [sic] the complaint is a violation of some specific area which the trained staff of Hocking College, upon evaluation, determin[e]s the appropriate path to investigate the complaint and ultimate outcome.
“If the complaint and resulting evaluation and outcome does not rise to a written sanction, up to termination, then a coaching session, training or similar occurs as appropriate.”
Young did not respond to a follow-up asking why the college apparently had no documentation of any coaching or training session with Campbell, or whether Campbell’s statement that he had never had more than a “five minute conversation” about any complaints in his file was accurate.
Other complaints
Racist remark
A September 2021 complaint alleged that Campbell said a Japanese football player was “pretty good for a Japanese kid, huh?” There is no evidence that this allegation was investigated by Hocking College.
Campbell said, “First of all, I never said that.” He added that he is the “biggest fan” of a Japanese international student, for whom he was a mentor and supported extensively.
He said he was never made aware of the complaint.
Sex on campus
On June 11, 2022, during the inaugural Black Diamond Music & Arts Festival hosted by the college, Campbell allegedly had sex in a campus dorm room, according to an investigation conducted by a Hocking College employee whose name was redacted. The sexual act “could have possibly been witnessed” by a minor in an adjoining room, the report said.
Campbell was interviewed by Hocking College on June 23, 2022, a day after the HR department interviewed the complainant. He denied allegations that he had been having sex, and that he and “his companion” had entered a room that they believed was available to rent for guests of the festival.
Campbell said he told the complainant that he wasn’t aware the room wasn’t available, and he denied refusing to leave. He “stated at no point was he inappropriate in any way in front of the minor staying in the dorm.”
Campbell told the Independent, “I was offered a dorm room and they never assigned me a specific room. And I just went up to find a dorm room during the festival.”
Security footage reviewed by the HR department showed Campbell and an unknown woman carrying bedding into a dorm room just after midnight on June 11, 2022, and leaving five minutes later.
The woman was holding a jacket that she had previously been wearing in the security footage. In a June 23, 2022 memo, the investigator ultimately found that there was “insufficient evidence to state that Cary Campbell was in violation of any policy or procedure of Hocking College.”
Missing money
A memo dated Dec. 7, 2022 — the day before Campbell resigned — states that the author became aware two days earlier that the athletics department “had not made any ticket sales deposits in many months.” Hocking College charges nonstudents $5 for entry into athletic events. The college redacted the author’s identity.
The next day, the memo’s author approached Campbell, who managed funds from ticket sales. Campbell purportedly said he had kept all money from recent ticket sales in a lockbox, and produced just over $2,000 in cash upon request. The box was “retrieved” from “within a couch cushion in the adjoining office” to Campbell’s.
The memo reads, “The amount seemed very low in comparison to my understanding of the normal attendance since the games resumed after the pandemic.” After inquiring with other employees, the author of the memo completed an analysis “based on what I consider very conservative attendance estimates,” which found that around $3,890 in funds was unaccounted for.
Campbell said, “They have all the cash deposits that have come in … It was in a cash box that was handed to them with receipts, so that was all the money, and they have it all.”
Keeping that much cash violated Hocking College’s Cash Control Policy, the memo states. According to the author, the policy requires daily deposits of cash in amounts over $100 belonging to the college. Campbell had not made a deposit since the fall season began on Aug. 26, 2022.
Questionable qualifications
The lawsuit against Hocking College by Caden Cox’s family alleges Kmosko, Cox’s employment supervisor prior to Campbell, was hired based on a request from a board member. The lawsuit further alleges that Young instructed the college’s human resources department not to conduct a background check on Kmosko.
In Campbell’s case, the college did conduct a background check. However, Hocking College hired Campbell despite his lack of athletics experience and his checkered business background.
Campbell said he began serving as athletic director in July 2021, after initially meeting with Hocking administrators when they were consulting his real estate business to build “new structures and help expand their fields and things.” Just before Campbell said he was hired, the college’s board authorized $450,000 for the construction of athletics facilities.
Hocking College Trustee Stuart Brooks, who served on the board at the time and attended the meeting at which the board authorized the athletics contract, said he did not know anything about Campbell consulting for the college or the athletics contract.
Campbell said that he never intended to work at Hocking College for long, and served as athletic director only “to help build out the program.” Campbell had no prior experience working in athletics programming or education, according to a résumé provided by Hocking.
Before he was hired at Hocking in July 2021, Campbell mostly worked in real estate. The “career overview” on his résumé reads that he has “extensive experience in the field of real estate development, club and restaurant operations, project planning, [and] marketing with an additional emphasis in financial programming.”
Two Michigan country clubs he operated faced financial insolvency.
In 2014, Campbell and business partner Robert Regan bought a 1920s-era country club in Monroe County, Michigan, that was designed by noted golf course designer Donald Ross.
“Campbell and Regan have a vision to completely restore the Ross design and return Monroe Golf & Country Club to its prior greatness,” a Toledo-area golf industry magazine reported in its September 2015 issue. Three months later, the course was sold at auction after Campbell and Regan defaulted on loans.
Regan gained notoriety in the 2022 election cycle for derogatory comments about Jews, survivors of sexual assault and COVID restrictions while running for the Michigan House of Representatives. He was in the midst of his first run for state house when he and Campbell worked on the Monroe County project in 2014.
In 2016, Campbell worked on the redevelopment of the Walnut Hills Country Club in his hometown of East Lansing, Michigan. By 2018, the 97-year-old club had closed for good after a zoning dispute between the township and the property’s owners, who wanted to build dense housing on the property. The property has since fallen into disrepair.
