Feb. 24, 2011

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Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 8:50 AM
To: Holland, Terry; Chancellor
Subject: Incident following last night's game
As my wife and I were leaving last night's game, we encountered a verbal confrontation between several ECU students and a father and son who had travelled down from the Virginia Beach area to cheer for UTEP last evening. The students were very abusive in their language in putting down UTEP. I walked up to the gentleman and his son and he advised that not only were the students verbally abusive, but they had bumped into him as well. I apologized to him and his son on behalf of East Carolina University and Pirate Athletics. Wanted you to be aware of this situation, as you'll probably hear of this unfortunate situation shortly, if you've not heard already. Thanks.

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To the Student Body:

Our students were a major part of last night's great win over UTEP. However, the actions of a few have once again tarnished the hard work accomplished by so many people, particularly that of Coach Lebo and team members, to turn our basketball program into a successful one.

Mistreatment of visitors, regardless of any situation, is simply not acceptable at this university for a number of good and practical reasons.

Every visitor who sets foot on this campus will have large numbers of relatives and friends who will be making college choices in future years. Those relatives and friends may be highly-talented individuals who are being heavily recruited by other institutions as well as East Carolina University.

Allowing anyone representing ECU to mistreat visitors is one guaranteed way to ensure East Carolina University will always be less than it can and should be.

We ask each of you to go out of your way to welcome all visitors to our campus, regardless of why they are here. If confrontations are initiated by visitors, walk away and let those individuals be the bad guys instead of dragging this university's reputation into a no-win situation.

The institutions aspiring to be long-term winners do not mistreat any visitors when those individuals are on our campus.

Let's do everything possible to help East Carolina attract the very best students in the future.

GO PIRATES!

Steve Ballard
Chancellor

Terry Holland
Athletics Director

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