We have received the attached letter from Licia-Michel’e Burgher, world champion, Olympic silver medalist, and for three years an assistant coach in Track and Field at Williams.  Since many of you have been inquiring about the basis of the administration's actions, perhaps this will shed some light. - Ed.

May 3, 2007

Dear Parents and Alums,

I am extremely upset and angry since I heard the school is not renewing Coach White’s contract. I have known Coach for ten years, and three of those years I was working for him as an assistant coach at Williams. When I was in college I transferred schools based on his reputation alone, just so I could train with the best. His knowledge of track and field and his skill as a coach is without a doubt the best in the country. He brought me from a good college athlete to winning a gold medal at the world championships and a silver medal at the Olympics for Jamaica in just a few short years. When he comes to a school, the athletes go from good to great, and when he leaves they are never as good again. His coaching ability can’t be questioned, and the administration should not even go there.

I have learned about the 2 accusations the administration gave for his contract renewal from talking to people with first-hand knowledge. The letter President Shapiro sent implies that there is something bad that they were not telling us, but I say call a spade a spade. I can give you the real story. Coach White doesn’t want to talk about the reasons that the school gave, and he waited for 10 weeks to tell anyone what was going on until word started leaking. He doesn’t want to make the kids upset, but I think it’s important that you know what is really going on.

First of all, if you do not know Coach White well, you must understand that above everything else he loves track and field and he loves the kids at Williams. He is committed to being a good coach for all of them, good or bad. He is also very dedicated to the community and doing community service. He is incredibly generous with other people. Coach White took in my sister and me at his house when we had nowhere else to go, and when we were not staying there, there were always someone else down on luck staying. He was always eager to help out someone who was down and out and give them a hand up.

One of the families he took in was the Agbra family from Africa that his daughter met while she was in the Peace Corps. Trying to say this was wrong is nonsense. His family had 2 parents and 3 very small children. They were almost starving in their village, and Coach White paid out of his own pocket to fly the whole family over to stay with him at his house for a year. He paid for all the expenses for the year while they were here, including 2 surgeries for the little boy, and then paid to send them back to their village when their visa expired. Many kids on the team expressed how much they learned from the experience of having Antoine around, since his life was so different from theirs. They were very proud of Williams for being willing to give Antoine a job so that the family could get visas, even though he was only paid a mere $1000 a month. Coach helped Antoine get a second job at Stop ‘N’ Shop because no one ever told him he wasn’t supposed to. Everyone else who was international had other jobs, so he didn’t know that Antoine couldn’t. Antoine saved every penny to take back home to Benin. This was a win-win situation for the family and for Williams looking good. While they were here, Antoine worked on recruiting international students, especially from Africa. This happened right after Williams started giving more international aid, and since we all know Africans are great runners, Coach was hoping to recruit some new athletes and increase diversity with the new money from the school. Coach was very pleased with the contacts that Antoine made, but he was very frustrated because he could never get any of the athletes into school. Williams always says they care a lot about diversity, but the kids they let into school are kids who could go to the Ivy League if they didn’t go to Williams. There are no programs at Williams to help kids from the ghetto who are poor but have a lot of potential, and there is definitely no help for kids from Africa!! Coach White has a special place in his heart for disadvantages kids because he himself had no parents and lived in 16 different homes before he was in the 8 th grade. He can relate to what these kids are going through better than anyone in admissions because he doesn’t fit the same mold as the Williams people. It is very upsetting for him to get in trouble when he is just trying to help someone make a better life for himself and his family. Williams talks about wanting diversity, but they don’t want to accept someone like Coach.

As for the second accusation about Coach White’s Masters Degree, he found out only a few years ago, and made serious efforts to get the degree. Kurt (my fiancé and another assistant coach at Williams) and I were with him when he was explaining to Mr. Sheehy about the degree he got credit for, and Mr. Sheehy explicitly said that it would be fine. Now he is saying that he “can’t recall” that, but we know he is lying to save his butt.

Coach White is the most dedicated, hard-working coach I have ever met, and he will do anything to fight for your kids. When he first started coaching, I remember that the school wanted to cut the size of the team down to 35 men and 35 women, but Coach fought hard to let all of your kids participate. Coach even bought new uniforms out of his own money when the school wouldn’t buy any more, so that every kid on the team could wear a Williams jersey. When he first arrived, alumni were angry about the state of the outdoor track and wanted to start writing letters, but coach had it put off for a couple of years until the kids started to get upset too. Once the students were mad, Coach supported them no matter what, but now he is getting blamed for upsetting President Shapiro when he actually just supported what the kids were doing about it. As for the design team that was meeting about the track, Coach was disappointed that he was not on it because he wanted the facilities to be top-notch for the team. As a track coach with 35 years experience, shouldn’t he have had more input than the administrators who knew little or nothing about track? When he voiced his concerns about it, he made people upset and now they are holding it against him. This is really not right.

Coach was always dedicated; even in his role as a P.E. teacher he was never late and never ever missed class, unlike many other coaches teaching P.E. who didn’t even try and didn’t make the kids do anything. His student ratings were always off the charts and the highest in the whole department for both P.E. and for coaching. At Williams, the faculty gets fired if they have low ratings. Coach is getting fired even though he has the highest ratings because he upset the administration when he fought to get your kids what they deserve.

The administrators don’t even know Coach White and they don’t care about track. When Kurt and I were coaches, we were the only 2 black faces in the whole department but Lisa Meledy never knew our names for the whole 3 years we were there. Some of you may remember that Coach had to fight to get hired in the first place because Lisa Meledy and others wanted to hire a female who had just graduated from college. I am all for diversity, but someone with 30 + years of experience deserves the job. Isn’t it funny that Lisa Meledy is the one who didn’t want him hires in the first place, and now she is the one who wrote the report about Antoine and the Masters degree?? Why is this being brought up now when it all happened in 2004? It is unfair that they are trying to make him look bad when he brought more success to the team than anyone else, and when he did not even do anything wrong. If you watch CBS News on Sunday at 1PM, you will see how he brought the team to a whole new level.

Coach White is not a quitter, and he will fight for what is right the same way he would fight for each of his athletes. His last appeal is coming up soon, and the letters you write are being kept to go into the decision. Please keep on sending your letters of support for Coach White because every little bit helps.

God Bless,

Michelle Burgher
Kurt Duncan