Father of Southeast athlete angered by university's reply to tweeted photo

The Missourian has been reporting on the risque photo tweeted out by Southeast Missouri State athletics department last Friday.

The university said its "investigation" was complete a couple days ago, but we've continued to report, as have others. Our last story, linked in the last sentence, included the discovery that the women in the photo were Southeast student-athletes.

The Riverfront Times posted a blog entry this morning in which a reporter quoted the father of one of the Southeast athletes.

From the entry:

"These aren't two random girls, these are two girls at SEMO who were exposed by the athletic department," says the father of one of the students, who asked to remain anonymous to protect the identity of his daughter. "Their response has been less than professional.... They've done nothing to console the girls. Their mantra is, 'It'll go away, it'll die down soon.' That is inexcusable."

You can read the full entry here.

The father says the person who sent out the tweet has been "terminated. We'll post more if and when we know more, but it seems for all the world that a member of the sports information department has disappeared in the last week.

Jeff Honza, the director of Southeast's sports information department, had previously refused to confirm it was a university employee who sent the tweet, but there is confirmation of that in the RFT entry as well.

My biggest question in all of this has been how the university employee obtained the photo in the first place, given its bizarre and inappropriate content. The original Deadspin article on the tweet said the photo did not appear to be anywhere else on the Internet. The father explains that as well, saying the photo was taken and tweeted by another student-athlete without the girls permission and then later deleted from Twitter. It showed up again later on the @GoSoutheast account.

The university has been known to try to bury its proverbial head in the sand when controversial matters arise, which seems to be the thing that drove the father to speak out.