Handling of Sexual Assault Claims Brings New Scrutiny to Montana Mike Albans for The New York Times Washington Grizzly Stadium at the University of Montana campus in Missoula, Mont. MISSOULA, Mont. - Montana advanced to the semifinals of last season's Football Championship Subdivision playoffs - the 11th time the team made it that far, and yet another indication of why the Grizzlies have long been a source of pride in this bucolic, football-obsessed city of 67,000. The team, however, is now at the center of a scandal in which campus authorities and local law enforcement have been accused of doing too little to respond to claims of sexual assault. The football coach and the athletic director have been let go, a player has been arrested and the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice recently said it would conduct a civil investigation to determine if county prosecutors and the Missoula police adequately handled numerous complaints of sexual assaults over the past three years, including 11 said to have happened on campus. The Justice Department is also investigating the university under Title IX, part of federal education law, and Title IV, under the Civil Rights Act, for how it handled sexual assault accusations. It will coordinate with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights on a sexual harassment complaint against members of the football team. "I am surprised they felt the need to come in," Royce C. Engstrom, the university president, said of the investigators. While top Montana officials were taken aback by the federal attention, others saw it as a positive that the issue was being addressed. "A number of victims of sexual assaults felt the process wasn't clear," said Cynthia Wolken, a member of the Missoula City Council. There hasn't been a lot of light shed at the university. I'm not saying there has been a purposeful cover-up, but a series of missteps that have been disturbing. A series of e-mails between university and city officials obtained last week by a newspaper, The Missoulian, show that they tried to contain damage from sexual-assault accusations. Jim Foley, the university vice president who has been at the center of the controversy, sought ways, under the student-conduct code, to punish a woman who had publicly discussed what she said was an assault by four members of the football team. Foley also urged other officials to stop calling the assault "gang rape" and refer to it as "date rape." Reaction among the university's 14,000 students has been muted, in part because the investigation was announced just before the end of the quarter. There have been a few low-key demonstrations. "People are getting angry, but in a good way that facilitates discussion," said Eilis O'Herlihy, the coordinator of the university's Student Assault Resource Center. There's a coming together to say it isn't welcome here. In April, the contracts of Robin Pflugrad, last year's Big Sky Conference football coach of the year, and Jim O'Day, the athletic director, were not renewed. The football team recently barred players from sending Twitter messages, a move it said was meant to eliminate possible "misconceptions." "I'm very sorrowful one of the premier universities in the Rockies has been scandalized by a few knuckleheaded students," said Pat Williams, a former United States congressman and a member of Montana's Board of Regents. The football team has been terribly hurt by this. An investigation performed at the university's request by a former Montana Supreme Court justice, Diane Barz, found nine incidents of sexual assault were reported on campus in 2010 and 2011. Two more cases have been reported since her findings were made public Feb. 1. In December 2010 a student told the police that she was drinking, had lost consciousness and woke to find herself under assault by five men, including four football players. The police said they did not find enough evidence to prosecute the men. Last December three football players were implicated in two separate sexual assaults, though no charges were filed. The university has expelled five students, none of them football players, for their involvement in assaults.