Details of underage drinking, fighting, racism and sex at a party on the Lipscomb campus in a former Vanderbilt basketball player’s upcoming “tell-all” book are not being overlooked by Lipscomb officials.
“I don’t believe that this party happened, but I want to be real as a university,” said Sam Smith, associate dean of Campus Life.
The claims are in former Vanderbilt University point guard Kyle Fuller’s book “Below the Rim.” An excerpt of the book was released recently in the Vanderbilt Hustler. The Tennessean has reported that the book, scheduled to be released next summer, is 40 percent completed.
In the book’s first chapter, called “Dixieland,” the basketball player writes about this alleged party, and his account includes claims that the apartment hosting the party had alcohol, racist posters and “down” girls.
Smith said he doesn’t believe the tale. Still, he said, “If this happened we need to take serious looks of what is going on. So we’re asking questions, but it’s still a very, very tough pill to swallow that this is really a possibility of something that happened on our campus.”
The details in Fuller’s account are what makes the story unbelivable, according to members of the Lipscomb community. When it first was released, the chapter “Dixieland” claimed the party took place in Fanning Hall, despite Fanning being an all-girls dorm with very strict rules about visitors of the opposite sex.
The story was later changed to say that the party took place in apartment-style housing, which was inferred to be The Village.
“The problem with The Village is that there’s only one dorm a fight could have spilled out of, like the book claims, and that dorm was not occupied by anyone who would throw a party,” Smith said.
Lipscomb senior Hadley Kelsey was so angered by Fuller’s portrait of the events that he decided to tweet the Vanderbilt graduate.
“I’m curious, when did this ‘party’ happen at Lipscomb? What year? Do you remember the month or day?” tweeted Kelsey.
“I wrote it th way it is 4 a reason. To protect 3 of my friends,” Fuller replied to Kelsey. “If u dnt believe me thts on u. But I wont put a lie in th book.”
Fuller was unavailable for an interview because he is preparing for a basketball career in Europe.