When UMaine hockey player Derek Damon skipped classes last spring, the coach forced him to miss the opening game of postseason play. When the associate head coach of women’s basketball, Kathy Karlsson, reportedly failed repeated sobriety tests this month after being stopped while driving in Bangor, she was suspended for three games. When the team’s head coach, Ann McInerney, lied to law-enforcement officers about her identity during that same traffic stop, she received no penalty that anyone can identify.

The traffic stop occurred Nov. 5, when State Trooper Christopher Hashey said he saw Ms. Karlsson driving erratically and pulled her over. Eventually, she reportedly was measured as having nearly twice the legal limit of alcohol in her system. A three-game suspension (with pay) seems like the absolute minimum for a coach who made a series of bad decisions – drinking excessively, deciding to drive while drunk, taking a passenger with her – that endangered her and others and brought dishonor to the team.

But that was tough treatment compared with how the university said it would penalize Ms. McInerney. She was in the vehicle with Ms. Karlsson, and according to Trooper Hashey and confirmed by the university, she initially provided her name but when he asked to spell it, she spelled out “Martin,” then refused to identify herself further and said she would be walking home from there. She misled law enforcement and was subsequently uncooperative – something no university should allow for its athletes and certainly not for its role models, its coaches.

But when asked about disciplinary action for what was a serious error in judgment, a university spokesman would not comment on any specifics and said it was “nothing we’re going to see.”

At a state university, that is not acceptable. This event is not only a violation of good sense but a violation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association bylaws, which say that university employees associated with athletics “shall act with honesty and sportsmanship at all times” for the honor and integrity of their institutions and their sports. That didn’t happen in this case, but the university is content to ignore this standard.

Everybody wants to like the local college coach; if the UMaine women’s basketball team is like most teams, its members have offered plenty of support to the adults who are supposed to be leading them. But support should not be confused with the university’s responsibility.

It certainly doesn’t want a player who makes a similar mistake and misleads an official to have the defense that she was acting just as the coach – and the university – taught her.