If you thought the podium walkout was the peak of this story, think again.
In the days since Seth Clevenger swept the Division III Indoor Championships, a new Instagram account called @RowanCleanSport has emerged — run by someone inside the Rowan program who has had enough. The account has been posting documents, screenshots, and statements aimed squarely at the university’s handling of the situation.
Rowan’s response? A cease and desist letter.
That’s where we are.
The Whistleblower Inside the Building
The @RowanCleanSport account — flagged in a LetsRun.com forum thread that has since run to six pages — posted a screenshot of an email sent directly to both Rowan Athletic Director Shawn Tucker and head track coach Dustin Dimit. The email includes quotes from a current Rowan athlete who appears to be one of Clevenger’s own teammates.
The quotes don’t hold back.
On the internal communication breakdown: “I don’t fault Tucker simply because I don’t think Dimit is being honest with him. Dimit is a very shifty guy, and he’ll tell you what you want to hear. About a week before the LetsRun article came out, I walked into our gym and listened to the two of them talking about Clevenger. Dimit was trying to claim the rumors were being spread by Hopkins because they were jealous. Tucker asked if he was sure because he was ‘getting a ton of emails.'”
On the atmosphere inside the program: “Dimit and Clevenger treat this like it’s a joke.”
And on whether Rowan ever did any due diligence before accepting Clevenger as a transfer: “I can also share with you that Sudbury and Dimit have not spoken at all.“
That last line is the most damning. Iowa State head coach Jeremy Sudbury — the man who suspended Clevenger — and Rowan’s own head coach have apparently never had a single conversation about what happened. It’s a pattern the NCAA has seen before: a school accepts a transfer, asks no questions, and lets eligibility rules do the rest. Rowan didn’t just turn a blind eye. According to this account, they never even looked.
Nobody Else Wanted Him
The email also reframes Clevenger’s transfer story considerably. He has publicly described his move to Rowan as a fresh start with people who “actually respect” him. According to the Rowan athlete quoted in the email, the fuller picture is this: “Clevenger is mainly at Rowan due to the fact that no other D1 schools would take him. The known schools that rejected him are Ole Miss, Georgia, Duke, NAU, and Saint Joe’s.”
On Saint Joe’s specifically: the athlete claims that school’s coach reached out to Iowa State’s Sudbury directly, was told what happened, and denied Clevenger a spot. That’s five Division I programs — including Northern Arizona, one of the elite distance programs in the country — that passed.
Clevenger didn’t choose D3 for a fresh start. D1 had already made its decision. The NCAA, meanwhile, has shown it can act fast on far smaller eligibility questions — it just doesn’t seem to have a mechanism for this one.
Rowan Responds With a Lawyer, Not an Answer
Rather than address any of this publicly, Rowan sent a cease and desist to the @RowanCleanSport account. It hasn’t played well. The running community has little patience for institutions that respond to integrity concerns with legal threats rather than transparency, and the forum reaction has been largely the same: this only adds to the impression that Rowan is more interested in protecting itself than the integrity of competition.
As one LetsRun commenter put it, the only way out of this for Clevenger is to be “truthful and transparent — and that doesn’t seem to be happening.”
The NCAA does have the mechanism, and they are starting to look into it. NCAA Bylaw 10.1 lists knowing involvement in providing a banned substance or impermissible supplement to student-athletes as unethical conduct. An Iowa State student says Seth provided him with a banned substance. It is a huge deal.