Hopes that Michigan State University had put its lengthy history of governance clashes behind it crashed Sunday night. Hours before the new president, Kevin M. Guskiewicz, took office Monday, a trustee tore into his fellow board members for being yes men; the first Black chairwoman in the university’s history, Rema Vassar, resigned while defiantly remaining on the board; and the trustees gathered for a late-night special meeting that ended with two members being recommended to the governor for removal from their posts.
Those two members, Vassar and Dennis Denno, will now wait to see if Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a fellow Democrat, will start proceedings against them. Under Michigan law, a formal hearing would have to take place before Whitmer could remove the pair. A spokeswoman for Whitmer said they haven’t yet made a decision on whether to pursue any removal hearings.
“As we have done in similar instances, we will take the time to carefully review this request upon official receipt of the formal communication from the board,” spokeswoman Stacey LaRouche told The Chronicle.
In addition to the recommendation for removal, the board approved a censure for both board members and stripped them of committee assignments. The extraordinary vote followed the release last week of a law firm’s investigative report into leadership controversy that has rocked the institution.
“I did hope my resignation” as chairwoman “would calm the temperature of the board,” Vassar said during the meeting, implying it hadn’t. “While I concede that I could have made different decisions in some cases over the past year, I maintain that I disagree with some of the findings and recommendations. This report is incomplete and omits some very important information and key voices that would have provided a fuller and different picture of the circumstances and intentions of the people involved.”
Vassar also wondered if her race played into the actions.
“African Americans, other people of color, and women are oftentimes held to a much higher standard or diminished and dismissed,” Vassar said. “Well, as I’ve stated, I could have made some different decisions. I certainly hope that who I am did not influence anyone involved in this investigation and report.”
The board also approved a censure for Trustee Brianna T. Scott, who leveled the allegations against Vassar and Denno that ultimately led to Sunday’s actions.
This is just the latest chapter in the sordid, recent history of Michigan State University, dating back to the Larry Nassar scandal in 2017. Since then, the university has been through two permanent presidents and three interim presidents. The most recent permanent president, Samuel L. Stanley Jr., lasted three years before departing early, saying he had lost confidence in the board. Teresa K. Woodruff, the current interim president, was seen as a possible successor to Stanley but eventually said she wouldn’t seek the presidency. Guskiewicz was hired away from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill instead. He officially started his job Monday. He was not on the virtual meeting call, nor was Woodruff.
How 2 Trustees ‘Fell Short’
Trustees have often been at odds with each other in recent years. The latest intra-board fight started when Scott, also a Democrat, issued a public letter attacking Vassar. “Since the election of Dr. Rema Vassar as chairperson — an election in which I was the deciding vote — the BOT has become more fractured, more contentious, and Dr. Vassar has developed a pattern of violating our codes of conduct, ethics, and conflict of interest, including engaging in repeated undue influence, and bullying of board members and administrators,” Scott wrote.
Scott’s letter alleged that Vassar had bullied Woodruff, violated the university’s ethics code, and refused to cooperate with an investigation into who had leaked the name of the woman who accused a former football coach of sexual misconduct. She also said Vassar accepted a free ride on a private jet to a basketball game and posed in an ad for a former trustee’s financial-management firm.
Vassar, in an interview with The Chronicle shortly after the letter was issued, denied the claims, saying it was an “old-style political hit job.” In the next board meeting following the letter, an attempt to remove Vassar from office failed, and Scott spoke through tears to defend herself, saying, “Had I not stood up, we would have continued in this chaos.” “I didn’t put one damn lie in that letter. I felt the only way to handle this was to have an investigation so this shit can stop.”
A report compiled by the law firm Miller & Chevalier, based in Washington, D.C., found that some, but not all, of the allegations were true, saying Vassar’s and Denno’s behavior “fell short of the conduct expected of trustees and fiduciaries of a public institution like MSU.” Among the allegations substantiated by the report was a claim that Vassar tried to negotiate a settlement with a former business-school dean in his lawsuit against Michigan State without the consent of the board. It also found that Vassar and Denno “encouraged a campaign of personal attacks” against the faculty-senate chair after he called for Vassar’s resignation.
The investigation cited a secret recording made of Vassar and Denno speaking to students about a meeting the students were about to have with Woodruff, the interim president, in which the two trustees seemed to encourage the students to publicly embarrass Woodruff. Vassar even spoke of student groups banding together “to crucify” Woodruff. Denno also offered to pay for T-shirts with a #NOTASPARTAN logo on it, as long as students kept his name out of it, the report said.
Vassar denied making those statements, the report said, and Denno said he didn’t remember saying what he was alleged to have said. “More broadly,” the report found, “both Chair Vassar and Trustee Denno stated that their goal on the call was to support ideas generated by students.”
The law firm also dinged Scott for releasing confidential information to the public in the letter and recommended she be censured, though the firm said it “appreciates the courage it takes to publicly denounce misconduct, especially in light of the tangible and personal repercussions that Trustee Scott has suffered.”
The meeting Sunday night was called to discuss the report. About 12 hours before it started, Denno blasted those pushing for his removal. “When people often ask me what’s wrong with the MSU Board of Trustees, the answer is simple: Too many trustees go along to get along, and they do not ask questions, which is greatly concerning. I ask questions,” he wrote in a statement.
He cited resistance he’d received from other trustees for questioning why Woodruff would receive a $500,000 salary after her interim presidency ended. “I have a constitutional duty to protect taxpayer money,” he wrote, “not to kowtow to bureaucrats in academia.”
He added that the law firm didn’t investigate relevant allegations he had made against other trustees, leading him to conclude that “their objective was to target Dr. Rema, and they were paid handsomely by taxpayer money and tuition dollars.”
Scott voluntarily accepted the censure but said the university was setting a bad precedent by taking action against someone who pointed out misconduct.
“It’s really unfortunate we had to get to this place,” Scott said. “It’s hurtful to me that my legacy will be that I was censured as a trustee for doing what I felt had to be done under the circumstances. But I do not regret it.”
