“I really can’t imagine anything like that happening here.”
Those words have haunted me recently as I read about and watched the stories of some of the over 150 women who testified in often horrific detail during the sentencing hearing of Larry Nassar, a doctor and an associate professor at Michigan State University, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a number of them. Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for his sexual abuse of these young women, most of whom were aspiring elite-level gymnasts.
I spoke those words six years ago as I stood at an event on the campus of Michigan State, surrounded by many other members of the university community. I was less than a month into my tenure as the new dean of the College of Education, and out of the corner of my eye I spied President Lou Anna K. Simon walking toward me.
‘So things must be pretty bad back there in State College,’ President Simon had said.
It was the first time I had had a chance to talk to her since starting the job. She greeted me, asking how things were going so far. I told her I was still a bit like a deer in the headlights but felt like I was getting my bearings. She then turned to the topic that many people had been talking to me about: the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Pennsylvania State University. I was not surprised, as Joe Paterno, Penn State’s legendary football coach, had died just a few days earlier, resurrecting a story that had quieted down a bit after the initial flurry of news. And I had come to Michigan State after a 10-year career at Penn State.
“So things must be pretty bad back there in State College,” President Simon said.
“Yeah,” I replied, “it was awful; the allegations about what Sandusky did and the university’s apparent complicit behavior. But I really can’t imagine anything like that happening here,” I told her.
I expected that she would agree, but her response surprised me. “Why not?” she asked, in her usual businesslike, probing manner.
I stammered for a second but then tried to explain how the institutions were different, including that the leadership at Penn State was almost entirely men, who would be more willing than women to sweep things under the rug. I also tried to explain that, with all due respect to Michigan State’s longtime basketball coach Tom Izzo, Joe Paterno was like a god at Penn State, and he and the football program were untouchable in ways that would not be accepted at Michigan State. Even though I had been there only a short time, I felt confident in this assessment.
President Simon did not say anything in response, and moved on to continue to work the crowd.
Looking back at my experience at these two institutions, I can see that there are many differences between the events at Penn State and Michigan State. At Penn State, Sandusky’s victims have remained mostly anonymous, and to most of us, unknown. Larry Nassar’s victims, however, are very different. Many of these brave young women have identified themselves publicly, and many are people we knew through our televisions — young women, even girls at the time, for whom we cheered in a succession of Olympic Games. Aly Raisman, Jordyn Wieber, McKayla Maroney, Simone Biles; as their names paraded through the headlines, the memories of their Olympic achievements and glory swept over me.
Jerry Sandusky was a well-known former coach in a high-powered, revenue-generating sport, someone who went on to run a well-respected nonprofit organization focused on disaffected youth in the tight-knit community of State College. Larry Nassar was a doctor and professor who, outside of the world of competitive gymnastics, was largely unknown on the campus of Michigan State and beyond.
But there are enough similarities in these cases to leave anyone in a position of leadership at a college feeling unsettled: a targeting of the vulnerable; warning signs of behavior that had been raised to staff at the institution but were evidently ignored, played down or inadequately investigated; a pattern of grooming victims by currying their favor, offering them things that the predator knew would please them and endear him to them
Are we as college leaders prepared to respond appropriately should evidence of wrongdoing appear on our campus?
Even after my four years at Michigan State, before Larry Nassar’s actions were brought to light, I would not have changed my initial assessment of the institution that I shared with President Simon. I still believed it was the kind of place where anything even remotely related to the actions of Sandusky could never have occurred and been enabled, for the reasons I had related to Simon. In addition, as the Sandusky case unfolded, resulting in scores of millions of dollars in costs to Penn State, and the criminal convictions of three of the university’s leaders, I felt that every college would be much more vigilant.
Time has shown that I was wrong in my assessment. While we do not yet have all the facts about Michigan State’s role in enabling Nassar’s decades-long abuse of these young women, enough has come out in the news media to cause me to accept that there were numerous Michigan State employees who failed the women by not coming forward to try to stop it. Just as with the Sandusky scandal, there will be many investigations that, I hope, will allow us to understand how this abject failure could have continued for so long.
I am wrestling now with many of the same feelings I am sure are shared by other college leaders around the country. You can’t help but worry if there are things happening on your campus unbeknownst to you, things you could not imagine, even in your worst nightmares. We provide training to employees to look for warning signs, and in how to take action if they see something wrong happening. We put in place policies and procedures to protect the most vulnerable on our campuses. We broadly and repeatedly articulate our values and who we are as a community.
But is all of this enough to prevent another Sandusky or Nassar? Are we as college leaders prepared to respond appropriately should evidence of wrongdoing appear on our campus? Will we be willing to stand up for what is morally right to protect potential victims of maltreatment, rather than reflexively reacting in a way that maximizes the interests of our institutions?
These are questions that should be asked by all of us in leadership positions: presidents, provosts, board members, athletic directors, and university lawyers. None of us should be so naïve as to think that what happened at Penn State and Michigan State could not happen again.
Donald E. Heller is provost and vice president for academic affairs, and a professor of education at the University of San Francisco.
