At a Brutal Meeting of Trustees, Michigan State’s Wounds Are Laid Bare

For most any university in the nation, what happened here on Friday would signal a crisis beyond repair. But at Michigan State, it felt all too familiar.

In speech after speech, survivors of sexual abuse and their supporters — most of them young women on the verge of adulthood — bared their souls, unleashed their anger, and shared their collective disgust during a meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees.

They delivered a consistent message: John M. Engler, the university’s interim president, has exacerbated the problems of a fractured institutional culture that enabled Larry Nassar, a former university sports doctor, to sexually assault young girls and women for decades. Engler has faced mounting calls for his resignation since last week, when a disparaging comment that he had made in an email about a sexual-abuse survivor was made public.

He apologized on Thursday, after eight days of refusing to do so, and managed to fend off a vote for his removal that failed to gain traction among a majority of trustees.

The Nassar Scandal and the Crisis of Michigan State’s President

Within a year the university lost two chief executives — Lou Anna K. Simon, sank by the scathing, heart-rending testimony of the sports doctor’s scores of victims, and John M. Engler, whose interim presidency ended amid a backlash over his bare-knuckled tactics.

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Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan, may never before in his political life have endured the sort of relentless grilling to which he was subjected on Friday. But he sat there and took it, having learned a harsh lesson in April, when he silenced an abuse survivor with his gavel, uttering the unfortunate phrase “your time is up.”

For college presidents and trustees, getting heckled by a few students over tuition rates or investment policy comes with the territory. But Friday’s meeting was something different entirely, moving over the course of several hours from intense to unglued to a final moment of surprising self-reflection from a few trustees, who appeared genuinely distraught about how things have gone so far off the rails and anguished that they can’t seem to get back on track.

The proceedings began with a public shaming of Engler, who sat stone-faced as speakers stood at a podium and called him a “monster” and a “liar.” Engler said nothing, betraying only the slightest of reactions — the firm clenching of a ballpoint pen in his fist, the tight clasping of hands, and (just once) a bulging of the eyes and a startled opening of the mouth — as his character and performance came under relentless attack.

Those visceral moments occurred in the public-comment period of the meeting, a routine pocket of time when members of the audience can tell the university’s elected board members what’s on their minds. Of late, however, this period has morphed into something akin to a truth-and-reconciliation session that affirms the elusiveness of both. It was eerily commonplace, therefore, when Bryan C. Tarrant, the father of an abuse survivor, took to the podium and pleaded through a cracked voice for the board to fire Engler.

“John Engler is a monster hiding in plain sight,” Tarrant said, “and you allowed him to stay.”

‘I Don’t See Spartans’

It went on like that for an hour, broken up by applause and outbursts, only to conclude as it had begun: with the steely voice of a woman who had been sexually assaulted by Nassar.

Jennifer Rood-Bedford, a former Michigan State volleyball player, landed what seemed the harshest blow of the morning, bringing a sharp focus to what many had — in their frustration and outrage — sought to explain about why Engler’s comments had so deeply offended them. Like Rachael J. Denhollander, who Engler had said in an email was likely to get a “kickback” for stirring up survivors, Rood-Bedford joined hundreds of women in litigation against the university, which has agreed to pay a $500-million settlement.

“To you I may just be another victim in the Nassar case, but to those who actually know me I am a Spartan,” Rood-Bedford said. “MSU used many words to describe me when I was an athlete, but ambulance chaser looking for a payday was never among them.”

“I wanted so badly,” she continued, smacking her hand on the podium, “to be fighting with you, alongside you, for change with my fellow survivors — not against you. But you were fighting the wrong fight. I never imagined I would find you standing in my way. But of all people you should know that MSU athletes do not let obstacles keep them from crossing the finish line. We power through them. So you have a choice. Choose change. Stop the baseless accusations. Break away from this history, pattern, and culture at the leadership level that tolerates contempt and degradation toward sexual-assault victims.

“I firmly believe that God can bring restoration to broken things with or without you,” she said. “But you really do have a choice. Right now, I see green and white, but I don’t see Spartans. So, if you will not proceed from a place of conviction, I ask that you please make way for someone who will.”

A Dam Opens

In a jarring transition, Engler tried to pivot from the moving testimony of abuse victims to the business of the university. There were announcements — “the sixth annual Bee Palooza will be from 1 to 4" — and presentations, and research grants to discuss. There was polite laughter.

And there was the matter of approving the issuance of bonds to pay for Michigan State’s settlement with survivors, which the trustees agreed to do.

But the proceedings, interrupted periodically by hecklers, kept bending back toward the Engler problem. The university’s primary functions were an afterthought.

“There are a lot of good things going on, but no one cares when you’re fighting with survivors,” said Brian Mosallam, the trustee who led the failed charge to fire Engler.

Mosallam’s statement, which he made as the meeting appeared ready to wind down, opened a sort of dam. Trustees, to varying degrees, joined in publicly rebuking Engler. At times, the trustees engaged directly with hecklers, whom they had spent the past hours pretending not to notice.

Mitch Lyons, a board member, looked at Engler and told him that, even during the meeting, he had wondered whether firing Engler was the only solution. He described himself as a man trying to choose the least horrible option, having concluded that the university was in such turmoil that they are stuck with the status quo. If Engler were fired, who would want to take his place?

“Nobody in their right mind is walking into this hot mess right now,” Lyons said.

And then an ultimatum.

“This cannot happen again,” he said, looking at Engler. “These comments — I will not allow it to happen again.”

And if it does, Lyons said, the broom should sweep them all away, even him.

“If John goes,” he said, “in my mind we all should go.”

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.