At Michigan State, a Shaken Campus Struggles Through Its Shame

On Thursday, copies of Michigan State University’s campus newspaper sat in a stack atop the desk of Lorenzo Santavicca, the student-body president. He grabbed one and held it up. A teal banner under the nameplate read, in all caps: “Can you hear them now?”

Printed underneath the banner were 156 names — all women and girls who had bravely read statements over the previous week about the horrific sexual abuse they endured at the hands of Larry Nassar. Their stories shook the world. Even more profoundly, their stories shook the campus.

For many students, professors, and administrators here, the events of the past two weeks have unleashed a flood of emotion. There’s anger that Nassar, formerly an associate professor of osteopathic medicine, renowned sports doctor, and team physician, got away with abusing girls and young women for so long.

There’s sadness that so many people, some of them Michigan State students, were violated by someone they trusted. There’s shame that the university, by failing to stop the abuse earlier, may have had something to do with it.

At one point last week, there was triumph: the moment when Nassar was sentenced to between 40 and 175 years in prison for his crimes. Students and others across the campus were huddled around televisions in residence halls and academic buildings. When the announcement came, they cheered. Hours later, Lou Anna K. Simon stepped down as the university’s president, in the face of sharp criticism of her public response to the scandal.

But Simon’s resignation may be only the tip of the iceberg. In the days since, damaging headlines have persisted. An investigative report by ESPN suggested that the problem of not taking sexual assault seriously runs deeper than Nassar, into the university’s football and basketball programs.

Ask people here what needs to happen next, and you’ll hear similar themes: Transparency throughout the forthcoming investigations, by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Michigan attorney general’s office, and the federal government. More education to prevent sexual assault. A concerted effort to make it right with Nassar’s victims — and to listen to them. A president, appointed from the outside, who will take ownership of what happened.

Even with widespread changes, the university may still suffer stiff penalties, and the scandal threatens to leave a long-term stain. Though many were adamant that new leadership was needed, they acknowledge that Simon’s departure won’t eliminate that dishonor. The burden of dealing with the aftermath, and of enacting the cultural change that many say is necessary, will fall to those who remain on campus.

The weight of that burden has already complicated another emotion: Spartan pride, the loyalty people here in East Lansing feel to Michigan State. As one professor put it, “It borders on betrayal, when the feeling is that deep. We loved you, we lifted you up. You let us down.”

‘There Are Just No Words’

It saddened Sue Carter to take a public stand against Simon. Carter, a professor of journalism, has known Simon for decades.

Carter has also been faculty athletic representative and chair of the Athletic Council, an advisory body to Michigan State’s athletic director and president, for nearly four years. Last Monday, she issued a statement on behalf of herself and several other members of the council, saying that the institutional response to Nassar’s victims throughout the hearing hadn’t been compassionate enough.

Then Carter got an email from the president’s office. Simon wanted to talk with her.

During that conversation, “her position continued to be a very legalistic one — one defending what the university had done, the choices she had made,” Carter said. “I lost all hope that she understood, in a full and compassionate way, that this university was complicit in rendering such harm.”

She resigned as faculty athletic representative on Wednesday. “I’ve invested a lot of my life in in this institution,” she said. “To see its reputation sullied was heartbreaking — when it didn’t need to happen.”

Jason Cody, a spokesman for Michigan State, declined to make Simon or senior administrators available for interviews.

Deborah Moriarty, a professor of piano and vice chair of the Faculty Senate, didn’t think it made sense for Simon to step aside at this point. She also thought it unwise to make decisions on an emotional basis. “It seemed to me it would be much more logical to keep the same group of people and find out what happened, and then deal with it,” she said.

Many on campus felt that the university couldn’t start moving forward from the Nassar case until Simon was gone. But since she’s stepped down, Moriarty said, “I haven’t honestly seen that. I’ve seen: The president resigned, and we have a lot of uncertainty and chaos.”

Others have wanted Simon to leave for weeks, if not months.

Anna Pegler-Gordon, an associate professor of social relations and policy, said many of her colleagues reached a breaking point a week and a half ago, the same day that the university’s trustees affirmed their support for Simon after a five-hour, closed-door meeting. In what turned out to be a coincidence, she and many of her colleagues were going through sexual-assault-prevention training that day.

The training, run by the Office of Institutional Equity, was focused largely on how to report sexual violence and harassment. But how, some professors asked, can we change the culture to stop these assaults from happening? The frustration among the faculty was palpable, Pegler-Gordon said. They wanted to take a stand.

So she and a colleague, Andaluna Borcila, called for a no-confidence vote in the president. Simon resigned before a vote was taken.

Faculty leaders had heard the student government speak out about the Nassar case — and they wanted to say something. They sat down and tried to draft a statement. It proved impossible.

“You say, ‘I’m sorry.’ But how can you begin to know what the survivors feel? It’s all so trite,” said Laura R. McCabe, chair of the Faculty Senate and a professor of physiology and radiology. Her voice broke. “There are just no words.”

“‘Sorry’ just doesn’t cut it,” Moriarty said.

Santavicca, the student-body president, was among those who had mixed feelings about calling for a change in leadership. He’s spent close to two years in his role. “I’m going to miss working with her,” he said of Simon. “She cared, and I think she still does.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “that just didn’t come across.” He and other student leaders ultimately decided that Simon had lost their trust.

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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Many on campus have also lost trust in the Board of Trustees, most of whom stood behind Simon until Wednesday. Its vice chair, Joel I. Ferguson, provoked outrage when he dismissed the scandal as “just this Nassar thing” during a radio interview on Tuesday.

Each trustee made a personal statement apologizing to Nassar’s victims. Several were overcome with emotion.

But that hasn’t stemmed the flow of calls for the trustees, especially Ferguson, to follow Simon out the door.

‘This Overshadows Everything’

For some here on campus, the constant replaying of the victims’ testimony has felt especially personal. Ewurama Appiagyei-Dankah, a senior, said that she was sexually assaulted when she was studying abroad in Spain a couple of years ago — and that the past two weeks have felt painful at times for her.

But she’s quick to stress that her experience pales in comparison to that of Nassar’s victims: “Thinking about the fact that there are women who were abused by him who are in our student body right now — I can’t even wrap my brain around what they’ve been going through.”

The university is a sprawling, decentralized campus, and it can be tough to bring the community together. Carter, the journalism professor, said her colleagues in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences are considering how they might “establish a forum for talking” and “giving the voiceless an opportunity to speak.” That will be an important part of charting a path forward for the institution.

So will openly acknowledging what has happened, said Borcila, an associate professor, and doing some self-reflection. Then Michigan State will have to turn to the reputational damage the Nassar case has caused.

“I was talking to my students, and they said, ‘Now we’re known for this shameful reality. This is who we’ve become — this is the main representation of who we are,’” Borcila said. “How do we deal with that?”

“I think this tragedy and this ineffectiveness and this shameful way our institution responded to it has to make us reconsider how we define ourselves,” she added.

It remains to be seen what the Nassar storm will mean for enrollment, for fund raising, for recruitment of star scholars. Student leaders say they worry that prospective students might not think the campus is safe for them. On Friday, one female student said this while speaking to her mother on the phone: “No, Mom, I’m not transferring.”

There’s also the question of how Simon, one of the longest-tenured public-university presidents in recent memory, will be remembered. She’s often been compared to John A. Hannah, a Michigan State icon who served as president from 1941 to 1969. Some have even called her the best president the university has ever had. Ferguson, the trustee, said so on Tuesday.

Hannah’s legacy is tangible. The four-story administration building in the heart of the campus is named for him. Just outside the entrance, there’s a towering statue of him in stride.

In terms of the Simon era, you can’t miss the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, for which the ex-president secured donations. It’s an eye-catching stainless steel and glass building on the northern edge of campus, across the street from the main strip of college bars and restaurants.

Simon’s advocacy also helped win a major scientific research facility — the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, known around campus as “FRIB” — a decade ago. Few doubt that Simon’s prowess has put Michigan State on the map.

That doesn’t matter to Pegler-Gordon: “This overshadows everything.”

Some hope people will eventually remember what Simon has done for the university. Those who know her well say they’re sad to see her go like this. “She was, I think, in some ways cheated of a farewell that she deserved in terms of what she built up here at Michigan State,” Santavicca said. At the same time, he said, “we didn’t have a leader when we needed it.”

For many students, there’s no question of what Simon’s legacy will be. On Friday, hundreds of them marched through the campus and to the administration building as part of a rally for sexual-assault victims at Michigan State.

They chanted, “Time’s up, MSU!” in reference to the campaign for change that has grown out of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment. They called out Simon and Ferguson by name. Their signs made plain their disgust: “Nassar enablers: We’re coming for you.” “Administrative silence is violence.” “They didn’t care until we knew.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.