Crises Continue to Mount at New Mexico State U.

The chancellor of New Mexico State University, Dan Arvizu, wanted to make one thing clear. While a hazing scandal and a “culture of bad behavior” unearthed in its basketball program had left a stain on the university’s reputation, the problems were “contained” to that team. The university as a whole wasn’t in crisis.

His remarks, delivered during a press conference last month, were intended to reassure those who live and work at the Las Cruces university, which over the past few years has experienced a spiraling series of leadership setbacks. The abuses in the basketball program, which prompted the university last month to fire the head coach, Greg Heiar, and cancel the rest of the season, were just the latest controversies confronting the land-grant institution.

In the span of three months, starting in November, both the former provost and former Title IX coordinator filed lawsuits over their dismissals, accusing the university of retaliating against them for doing their jobs. The Board of Regents decided not to renew the chancellor’s five-year contract, which expires June 30. And a New Mexico State basketball player, apparently ambushed by students from a rival university, was involved in a shootout that left him injured and a University of New Mexico student dead.

Timeline: New Mexico State U.

Andrés Leighton, AP

Chancellor Dan Arvizu (Andrés Leighton, AP)

2021

• November 4: Faculty and students vote no-confidence in provost and president
• November 9: Provost put on paid leave

2022

• January 7: President steps down
• January 26: Provost fired
• May 5: Chancellor’s wife arrested and charged with battery (charges later dropped)
• August: Title IX coordinator forced to resign
• November 19: Basketball player involved in fatal shooting; claims self-defense
• December 14: Provost sues over dismissal
• December 28: BOR indicates it won’t renew chancellor’s contract

2023

• February 7: Title IX coordinator sues over dismissal
• February 12: Basketball player alleges hazing; season suspended
• February 14: Head basketball coach fired

Combined with last year’s arrest of Arvizu’s wife on a misdemeanor battery charge that was later dismissed, the university appeared to some to be lurching from crisis to crisis. In a March 2 email to the university, the chancellor worried that the attention to these events had obscured “all of the outstanding things happening each day at our great university.” University employees, he wrote, “are doing incredible, life-changing work and their efforts deserve better than to be overshadowed.”

The university’s main campus in Las Cruces enrolls some 14,000 students, 58 percent of whom are Hispanic. About a third of the students have parents or guardians who didn’t complete four-year degrees.

The campus of Spanish-styled buildings with red-tiled roofs is located in a quiet, relatively isolated city on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, the landscape rimmed by jagged mountains. Students who have grown up in Las Cruces following the celebrated, but suddenly benched basketball team have deep ties to the university. “There’s a lot of school pride here,” said Ernesto Cisneros, a senior and managing editor of the student newspaper, NMSU Round Up.

“Our teams draw large crowds and lots of support from local businesses,” he wrote in an email. “You can walk into almost any business in Las Cruces and there’s an NMSU logo, athletic photos and memorabilia, or even an Aggie flag displayed.” The recent events, he said, are disheartening to students and fans alike.

Cielo Rodriguez, a senior and the newspaper’s editor in chief, said in an interview that the controversies over the past year have kept student reporters busy. All of the attention, she said, is “a little embarrassing.”

“Bigger news outlets have been coming to us and it’s clear we’re being watched,” she said. “It’s a lot to deal with all at once.” Rodriguez said she hopes all of the recent attention will result in better oversight and accountability for administrators who have been accused of failing to act on faculty and student concerns. But she admits that with each new hit on the university’s reputation, “Some of us are feeling like ‘OMG NMSU, I have to get out.’”

Perhaps the most personally distressing incident for the chancellor happened last year when his wife, Sheryl Arvizu, was charged with battery against a household member after telling police that she’d been the “primary aggressor” in an altercation with her husband. A police report said she repeatedly punched him while he was driving them home from a work dinner after he denied cheating on her with a colleague. The incident went public after the couple’s interview with police was captured by a police body camera. The charge was later dropped.

In his March 2 email, titled “Setting the record straight,” Arvizu referred to a “deeply personal situation” his family had gone through, and said he and his wife had worked since then to rebuild their relationship. He asked that the community continue to give them privacy.

“Importantly, there is no truth to the allegations made that evening,” Arvizu wrote. “I am confident this matter has not impacted my ability to lead our university. To the extent it has brought negative publicity to my alma mater, I deeply regret that.”

Addressing the two lawsuits filed by former administrators, he said that university employees who commit wrongdoing are held accountable and terminated if appropriate. Whistleblowers are protected by state law and employees are protected from retaliation by university policies.

There was no mention of any of those controversies when, in December, the university’s Board of Regents made it clear, without giving a reason why, that it wouldn’t be renewing Arvizu’s contract as chancellor. The board issued a statement thanking Arvizu for his service and authorizing the university to start looking for a replacement. It acknowledged progress made on his watch, including enrollment increases this fall at each of its campuses, as well as growth in research spending.

One high-level position the board won’t be filling is that of the former president. John Floros stepped down from that position under pressure in January after a yearlong “sabbatical” he’d been placed on following no-confidence votes by the Faculty Senate and student government in 2021. The university, which has had five presidents and chancellors since 2010, has reverted to a single-leader structure with Arvizu serving as both president and chancellor until his term ends.

Also receiving votes of no-confidence was the former provost, Carol Parker. She was fired last year, and then sued the university in December, alleging she had been made a scapegoat for problems her male superiors had created.

Parker said she was punished for trying to investigate widespread faculty complaints about pay disparities based on gender and race, which she said the president and chancellor wanted her to drop. She said Arvizu also pressured her to support a merger of academic colleges and departments that the faculty opposed. Parker “believed she was being blamed by faculty for actions that were not her decision, but rather decisions of her male superiors that she was charged with implementing,” the lawsuit states.

It also argues that she was the victim of gender discrimination herself in the way she was disciplined; the decision to put her on administrative leave before terminating her employment was announced to all university employees, she said. Floros was given a yearlong paid sabbatical and then allowed to return to a tenured faculty position.

Two months later, in February, the university was hit with another lawsuit — this one from its former Title IX coordinator, Laura Castille. She contended that her superiors retaliated against her for reporting “gross mismanagement, abuse of authority, and violation of policy” by the university.

Castille’s role in the Office of Institutional Equity involved reviewing the university’s job postings for compliance with laws and university policies. She said a university vice chancellor had inappropriately altered a job posting to ensure that a “close ally of hers” would become chief audit officer. When Castille complained to her superiors, including the chancellor, she alleges she was reprimanded and evicted from her office. In August, she resigned under pressure.

A New Mexico State spokesman said in response to the lawsuits that he couldn’t comment on pending litigation but that the university “takes any allegations of discrimination seriously and works to ensure compliance with university policy on such matters.”

With so much turnover, and vacancies at the top, “We’re just trying to keep the NMSU boat moving forward even without anyone steering it,” said Jamie Bronstein, a professor of history and vice chair of the Faculty Senate. “Faculty have had ongoing concerns about the lack of accountability at this university.”

That became apparent, Bronstein said, when she and others contacted the chancellor for months before the provost was fired about the problems they were having communicating with her. It was also clear, she said, in the hazing accusations in the basketball program, which the chancellor acknowledged went unaddressed for too long.

Those accusations publicly surfaced in February, when a New Mexico State basketball player told campus police that three teammates had been ganging up on him for months, holding him down and subjecting him to inappropriate physical and sexual touching. This had been happening, he said, in locker rooms and on road trips. He said he didn’t want to press charges, but, depending on the results of investigations, charges could be brought anyway.

Heiar, who was in his first year of head coaching when he was fired, could not be reached for comment.

It had already been a season of turmoil for the team. In November, one of its players, Mike Peake, exchanged gunfire with a University of New Mexico student, Brandon Travis, who died of his injuries. Police said Travis was apparently one of four UNM students who lured Peake to the Albuquerque campus to get even for a brawl that broke out at an earlier football game between the rival universities. Peake said he was acting in self-defense after he was attacked with a baseball bat and then shot in the leg. He has not been charged with a crime pending the outcome of investigations.

The university has hired two firms to probe the hazing allegations and shooting incident. It’s also conducting its own internal investigation. Depending on the outcome, these could result in further disciplinary measures against other members of the coaching staff, the chancellor said. Questions have been raised about whether the coaches fully cooperated with police as they were investigating the shooting and trying to recover evidence.

Appearing alongside the university’s athletic director, Mario Moccia, in a February press conference, Arvizu said student safety is the university’s top priority, followed by maintaining the integrity of the university.

Reviewing the events of the past few months, he said, “feels like a gut punch.” As a parent, administrator, and alumnus, “I’m both disgusted and I’m angry about what has occurred.” The men’s basketball program, he said, “has been infected with a culture of bad behavior.”

The university is pursuing student disciplinary actions, but won’t be disclosing the results because of privacy restrictions, the chancellor said. Moccia said the university plans to resume men’s basketball next year.