How Did Michigan State’s Interim Chief Squander a Chance to Heal?

If there is a defining image of John M. Engler’s interim presidency at Michigan State University, it is that of the former governor, seated uncomfortably behind a long table as he tells a sexual-assault survivor that her time is up.

It is a difficult moment to watch, now immortalized on video. In that recent exchange, Kaylee Lorincz, a gymnast at Adrian College, told Michigan State’s Board of Trustees that Engler, seated at the table alongside them, was a callous dealmaker who thought he could buy his way out of what has come to be one of higher education’s worst sexual-abuse scandals.

Engler, she said, thought that he could cut her a check for $250,000 and make it all right. He had said as much to her in a private meeting, Lorincz recalled, without her lawyer present.

The sober confines of the Michigan State boardroom were unsettled on that day, in April, when Lorincz described how Larry Nassar, a former university sports doctor who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting girls and young women, had shoved his fingers into her “13-year-old vagina.” Those words were difficult to hear, not only for their graphic content, but also because, by that time, Engler was talking over her.

“Kaylee, your time is up,” Engler told her, seemingly unaware that the very phrase he chose has been adopted, in the #MeToo era, as a rallying cry of sexual-assault survivors the world over.

Engler disputes elements of Lorincz’s telling, but the optics of that meeting were bad. In that moment, Engler was cast as a politician with a fat checkbook, silencing a survivor who claimed he’d tried to pay her off.

This is not, as they say in college sports towns, what coach drew up. An interim presidency is arguably the best chance that an institution in a crisis has for a fresh start. And yet Engler, ostensibly unburdened by the sins of his predecessors, finds himself crosswise with the very people that the university needs to reassure the most: sexual-assault survivors. This dynamic has fueled mistrust of the administration, making it all the more difficult for Engler to deliver on his promise to change the culture of a university where women have felt devalued and dismissed.

Three months into his tenure, which followed Lou Anna K. Simon’s resignation as president, Engler has slid all too easily into the caricatured role of a heartless dealmaker. His greatest assets — political acumen, toughness, and expedience — are perceived by many as liabilities, at a time when people crave from the university signs of contrition, empathy, and transparency, as much as legal closure.

Engler was not made available for an interview. Emily Gerkin Guerrant, Michigan State’s spokeswoman, said in a statement that Engler has had positive interactions with survivors behind the scenes.

“Interim President Engler has met with many survivors and family members of survivors,” she wrote in an email. “Listening to them, hearing about their personal stories or suggestions for improvements and change at MSU is important. But he does not talk publicly about those conversations. He cares about the survivors and the healing processes they are going through, and he cares about the university and the changes that need to be made to prevent a person like Larry Nassar from happening again.”

Some of this conflict was baked into the cake from the start. Professors saw the hasty appointment of a former Republican governor, lacking in higher-education experience, as at best a tone-deaf decision by the board. There is no winning over that constituency, Engler might reasonably calculate. What is perplexing, however, is how the interim president came to be regarded as an adversary of Nassar’s victims. No one, least of all those women, can seem to figure that one out.

Trustees Wanted ‘Intensity’

When Engler was appointed in January, Michigan State was a house on fire. During Nassar’s sentencing hearing, more than 150 women testified in open court about the abuse they had suffered at his hands and the abandonment that some of them had felt when no one in authority seemed to care.

The prospect of hundreds of victims, all of them with legal claims against the university, was an abuse-litigation nightmare unparalleled by a university in the modern era. To put this in perspective, Pennsylvania State University, which was turned upside down by the crimes of Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, is known to have settled with 35 of the men who say he molested them as boys.

Added to these swirling lawsuits at Michigan State are numerous outside investigations, including one from the state’s attorney general, into how the university handled abuse allegations that, according to victims, were reported as early as 1997.

The Board of Trustees, in this environment, did not so much want a consoler-in-chief as it did a fixer. Dianne Y. Byrum, a board member and former Democratic lawmaker, said that the trustees zeroed in on Engler because he had been battle-tested in intense, politically charged situations that required speed and agility. They had not seen that skill set, she said, from the academics in the previous administration.

“There wasn’t an intensity that needed to be there — intensity in terms of how important it was to not miss those deadlines, and to just be on top of it,” Byrum said in an interview. “Understanding the urgency, the intensity, it’s just a different terrain than a university. The acumen needed in that context is just different.”

And all of this criticism about Engler being a politician? Wake up, the trustees say. The board sees the Nassar fallout as deeply political, Byrum said. Bill Schuette, the attorney general, is running for governor. The lawmakers casting stones are in an election cycle.

“There is a lot of criticism about bringing in someone with a political background,” Byrum said. “But the context of these investigations was a political context.”

What the board did not foresee, however, was how readily Engler and his team, plucked from his political past and given generous salaries, would come to be regarded as combative and transactional defenders of the Spartan realm, not as paragons of efficiency and masters of the Legislature. If that troubling narrative was not already solidified in the moment that Engler told Kaylee Lorincz that her time was up, it was effectively sealed shortly thereafter.

In an email that was leaked to the news media, Engler’s special counsel and vice president told trustees that Lorincz was a purveyor of “false news.” For good measure, she peppered her missive with scare quotes when discussing the survivors’ claims of “revictimization.”

“Kaylee’s statements to the Board contained many false and inaccurate statements, which we did not publicly contradict out of an abundance of concern for the survivors who are quick to claim ‘revictimization’ or ‘shaming’ of survivors whenever they are falsely accusing members of the MSU community,” wrote Carol M. Viventi, who, during Engler’s time as governor, served as his cabinet’s deputy chief of staff and legal counsel.

Viventi went on to say that Robert P. Young Jr., whom Engler tapped as lead counsel to handle Nassar-related investigations and lawsuits, had warned Engler not to meet with Lorincz, describing it as a “set up.” Of course, Viventi said, Young had been proved right.

“Understand that Bob Young advises that the plaintiff attorneys are willing to make bold and false assertions to advance their goal of increasing the cost of settlement,” Viventi continued. “What members of the board say in public can, however unwittingly, advance the plaintiffs’ goals and injure the university. When, as here, it is possible to verify whether public assertions made by plaintiffs are true, there should never be a statement in the press by board members that gives credibility to sensational headlines or what can best be described as ‘false news.’”

Young is another of Engler’s old political allies, of which there are many now playing key roles at the university. As governor, Engler appointed Young to the state Supreme Court. Other recent hires include John Truscott, Engler’s former press secretary, to run crisis communications; Guerrant, the spokeswoman and a vice president, is a former deputy press secretary to Michigan’s House speaker; and Kathleen M. Wilbur, a former legislative chief of staff, who was most recently vice president of external relations at Central Michigan University, is now in a similar role at Michigan State.

Viventi has apologized for her email, but the damage is done. For many at Michigan State, her words suggested deeply held sentiments in an administration that often appears to be in an adversarial relationship with abuse victims.

“Part of seeing this as a political problem puts survivors in the category of problems,” said Megan K. Halpern, an assistant professor of science communication at Michigan State. “Obviously that’s deeply troubling. That email revealed a perception of the character of the survivors that I don’t think is OK.”

There are legitimate reasons for tension. Litigation is an inherently contentious process, and Engler seldom makes a public appearance where he isn’t heckled. This level of animosity, however, took even Engler’s allies by surprise.

“I don’t have an answer for how it happened,” Byrum said.

Byrum said she had conveyed her concerns and disappointment to Engler personally. She declined to speak with specificity about her grievances but lamented a series of “self-inflicted missteps.”

“We have to be very respectful to the survivors and that needs to be the tone of our conversations and anything that we’re doing,” she said. “We have to show respect, first and foremost.”

None of Michigan State’s other board members responded to interview requests. George J. Perles, a trustee and former Spartan football coach, has been ill and could not be reached for comment.

‘I Dread My News Feed’

An email or a stray comment might be forgiven, but Engler has supplied his critics with considerable ammunition.

One of Engler’s first official acts was to blast William Forsyth, the special independent counsel leading the attorney general’s investigation, for sending investigators to a university administration building with news camera crews in tow to gather evidence related to the Nassar inquiry. The search might reasonably be characterized as political theater. But Engler’s response risked positioning the former governor as a leader who is resistant to inquiry — another Spartan chief afraid of sunlight.

For Rachael J. Denhollander, who was the first woman to go public with accusations of Nassar’s abuse, Engler’s response to investigators validated her misgivings about the appointment of a “political insider” to the post.

“He came in with a desire to protect the institution, and that was unfortunately clear from the very beginning,” she said in an interview.

In the ensuing months, Engler drew further criticism for deflection and defensiveness. Asked in March by an ESPN reporter about sexual-assault problems in athletics, Engler countered that the bigger problem was the sports’ network’s toxic environment of sexual harassment.

A couple of days later, Engler publicly referred to two female professors as “you girls.” The women could spin their wheels trying to get trustees to resign, he told them in a meeting, but “I’ve got to do this management job.”

It didn’t stop there. In April, Engler said that he regretted releasing personal information about a woman who has alleged in a lawsuit that she was gang-raped by three Michigan State basketball players. The university said that her claim that she was discouraged from reporting the crimes was untrue. But officials went further, detailing her interactions with counselors and even describing her father’s concerns about her academic performance.

Stephanie J. Nawyn, an associate professor of sociology, said that the administration’s gaffes and miscalculations have happened with such frequency that she braces herself each day for the next one.

“It boggles my mind that anyone would think that the way the MSU administration is responding is the right move,” said Nawyn, who is co-director of the university’s Center for Gender in Global Context. “I can’t explain it. I stand aghast with each new tweet of additional information, each new story that comes out. I dread my news feed, because I’m waiting for some breaking story of our administration shooting themselves in the foot.”

Don’t Expect Hugs

The political savvy that endeared Engler to the board has, in itself, put him at odds with survivors. In March the former governor returned to the Capitol to oppose legislation championed by sexual-assault victims.

The specific provisions that Engler decried would extend the statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault to file civil lawsuits and limit protections of governmental immunity for institutions like Michigan State. The prospect of those changes, Engler argued, had slowed down legal settlements, effectively shifting the parameters of negotiation midstream.

Theoretically, this was Engler in his element, working political magic. So why did it feel like he had stepped in it again?

Guerrant, the university’s spokeswoman, said that Engler’s objections were narrowly confined to a single bill. He supported other legislation, she said, including an expansion of mandatory reporting and more education about sexual assault.

As Engler describes it, his primary job is to settle legal claims against the university as quickly as possible. He has conceded, however, that his focus on that worthy goal risks the appearance of coldness at a time when the university seeks warmth and compassion.

“Where I make an error is that in the haste to get things fixed, people think you’re moving too fast so you must not care,” Engler recently told The Detroit News.

“It’s just the opposite. We’re moving fast because we care so much. I’m also over here trying to fix the processes and that’s something that sometimes doesn’t seem very empathetic. But it’s the process that determines the response to anyone who’s been through this.”

William A. Sederburg, a former Republican state senator whose service overlapped with Engler’s tenure as majority leader, said that Engler’s toughness and political connections could be played to Michigan State’s advantage. But he won’t be everyone’s best friend.

“John is not one of these warm and fuzzy kinds of guys who is going to share a lot of hugs with the victims,” said Sederburg, a former president of Ferris State University. “That is not his nature.”

Kenneth R. Feinberg, who mediated the settlements in the Penn State abuse case and the Virginia Tech shootings, said that Engler is right to want to reach settlements quickly and out of court.

“Speed is in the interest of the victims,” Feinberg said. “Why should they be compelled to engage in years of protracted litigation? The uncertainly of such litigation? The cost of litigation? The impact on the individual psyche of victims? Why should they be compelled to go through another round of hell in the courtroom under cross examination?”

At the same time, this is a delicate and fraught process that requires steadiness and empathy, Feinberg says. Victims do not just want to be compensated, he said. They want to be heard. When Feinberg oversaw the payout of $7.1 billion to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, he offered to meet with all 5,300 of them.

It is easy in these emotional cases, Feinberg said, to blunder.

“I’m rather sympathetic to the governor on this,” said Feinberg, who has spoken with Michigan State officials but is not representing the university. “No governor, no CEO is trained for this.”

But patience is wearing thin at Michigan State, where calls for Engler’s resignation are growing. There is a sense that the university has a limited window in which to heal, and Engler is regarded by many as an impediment to that process. He has said he will not stay long, but the past three months have demonstrated how quickly things can turn from bad to worse.

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