Update (1/21/2018, 9:30 a.m.): This article has been updated with news that one of the trustees has dissented from his fellow board members, and to add comment from Michigan State faculty members.
It has seemed, recently, that nearly everyone wants Lou Anna K. Simon, president of Michigan State University, to resign. Student-government leaders. State lawmakers. Newspaper editorial boards.
But the people who control her fate, the university’s trustees, held firm. Ms. Simon, they reiterated on Friday, is the “right leader” to steer Michigan State through one of the biggest sex-abuse scandals in sports history.
“Through this terrible situation, the university has been perceived as tone-deaf, unresponsive, and insensitive to the victims,” the board members wrote in a statement. “We understand the public’s faith has been shaken.” They then emphasized that Ms. Simon “has our support.”
That support, however, was shaken on Saturday, when one of the trustees, Mitch Lyons, called on Ms. Simon to resign so that the university could move on from the controversy.
“As I expressed repeatedly to fellow board members during our discussion Friday,” Mr. Lyons said in a statement, “I don’t feel that President Simon can survive the public outcry that has been generated by this tragedy and even less so after hearing the testimony of these brave survivors of Larry Nassar’s abuse. I feel that our best recourse is for President Simon to resign immediately.”
The other seven trustees reiterated their support for the president.
Ms. Simon has been president since 2005 — a long reign for a public-university leader. “I continue to appreciate the confidence of the board and the many people who have reached out to me, and to them, who have the best interests of MSU at heart,” she said in a statement. “I have always done my best to lead MSU, and I will continue to do so today and tomorrow.”
But just a few miles away, in a county-circuit courtroom in Lansing, Mich., calls for Ms. Simon’s resignation have poured in. At the sentencing hearing for Larry Nassar, formerly a team physician for USA Gymnastics and an associate professor in Michigan State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, many of Dr. Nassar’s victims have criticized Michigan State’s handling of their abuser — and Ms. Simon’s fitness as president — in their statements.
Those criticisms were amplified on Friday, just after Michigan State’s board issued its statement of support, according to reporters in the courtroom.
Dr. Nassar was convicted in November on seven counts of criminal sexual conduct, and last month he was sentenced to 60 years in prison on child-pornography charges.
The university fired Dr. Nassar in September 2016, when reports of his sexual abuse prompted more victims to come forward. But critics, including some of Dr. Nassar’s victims, say that that Michigan State didn’t do enough to prevent the abuse.
The Detroit News reported on Thursday that at least 14 people at Michigan State were warned about Dr. Nassar’s conduct with young patients over a 19-year period, and that Ms. Simon was notified on at least one occasion. In 2014, Ms. Simon told the newspaper, she was informed about a Title IX complaint and a police report involving an unnamed sports-medicine doctor.
“I told people to play it straight up, and I did not receive a copy of the report,” she said. “That’s the truth.”
‘Negligence and Willful Ignorance’
On Friday, Michigan State’s board also asked Bill Schuette, Michigan’s attorney general, to review how the university had handled Dr. Nassar’s case. “Although we have confidence in the integrity of various reviews already conducted by law enforcement, subject-matter experts, and outside counsel to the university, we are making this request because we believe your review may be needed to answer the public’s questions concerning MSU’s handling of the Nassar situation,” the board said in a letter to the attorney general.
Mr. Schuette said in a statement that he would review the situation at Michigan State, issue a report, and make a recommendation on how to proceed.
But on campus and off, many people still seek swifter action. This week Michigan State’s student government passed a resolution calling for administrators to “take ownership and responsibility for their negligence and willful ignorance in allowing Larry Nassar to commit criminal acts from a university position.” They called for a leadership change “at the highest levels.”
Lorenzo Santavicca, president of the Associated Students of Michigan State University, wrote an email to the board. “Students can no longer place faith and trust in the current leadership of our administration,” he said.
The student government’s resolution did not specifically state that Ms. Simon should step down. But Mr. Santavicca told The Chronicle that until students see new faces in the administration, campus officials can’t distance themselves from the distrust students have developed.
“As an institution, I think we have a hard time admitting our wrong,” he said. “For some reason or another, we seem to put the brand and the reputation ahead of anything else. There’s really no sense of ownership.”
Many students on the campus were disappointed to learn that Ms. Simon still had the board’s full support, Mr. Santavicca said. He argued that the decision shows the board to be disconnected from the student body.
Mr. Santavicca said the board’s move would very likely prompt students who feel they are not being heard by campus leaders to organize and protest on their own. “Students are feeling a whole multitude of emotions and feelings around this issue,” he said, summing up the mood as “disheartened Spartans.”
Michigan State’s Faculty Senate has yet to take an official position on Ms. Simon.
Deborah Moriarty, a professor of piano and vice chair of the senate, stressed that she spoke only for herself, but noted that the president “has had and will continue to have very deep and sincere faculty support.”
In an email, Ms. Moriarty praised Ms. Simon’s “proven track record of supporting women at MSU.” The president has devoted significant attention and resources to the university’s Title IX enforcement efforts and to a faculty-training project on sexual misconduct and relationship violence, Ms. Moriarty said.
At this point, Ms. Moriarty added, “the facts of the Nassar case regarding MSU are still not known.”
“Due process is not only necessary but extremely important for all — faculty, students, and Dr. Nassar’s victims,” she said. “I am confident that President Simon can lead the university through this maze of accusations, rumors, and conflicting stories.”
On the other hand, Frank Fear, a professor emeritus and former senior associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, hopes that the faculty will take a vote of no confidence in the president.
“This is not about one person, it’s about an institutional culture,” he said. “The only option here from my point of view is, there needs to be new leadership from the outside.”
“People are afraid to say that,” he added.
Mr. Fear helped organize a petition last year calling for an independent investigation of Michigan State; more than 200 professors signed the petition. At the time, he said, Ms. Simon declined to endorse such a review. Mr. Fear said some professors are angry that only after a wave of public pressure did she change her mind.
But quite a few faculty members are reluctant to speak out, he said: “Many folks are conflating strong support for the president with strong support for Michigan State.”
Parallels With Penn State
John C. Manly, a California sex-abuse lawyer who is representing dozens of Dr. Nassar’s victims in lawsuits against Michigan State, said the “common sense” move for Ms. Simon would have been to resign. “The survivors are dumbfounded,” he said.
Mr. Manly said he wonders if “there’s more to the story than meets the eye.” Instead of acknowledging the harm caused to dozens of Michigan State students and alumni, and taking steps to deal with it right away, the university’s leadership has remained defensive for months, he said.
“For generations, MSU will be synonymous with Larry Nassar,” he said. “The people to blame for that are not the alumni or the kids who go there. It’s Lou Anna Simon and that board.”
Some have drawn parallels between Michigan State and an institution that did, in the eyes of many, become synonymous with an abuser: Pennsylvania State University, where some officials eventually went to prison for allowing sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, to continue for years without being investigated.
Ms. Simon became chair of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s executive committee in 2012, a week after the association slapped Penn State’s football program with steep penalties for its mishandling of the Sandusky case. At the time, she condemned Penn State’s ethical failures and pointed to a need to “build trust and confidence back in the system” of college sports.
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.
Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a breaking-news reporter. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.
