Salmon, Awkward Tweets, and ‘Hell No,’ I Wouldn’t Fire Him: A Reporter’s Notes From Outside Michigan State’s Trustee Dinner

David Eggert, AP Images

A decision on Thursday by Michigan State University’s Board of Trustees to stand behind John M. Engler, who has been under intensifying pressure to resign as interim president, all but ensures that the campus can count on protests and outrage to continue.

Two trustees and a host of lawmakers have called on Engler to resign since last week, when a disparaging comment that he had made in an email about a sexual-abuse survivor was made public. Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan, apologized for his words in a statement on Thursday — after eight days of public flogging. Shortly thereafter, the board’s chairman released a statement saying that a majority of the university’s trustees support Engler’s staying on until a permanent successor is named — a process that could take a year.

Michigan State’s leadership crisis marks another dark turn for the institution, which has been in a state of upheaval since 2016, when the first of what would be hundreds of women accused Larry Nassar, then a university sports doctor, of sexually assaulting them. Since then, trustee meetings have become public spectacles, as abuse survivors and their supporters crowd the room to voice their continued displeasure with the board and the administration.

The board, which is scheduled to hold a public meeting on Friday, has been holed up for two days in Cowles House, where the president holds functions and entertains, for a closed retreat. Despite open-meetings requirements at the public university, the trustees have discretion to hold unofficial discussion sessions.

The two coordinated statements on Thursday that resulted from those sessions appear designed to remove any uncertainty about what will come of Friday’s meeting. Critics can howl and scream all they want, but a majority of Michigan State’s trustees are standing by their man.

With two board members still saying that Engler should resign, and abuse victims aghast at what they describe as Engler’s insensitivity, the stability that trustees say they want remains fleeting at best. Michigan State is a university at odds over the most fundamental of questions: Is the interim president capable of healing the institution, or is Engler hard-wired to tear it apart?

The Dinner

The trustees gathered again on Thursday evening at the president’s house, where a reporter was told they had dined on salmon, beef, and a “vegetarian option.” By 9 p.m., most of them had departed, including Melanie Foster, whose connection to Engler dates back years, when he first appointed her to the board for a brief stint in 1991-92. (She has since been twice elected to it.)

Heading toward her white Porsche Cayenne in a long patterned dress, Foster said that the trustees had managed to disagree with “mutual respect.”

“Hey, we all came out smiling, right? How’s that?” she said. “We can agree to disagree.”

A lot of people had wanted Engler to apologize to Rachael Denhollander, who, Engler had said in the email, was likely to get a “kickback” from her lawyer for stirring up abuse survivors. But the trustees did not deliver an ultimatum — apology or else — at least not in unison. That much is clear from Foster, who said, even if Engler hadn’t apologized, she would not have forced him out.

“Hell no,” she said.

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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• At Michigan State, a Disruptive Presidency That Few Could Muster the Will to End

As for that email, Foster said: “I’m not going there. I’m really not. It was a private email.”

Foster, who broke up her sentences with frequent laughter, gave the impression that she did not think much of this hullabaloo over Engler and his email. So the reporter asked if she thought the news media had been unfair to the interim president.

“Do I think The Chronicle has become a tabloid?” she said. “Let me ask you that.”

The Chronicle was the first to report on Engler’s email, which was obtained through a public-records request.

Earlier in the evening, a black Ford Taurus rolled up to the house and parked in a slanted spot out front, overlooking a green hill that runs alongside Cowles, the university’s oldest existing building. Perhaps this was the sort of image that Foster was conjuring up when she talked about the trustees as friends with differences. In the driver’s seat was Daniel J. Kelly, a trustee who said early on that he thought Engler should stay. Sitting shotgun was Brian Mosallam, who was the first board member to call on Engler to resign.

Mosallam made it clear that he was prepared to fire Engler if he could get the votes. (It seems he couldn’t.)

Kelly, wearing a light-blue blazer and a green pastel shirt, exited the car and engaged with a reporter with mild reluctance. Social media was buzzing about Engler’s apology, and survivors had made it clear that they thought it was too little too late. But Kelly, strolling toward the house for dinner, did not seem to mind that it had taken Engler eight days to do it.

“I’m glad that he did it,” Kelly said. “I’m not concerned about the timing of it.”

“The statements are unfortunate, and we have to deal with them,” Kelly continued. “I’m glad he apologized for them.”

For trustees like Kelly, who have stood by Engler during his darkest hours, there is an interesting bifurcation going on. They see in the interim president an able tactician, whom they credit with warding off the kind of legislative backlash that they had feared after the Nassar debacle. They also credit him with securing a $500-million settlement with abuse victims. But they can no longer deny that Engler has, from a public-relations standpoint, made things at a minimum more challenging.

That’s why, when asked a straight question — Is Engler doing a good job? — Kelly answered like this: “Administratively, yes.”

No one wanted Engler gone like Mosallam. As late as Thursday evening, he was still mulling whether to force a vote Friday on Engler’s dismissal. It would appear to be a futile gesture, given that a majority of the trustees back Engler, but it would be in keeping with Mosallam’s persona as the board’s principled needler.

When Mosallam exited Kelly’s car, clad in blue jeans and an untucked button-down shirt, he didn’t look defeated. His chest popped out like he was ready to play another half at Spartan Stadium, where he was once a football team co-captain. But he had broken an ancient rule of politics: He shot at the king and didn’t kill him.

Mosallam declined to discuss the details of how his plan to oust Engler had fallen apart. Was George J. Perles, his old football coach and a fellow Democrat on the board, with him? How close were the others? No one who drifted in and out of Cowles House would say on the record.

Inside the building, Mosallam did something that would surely be frowned upon by Emily Post, had she lived in our age. In a tweet, Mosallam wrote of his host, “I stand by my call for John to step down so MSU can rebuild confidence with all stakeholders and focus on healing.”

Pleased to see Engler tried to apologize to @R_Denhollander and our survivors. But because of his chilling behavior, Engler’s apology is too little too late. I stand by my call for John to step down so MSU can rebuild confidence with all stakeholders and focus on healing. #teal

— Brian Mosallam (@Bmosallam63) June 21, 2018

It’s unclear whether folks inside the house were watching Mosallam’s tweets. But Brian Breslin, the board’s chairman, would not discuss that, or dinner, or much of anything. He did say, before speeding away in his car, that The Chronicle had gotten something wrong.

The Chronicle had recently reported that Breslin, a Republican like Engler, was on leave from his position as appointments manager for Rick Snyder, Michigan’s governor. On Thursday night, as Breslin put his silver BMW into reverse, he said that he had resigned that position.

Breslin offered his correction only after the reporter had laid his tape recorder on the graveled parking space like a weapon, putting his hands in the air, signaling Breslin to lower his window so that the reporter could correct the record if there had been an error. (The article has been corrected.)

Then Breslin drove away.

‘I Was Told I Was a Liar’

None of what happened on Thursday has mollified survivors of Nassar’s abuse.

Engler’s troubles started from the day of his appointment, when critics described him as a political insider unfit to send a message of transparency or to heal the institution. But what really bruised Engler as a leader happened in April, when Kaylee Lorincz, an abuse survivor, accused him in a public meeting of having tried to pay her off without her lawyer present. In the days after that, during what Engler described in his statement as a time of “emotions and tempers, including mine,” he sent the infamous email about Denhollander.

Lorincz says she is still waiting for her apology. The emails that have been made public include one from Carol M. Viventi, the president’s special counsel, who accused Lorincz privately of spreading “false news” about her meeting with Engler.

“I was told I was a liar and I was fake news, but I never received an apology,” Lorincz said. “So I find it very hard to see that it is sincere.”

Engler, who has seen lawmakers of all political stripes call on him to resign in recent days, acknowledged on Thursday that his email had been “a big mistake.”

“I was wrong,” he said in the statement. “I apologize.”

While Engler’s apology specifically mentioned Denhollander, who he said was getting a “kickback,” he did go further, making a more general reference to abuse survivors.

“When I started this interim position, in February, it was never my intent to have an adversarial relationship with some of the survivors,” Engler said. “My speculation about the lead plaintiff receiving kickbacks or referral fees hurt her deeply, and for that I am truly sorry. She and the other survivors suffered greatly, and they are entitled not to have their sincerity questioned, either individually or as a group. I apologize to her and her sister survivors.”

Lorincz, who plans to speak publicly at the meeting on Friday, said that the trustees, by not firing Engler, had failed her and other survivors.

“It really sends the message that they don’t care about survivors and they don’t care about their students at MSU,” she said. “Because John Engler is not the right person for that job. He has proven that time and time again. And if the board really wants MSU and the community and the survivors to heal, they know the right thing to do is to fire John Engler.”

Denhollander, who was the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, said she was “thankful for the gesture” from Engler. But the board, in its support of Engler, had failed to recognize that his email is not an isolated incident, she said, noting a string of comments and actions that survivors have found offensive.

“I don’t think it solves any of the problems, and it does not undo the damage,” she said. “This is one statement in an entire pattern of attacking sexual-assault survivors. It’s a pattern that demonstrates a mind-set toward sexual assault and sexual-assault victims that is deeply damaging.”

“Were it an aberration,” she said of Engler’s email, “it might be a different story.”

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