MSU Burried Nassar Files During Title IX Investigation
Michigan State University, under U.S. Department of Education oversight since 2014 because of its mishandling of sexual assault and gender discrimination cases, asked federal officials last fall to end their monitoring of the university because administrators had been acting in "good faith" and had "gone above and beyond" in meeting standards laid out by federal officials, according to documents obtained by Outside the Lines.
The Oct. 17 request was rejected outright by federal officials for several reasons but in large part because of how the university has handled sexual assault allegations against former MSU athletics physician Larry Nassar, the documents obtained by Outside the Lines show:
-Michigan State administrators in 2014 did not notify federal officials that the university had dual Title IX and campus police investigations of Nassar underway even though federal investigators were on campus that year scrutinizing how MSU dealt with sexual assault allegations.
-MSU administrators still have not provided to federal officials all documents related to the Nassar allegations.
http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/22211140/michigan-state-sought-…
January 26th, 2018 at 12:32 AM ^
absolutely this
January 25th, 2018 at 1:45 PM ^
... and finally after the Nassar thing went public, the MSU general counsel's office wrote to federal officials calling it an "unfortunate oversight" and then even after that, 8 more files were merely "erroneously excluded." Are you kidding? Might as well just say "oh drat, you caught us again ... okay here are the files. Gee we must have forgotten about those somehow."
January 25th, 2018 at 1:48 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 1:54 PM ^
Really?
January 25th, 2018 at 1:59 PM ^
Didn't see the "a" missing. My bad. My original point is still valid, maybe a Mod can tak out the second "r".
January 25th, 2018 at 2:18 PM ^
Tak? You ARE that guy, and you are really bad at being that guy.
January 25th, 2018 at 1:59 PM ^
This judge is a total bad ass.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:03 PM ^
She's a known showboater.
She did the right thing . . . but she did it the wrong way.
I want my judges to be thoughtful, rational, and deliberative.
Save the grandstanding for the lawyers and the TV game-show judges.
TV Teddy causes no real harm on the basketball court, but acting like him in a real court can be extremely damaging.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:07 PM ^
Nassar is the only one she worries, and apparently you.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:11 PM ^
Show me all the places where people previously complained about her being a "showboater."
January 25th, 2018 at 2:46 PM ^
or who knows the body of her work.
"Showboat" is the exact term that I used, to describe her to out-of-state friends who asked me about her yesterday. I can think of no better term.
As an Ingham County Circuit Judge, she gets a lot of high-profile state government cases, in addition to work as a Court of Claims judge. That's not a fault of hers, it is just a fact.
But late last year, U.S. District Court Judge Janet Neff sentenced the very same Dr. Larry Nassar, without the cameras and the hoopla seen in the Ingham County case. Neff was the judge who effectively put Nassar away for life; 3 consecutive federal (i.e., don't even think about early release) 20-year sentences. Beyond the federal guidelines. A federal inmate, until age 105. Effectively a life sentence.
Nobody's talking about Judge Neff.
And here's a classic example of Judge Aquilina's showmanship; her ruling "with a copy to President Obama" against the Detroit municipal bankruptcy filing. She was reversed soon after:
January 25th, 2018 at 3:30 PM ^
Throughout all the coverage, the MAJORITY of the focus has been on the victims and Nassar. I've heard little to nothing about this judge and her "showboating ways."
Not really much smoke here.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:05 PM ^
Because 99.999999% of the American public knows Judge Aquilina only from the exposure of just this one case. And nothing else.
Many of the "showboat" descriptions of her come from practicing attorneys, journalists and lansing political players who know her much better, than just one case.
My judgment of Judge Aquilina as a "showboat" has nothing whatsoever to do with my personal judgment of Defendant Nassar. It has everything to do with Aquilina's performance as a judge (and as crime novelist/media figure/political activist) for many years wholly apart from this case. But also, my judgment of her as a "showboat" was completely unchanged by this case.
Oh by the way; Judge Aquilina has an agent, if you are interested:
http://www.langtonsinternational.com/fiction.html
January 25th, 2018 at 4:26 PM ^
January 26th, 2018 at 12:44 AM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 3:46 PM ^
noticing this as well. She's kind of acting like the judicial version of TV Teddy. The focus should be solely on the victims and beating that Nassar POS into the ground. No one wants to see her theatrics.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:25 PM ^
Judge William Collette, who's been a sitting Michigan trial judge from before the time Judge Aquilina entered law school, and who has been the Chief Judge of the Ingham Circuit, called her conduct of the Nassar sentencing hearing one of the most "violative" and "baffling" things he has seen...
But I think that Judge Aquilina knows what a national media star this has made her, and she's playing it beautfully.
January 25th, 2018 at 6:35 PM ^
Judge Collette is right. The most "violative" and baffling thing was being present in that room. Just that it was the defendant being on trial and the whole MSU culture. If he used those words with regards to anything in that courtroom other than Nassar and his enablers, I am not sure one should be listening to the Judge.
January 26th, 2018 at 12:39 AM ^
January 26th, 2018 at 10:31 AM ^
Judge Aquilina played it all like the political pro that she is. For lawyers and students of criminal procedural law, we are all scratching our heads and wondering how it is that a judge accepted victim impact statements from more than 150 people, almost all of whom were not subjects/witnesses of any of the discrete number of charges that Nassar was actually charged with.
There is a case -- and Judge Aquilina cited it -- People v. Waclawski -- which allows a trial judge to accept victim impact statements from persons other than the actual crime victim in a sentencing hearing. In People v Waclawski, the three victim(s) didn't want to testify in a child CSC case. And so some of their family members testified.
Judge Acquilina took that principle and expanded it almost beyond imagination. Some will obviously and perhaps rightly say that Larry Nassar's crimes were almost beyond imagination. And it is true, that he entered a plea agreement in which he agreed to be present in the courtroom to hear all of it.
And, as you have indicated, you (and certainly millions of people like you) feel as though the proceeding served an emotional purpose. Judge Aquilina played that emotional show with remarkable skill. "Calculating" was your word and I will agree with that.
January 25th, 2018 at 1:53 PM ^
Not that the general MSU community didn't rightly wish for Simon to go, but I bet if you really scratched away at it the person that many of them are really terrified to lose is Hollis. He has reigned over what they perceive as the Golden Age of Sparty athletics (though some of us see it as an age of rampant 'roid rage, sex assaults, and disrespekt). That 8-2 run on Michigan in football has been like a meth binge for many alumni. I think that's why Hollis has been so quiet. They are hiding him in the crawl spaces up there.
January 25th, 2018 at 1:53 PM ^
I gotta ask - does OP just search the news for the latest in the MSU saga and think to themselves "this HAS to be a thread on Mgo? I might be able to earn some precious MGoPoints if I start a new thread!
January 25th, 2018 at 2:02 PM ^
I gotta ask - does OP just create a new user account to be an anonymous, little baby and whine about something so trivial to his actual life? It's a thread on a sports blog. Grow up.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:23 PM ^
You mad, bro? It was a legitmate question, which OP answered kindly later. Long time lurker, finally created an account to join in the fun that goes on here.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:31 PM ^
No one who actually graduated college in 1978 would use "You mad, bro?". Go back to RCMB.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:05 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 2:15 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 6:28 PM ^
this is the biggest story in sports right now, not just in michigan. are people really unaware of this?
January 25th, 2018 at 1:55 PM ^
This revelation of what looks like nothing other than ongoing obstruction is damning.
I generally try to keep the phrase "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity" in mind, but in the case of MSU's mishandling of Nassar, it's impossible.
January 25th, 2018 at 1:57 PM ^
300-900 years. See what I did there?
I have learned to really despise sparty football (and to a lesser extent basketball). And I cannot quantify the disgust for people that abuse others in any way, especially children.
That being said, I don't enjoy seeing another B1G school get torn down like this. Yes, they deserve the utmost punishment for looking the other way and ANYONE responsible should be punished to the maximum extent possible. But I hope the rest of the university and all the good things about msu as an educational institution does not suffer.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:05 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 2:02 PM ^
"Michigan State University has adhered to its resolution agreement in good faith and completed the requisite actions, and in most respects, has gone above and beyond its requirements," the MSU letter to Candice Jackson, the OCR's acting assistant secretary in Washington, D.C., states. By sending the letter to Jackson, MSU bypassed the attorneys in the OCR regional office in Cleveland it had been reporting to since 2010.
"... adhered to ... in good faith ... completed ... gone above and beyond ..." - I don't think they know what any of those words actually mean.
Also, this was a lame attempt to do an end run around the Cleveland Office for Civil Rights which they had been dealing with.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:06 PM ^
I wonder if this will uncover the Appling/Payne rapes that alledgedly happened.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:18 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 2:27 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 6:46 PM ^
how's life under your rock?
January 25th, 2018 at 2:29 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 2:35 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 2:44 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 2:52 PM ^
There isn't one.
I read MSU's letter as an attempt to get the DoE OCR to back off because there was a new executive in charge of the department who seemed to have very different views on these issues. More a case of "Your new boss doesn't think these things are as important as your last boss."
January 25th, 2018 at 3:50 PM ^
Why doesn't the new boss think "these things" are as important as the last boss?
January 25th, 2018 at 4:14 PM ^
It's not "Betsy De Vos doesn't think this is important for MSU...," it's "Betsy De Vos has other priorities and doesn't think Title IX investigations are a good use of resources."
This isn't about a quid pro quo. Far from it.
January 26th, 2018 at 8:26 PM ^
https://deadspin.com/betsy-devos-rolled-back-title-ix-protections-two-d…
One last time: Why doesn't Betsy DeVos think Title IX investigations are a good use of resources?
Happy to agree to disagree.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:31 PM ^
There are a lot of people, if they read that piece, that will hear about those allegations for the first time. I wonder if it will embolden that young woman to come forward.
January 25th, 2018 at 2:35 PM ^
They protected Dantonio too.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:27 PM ^
we getting that from?
January 25th, 2018 at 2:52 PM ^
Rachael Denholland is the first victim to come forward -- she was the first one to put her name on this, going to the Indy Star, and to the police in Lansing. She was, for that reason, the last victim to read her statement just before Nasser's sentencing.
Here is the full transcript of her comments to the judge. The second half of it just completely annihilates MSU. She goes, fact by fact, through all the things MSU knew and how they turned their backs on the girls. Even told the girls not to report. And the lies they are telilng the courts to defend themselves, and twisting words ("we didn't know" means "we didn't bother following up reports") and putting their head in the sand, and how they internally and publicly belittled the girls. I had never seen all of this mountain of disgusting evidence compiled in one place against MSU, but... it's way, way worse than PSU. Way, way worse.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/us/rachael-denhollander-full-statement/
If after reading this you don't want MSU out of the Big 10 along with PSU, then you need to read it again.