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 25th, 2018 at 3:32 PM ^
Probably as good a reason as any to make the Big Ten actually 10 again. Only thing that gives me a bit of pause is Maryland AFAIK hasn't really been awful, but ya gotta make the numbers work.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:43 PM ^
Wow. Everybody should read Denholland's account. It details how devious Nassar was and how complicit various members of the MSU staff were in allowing him to continue molesting his victims.
January 25th, 2018 at 7:07 PM ^
I am so grateful for her standing up for what is right, that is a truly remarkable thing she did. Wow. I will be sharing that with all my friends too.
January 25th, 2018 at 3:00 PM ^
I heard it comes before the fall................
January 25th, 2018 at 3:16 PM ^
Hold on eveyone! I think I have figured all this out....it is just a minor misunderstanding. LAS has been saying all along that MSU is seeking transparency....you cannot really see things that are transparent, right. So, in her virtual reality, these reports are essentially transparent just like she has been saying all along.
I am beginning to see why her resignation letter had such an angry tone.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:26 PM ^
I know you are kidding and I giggled a bit. but "transparent" means you can see through something to what's on the other side. It's not the same as "invisible".
A for effort!
January 25th, 2018 at 3:20 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 5:20 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 3:22 PM ^
DEATH
PENALTY
January 25th, 2018 at 3:31 PM ^
Spent 6 years as a student there in two programs. Mid to late 1990s. It was a place with a very very fragile collective psyche during those times. A lot due to the little brotherdom. Education status was one thing, but the big two sports are what people really get after each other about at work or family get togethers.
Izzo began his rise in my last couple years there and Saban was starting to do well.
Michigan began it's decline in both major sports around 2000. One was up and down then down. Basketball was steep down.
MSU sports, particularly Izzo's run of Final Fours, was a major source of pride. The school was elite in something that mattered to a lot of people nationwide. It became better than Michigan in both sports over that decade arc to the early 2010s. Those were massive and unheard of accomplishments and all happening in the media saturation era.
I think in the end, the desperation to not detract from that new status led to some very short sighted and bad judgment relating to a lot of incidents. People not understanding the web of Title IX reporting requirements. Or people not caring and rolling the dice.
I mean let's not forget Larry Nassar was THE guy called on to work with athletes in arguably the most popular Olympic sport. Number 1. That's rarer air than making a Final Four. In certain circles different from the football/basketball fandom, that affiliation was another major source of pride.
Desperation to maintain status probably brought on ill conceived decisions. And then more were made to cover the previous bad decisions. And so on.
The perversion of priorities at a good school on full sorry display. The wrong people in charge making wrong decisions.
January 25th, 2018 at 3:31 PM ^
MSU needs the death penalty, but apparently that's only for getting paid.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:11 PM ^
Penn State didn't get it for actively covering up child rape. Baylor didn't get it for creating its own complacency to a rape culture.
The death penalty is, ironically, dead. The NCAA will never institute it again.
January 25th, 2018 at 3:39 PM ^
Anything that can derail and put all MSU athletics in a coffin would be great for me/us. Nothing will make me feel better than seeing MSU fall after they have been so damn prideful.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:14 PM ^
Thank goodness all the child raping gives you a chance to stick it to your MSU buddies. That really is great.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:25 PM ^
Let's be for real here... I'm not saying what Nassar did is a good thing. In several of the many Nassar threads I have made aware how disgusting the man is. With all these damn posts it is quite DAMN FUCKING obvious that we want MSU to get hammered with the death penalty.
No need for some of you to act all high and mighty. Go back and look at my history and you will see my other thoughts on the matter in the other threads.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:51 PM ^
Personally, I think it would be pretty wild for the other athletics to be given the death penalty (football, basketball) when they were on the outside of this.
PSU Football got the hammer because it was a direct connection between program and coach.
This is a little more complicated in terms of who gets fired, kicked out, and punished. You can't just say, SHUT DOWN ALL THE PROGRAMS.
Yeah, MSU needs to get punished and punished big in some way. But don't try to put words in everyone's mouth here.
January 25th, 2018 at 7:02 PM ^
January 26th, 2018 at 8:35 AM ^
Department-wide sanctions. Two season post-season ban on all MSU sports. 10% scholarship reduction for all progams for a period of 3 years. Waivers granted to any and all athletes who wish to transfer out in wake of these sanctions.
Something like that would have some teeth without nuking the entire athletic department.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:13 PM ^
I'd rather the downfall of a program not come at the expense of over 150 women being sexually assaulted.
But hey, what do I know?
January 25th, 2018 at 4:15 PM ^
Mindset that I cannot stomach from this board which I have seen too much lately.
I'm tired of people celebrating this as though this is something positive for Michigan.
There are hundreds of victims in this. That's the MOST IMPORTANT THING in all of this.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:37 PM ^
And what irks me is the Holier-Than-Thou attitude I've seen a lot on this board lately. Dude. No-one here doesn't believe Nassar is evil and horrendously assaulted hundreds of women. No-one here doesn't feel Simon and many others at MSU failed those victims over the years. And no-one here doesn't wish the best for those survivors in their ongoing recovery.
But all of the chaos and investigating certainly doesn't help their institution / athletic program either -- that's all.
January 25th, 2018 at 4:43 PM ^
Nice job finding that silver lining.
January 25th, 2018 at 5:18 PM ^
Why would you be happy about this disgusting thing that has happened, come on man. Lives have been ruined and some will never recover. People are so damn prideful they can't get out of their own way. Good luck man.
January 25th, 2018 at 5:37 PM ^
You failed to mention that lives have been LOST. One of the girls committed suicide due to what happened and a father of another girl took his life because he felt he let his little girl down.
I want MSU to be torn down at this point, but take no joy in it. I have many friends who went there and know many current students. All good people who deserve a way better institution than the one currently making mess after mess.
January 25th, 2018 at 5:54 PM ^
January 25th, 2018 at 5:57 PM ^
not to mention hypocritical in the extreme. If the timing had been a bit different, her dismantling of the title IX guidelines for investigation of sexual abuse cases might have allowed Nassar to continue and for MSU to bury the whole thing.
The MSU petition to remove oversight early was directly a result of DeVos removing the previous federal guidelines for investigation, because MSU incorrectly thought they no longer had to comply. They were denied only because existing cases were still bound to the previous guidelines.
Congratultions Betsy, any future investigations into sexual assaults will now be much harder to conduct, the people/insititutions that fail to inadequately investigate them will no longer be held accountable and victims are no longer protected in the same manner and will therefore be less likely to report them.
Anyone with a daughter attending or planning to attend college, be happy because your daughters are less safe now thanks to her and those of her ilk.
January 25th, 2018 at 6:45 PM ^
I recgonize that this topic isn't a catch-all general-argument Title IX thread.
But come on; by the end of August, 2017, the story on Nassar was out, and he had been removed by MSU, and criminal investigations had been initiated.
Secretary DeVos didn't even announce anything about Title IX until a month later, and even then it was not a policy change, not a "Dear Colleague" letter as was the case with the previous administration in April of 2011. She simply expressed the idea that the previous policy was palgued with problems and that they will work on something different. She is the Secretary of Education. The Ed Department's Office of Civil Rights is the central clearinghouse for federal Title IX policy.
And even with the post-2011 enforcement regime, nobody did anything about Dr. Larry Nassar in 2012, or 2013, or 2014, or 2015, or 2016.
To me, it shows me that Title IX was insufficient to address a Larry Nassar, just as Title IX was unlawfully used by the University of Michigan to railroad Drew Sterrett.
Rape and sexual assault allegations belong in courtrooms; with police and prosecutors and defense attorneys. Not in university conference rooms.
Dr. Larry Nassar deserves to be in jail for the rest of his life. Don't look to Title IX for that brand of justice. Title IX doesn't put anybody in jail. But at the same time, as Michigan knows all too well, Title IX sometimes kicks innocents out of school.
January 25th, 2018 at 7:53 PM ^
First off, I'm not claiming DeVos had a specific interest in or was influenced in any way by the MSU case in terms of her title IX actions. That would be stupid. If she was trying to spare MSU anything she would have been sure to make it so previous cases were not still bound by the previous guidelines.
Not what I'm saying at all.
My point is that she removed guidelines for campus assault investigations that consider the victim and establish standards and accountability if not followed. She considerably weakened a school's ability to do anything about it when they want to and made it waaaaay easier for a school to avoid being accountable when they don't act. You may think that is a good thing. I don't.
She doesn't care about the victims. she doesn't really care about it not happening again.
For....oh....an eternity...it has been extremely difficult for a woman or girl to file a claim of sexual assault. As this case so clearly indicates, they are not believed, discouraged from following through, threatened, ridiculed, dismissed, suspected as being at fault for what they did/wore/drank/said, etc. This is especially true of the criminal justice system off campus.
As a result, rapes and sexual assaults have been drastically underported. Do I need to list for you the myriad of cases where abuse/rape would have been stopped by following adequate Title IX procedures or the cases that would have been non-existent without it? Hundreds, if not thousands. The number of victims easily reaching the thousands and vastly outnumbering the number of falsely accused who don't get due process. I value protecting that vast majority of women victims in this case.
Title IX and the guidelines and requirements for investigation and reporting of sexual assault changed thae dynamic and gave women a safer, more approachable alternative to report crimes. Taking that away puts girls and women more at risk and goes back to the old "tell the police" way, which may be fine for you, but in my opinion is completely regressing to a broken system.
Could/should Title IX be tweaked to allow for more due process, a better appeals process, categorization of a case as not clear or lacking in evidence and thus requiring more rigorous investigation and a trial? Yes.
Good idea to dump all the progress and the protections being afforded female victims by dropping all guidelines? No way.
Your "let the courts handle it" is an obtuse viewpoint from someone who has not and will never experience sexual assault as even a remote possibility.
January 25th, 2018 at 10:10 PM ^
Best post today award.
January 26th, 2018 at 7:00 AM ^
she doesn't really care about it not happening again."
Interesting how dialed in you are about exactly what Devos doesn't care about.
January 26th, 2018 at 5:00 PM ^
her words say she cares, her actions say she doesn't, plain and simple.
She CHOSE to repeal the previous guidelines and procedures for reporting sexual assault on campus and considerably weakened what had been for thousands of victims an accepting and considerate path for them to report crimes and an established methodology for investigating them that placed the onus on the school to follow up or face consequences.
DeVos simply wouldn't do that if she cared for the victims. Instead, she used her position to stand up for the tiny fraction of accused males who may not have been granted due process.
Her actions say she doesn't care if it happens again.
She continues to employ Candace Jackson who is quoted in the Times as saying that "90 percent of campus accusations are over drunk or breakup sex. An alarming viewpoint for someone who is supposed to give a shit about women students, especially so becuase there is absolutely no statistical basis for saying that.
Show me what DeVos has actually done, besides provide an empty quote about caring, that displays any level of care for survivors. Anything.
January 25th, 2018 at 8:44 PM ^
Whatever wrong there was possibly to do in this, MSU administration managed to do it.
January 26th, 2018 at 4:52 PM ^
The people on this forum are just as bad as Larry Nassar. Celebrating sexual assault because it will hurt a conference rival.
2-15 over the last 17 years against Ohio State.
2-8 over the last 10 years against Michigan State.
Absolutely pathetic.
January 26th, 2018 at 4:53 PM ^
The people on this forum are just as bad as Larry Nassar. Celebrating sexual assault because it will hurt a conference rival.
2-15 over the last 17 years against Ohio State.
2-8 over the last 10 years against Michigan State.
Absolutely pathetic.