Our criticisms of the MSU administration are not credible unless we also examine UM

You seem to be taking this issue rather personally, since you're insisting on digging your hole deeper. What exactly are you so butthurt about? Do you have a vested financial interest in here somehow?

I am so tired of people like you.

I read this earlier, and what it seems to be is a dispute between two departments on how audits are conducted and whether the standards applied would be the same for any University of Michigan department vs the standards for an independently run $11 billion fund.

On one hand, you have the internal compliance group at M accustomed to looking at academic departments and bodies and conducting a standard accounting audit of what is essentially a huge, independently run investment fund and I think Lundberg's contention is they aren't the same.

Schlissel clearly states that they are not the same and clearly admits that they have taken too long to resolve the issue. Big deal.

The gifts in question are a set of Timo luggage, some expensive clothing and a few business class flights. Meh. 

It also mentions the potential for a conflict of interest for the fund manager, which I think they did already address fairly quickly by establishing a new and separate oversight committee to address that. I don't think there is any actual accusation of wrongdoing here. 

The only even partially troubling item is the possible funnleing of investments to people that donated large sums to the university. Not sure if there is actualy a crime involved in that, or just bad optics and some potential for bad decisions without oversight. 

I can't believe you actually tried to equate this with the MSU situation. 

double post

Does not mean what you think it means. The word you are looking for is "equate." 

As a sidenote, somehow, the Freep saw fit to publish three articles on the topic. MLive, DetNews, and other media outlets? Zero. 

I mean, it's important work to do, for sure. Absolutely wrong, unethical behavior by some of individuals. 

However, this has nothing to do with credibly criticizing what happened and continues to happen at msu. It's not as if that is somehow less true because some fund managers got away with some unethical crap for a few years. 

You do realize that it is common practice for organizations to pick their auditors.  It's not like they pick someone off of the street, they are choosing from a handful of accredited accounting firms.  

Frankly, the concept that an internal auditing group would be the appropriate organization to audit an $11B investment fund is the concern.  An independent third-party should perform the audit for obvious reasons.

I have worked as an auditor. I have worked for the very firm now hired to perform an independent audit of the endowment office.  What happened at UM is relatively minor operational issue, and the events that occured actually provide more comfort to me that they would appropriately address a more serious issue. 

Really the events are - 2014 inernal audit makes findings -> CIO disagrees ->Tensions increase between internal audit and endowment office ->UM president admits some errors and hires external auditors to review. In fairness, they were a bit slow to address, but not because they feared reprecussions - frankly, i think its because they just didn't really understand/had more interesting things to address. Seriously, try reading the audit report and stay awake all the way through. I work in finance, things like audit findings are nearly impossible to get the attention of Boards unless they are really serious (i.e. embezzelement, major accounting error, etc). Ultimately, Schlissel has admited some mistakes and is working to address and learn. 

MSU on the other hand has girls making accusations back in 1997. In the subsequent years several people try to bury accusations from getting out. Nassar is investigated by police but still allowed to practice. MSU pres is told of FBI investigation and says "play it by the book". Eventually Nassar is fired and this hits media. MSU Board defends president because she raised a lot of money. MSU continues to do everything it can to mitigate legal exposure while not admitting wrongdoing. 

'I'm not trying to equivocate sex crimes with potential financial crimes, but the parallels are undeniable."

"I'm not trying to say that a rusty spike in the eye socket is the same thing as possibly stubbing your toe, but their similarities are impossible to deny."

Sorry, but it's really dumb to try to make any kind of link.

Think about how dumb it would be for MSU to use the same logic. No one can criticize us as long as we can find something to criticize them for.

Yes.  Brian's was just more accurate and compared apples to apples issues (FOIA response at UM vs MSU / sexual assault response at UM vs MSU) and explained the differences between the failures of each university. 

This post instead is equating two potentially wrong responses just because in the OP's mind both are wrong.

To continue the comparison trend with the two posts.  One good, one bad.

MSU fans/grads can read?

I have never seen that gif. By far the best of all the hilarious gifs on this thread.

This should be pinned to the top for anyone claiming any bullshit based on the artcle alone

Also, as long as they are qualified, there's zero inherently wrong with placing endowment money with alumni investment managers. I would even say it's preferred over other strategies as they have some skin in the gane with regards to institutional reputation and harm. A UofM alum will most likely be MORE careful when managing UofM money than other people will.....