Press release, Warde Manuel statement on W Gymnastics assistant coach hire

I get the sentiment, but you also could find yourself in trouble if, after an event like this, you changed your hiring metrics, and decided to go with the person who you feel has as flawless of character as possible. In doing so you have to make judgement calls that don't actually correspond to who is more qualified for this job or any other normal business criteria. "I thought he had better character" isn't going to get you anywhere during a court proceeding or investigation if the older lady with significantly more experience you didn't hire accuses the university of age and sex discrimination. 

Let's take this situation for example. It would not surprise me if they had several candidates for the job, let's say 3 guys in their late 20's early 30's with an average of 2 years graduate assistant work, and 3-5 years as a head coach somewhere. Then we have Rhonda Faehn, a lady in her mid 40's but with an amazing career including 15 years as head coach at FSU with 3 national championships the last years, and as an executive with USA Gymnastics. Obviously she was involved in the scandal, and as an employer you want to stay as far away from that as possible. She applies for the job though.

The problem comes when your head coach knows her professionally and is unwilling to tell your in-house counsel that she is not the most qualified for the job, or that she believes that the way she handled the Nassar situation, and what she knows now, would make her a potential danger to the student athletes compared to the other coaching hires. Either way would have given the University a clear way out. Your head coach says something like "no, I can't say that, to me she tried, not the best, but she did tell her boss right away, and the FBI was made aware within a week, so she didn't necessarily know he didn't tell them right away, he said he would, and I really feel like she learned from this situation and would be more willing to bring concerns to all the authorities than these other hires". At this point your counsel talks to the AD because they are kind of in a bind. What's better for the students, and of course, do they want to have a potential for some sort of lawsuit? When congress thanks someone for being honest and elevating the issue at the time, during an investigation into the Nassar scandal (when she testified to them), She's sort of cleared in a court of public opinion, so if you decide to go with the young man with a fifth of her experience, watch out! Still, not a great look, so at this point they decide to hire her at arms length, as a consultant, and with an air tight employment contract that stipulates everything she will do and the repercussions to her if she doesn't, and maybe stipulates that she can't use this job simply as a landing pad, but has to commit to working with the students for a longer period. I don't know if any of this is how it happened, but that may be why Michigan came to this decision. 

It's also possible the university just examined all the facts, realized we are all human, that this lady learned from the situation more so than the other applicants who haven't ever been in the situation, and as result posed less of a risk to the student athletes for any future incident. I have no idea, but If I were coming into the fallout of this situation at work, I would be expecting something like one of these two scenarios.