The MSU administration continually ignores student concerns and manipulates social conflicts into public relations opportunities by erasing administrative mistakes.
From 2013 to 2015, individuals in the MSU administration intentionally mishandled sexual assault cases and, instead of admitting they are directly responsible, they reframed the conversation on the few steps they have taken to change policies. In President Simon’s “Statement on Sexual Assault” released in September after the findings of the federal investigation were made public, there is nothing remotely close to an apology.
Instead of being accountable to mishandling the cases, President Simon deliberately manipulates the federal investigation to her own advantage, emphasizing instead the “great strides” that MSU has allegedly taken including policy change. This ignores the fact that the upper administration was complicit in the mishandling of these cases. President Simon should have issued an apology, not an advertisement.
Even with a change in policy, the MSU administration continues to mishandle cases. Vice President Maybank disregarded written policies during her oversight of a case from February 2014 to March 2015.
It has gotten so bad, that currently four students are suing the university for mishandling their sexual assault cases. The administration is said to have ‘delayed the sexual assault investigations’ as federal guidelines states 60 days for colleges and universities to investigate campus sexual misconduct complaints, but MSU often take more than seven months. It is clear the MSU administration is not acting with the well-being of our community in mind. They changed their policies not in response to these mistakes or student demands; they changed their policies only once the federal government stepped in to investigate mishandling and threatened to withhold funding.
In addition to the upper administration being culprits in the mishandling and misrepresentation of the above sexual assault cases, they are also currently choosing to eschew responsibility in creating a climate of racialized distrust on campus. When confronted with the legitimate demands of the student protestors of LiberateMSU, Simon shrugged off the seriousness of their concerns and dismissed their ideas as being out-of-date, saying that it is no longer the 1970s.
In some ways President Simon is more correct than she knows — incarceral rates for Black Americans have gotten worse than they were in the 1970s. The black/white incarceration rate jumped from 1 for 5 in 1980 to 1 for 8.5 in 2000, and the trend shows no sign of reversing.
President Simon is head of a massive land grant university and is in a unique place to confront institutional racism, yet she balks. In the same vein as her sexual assault statements, she refuses to even name the problem. She does not use the word “racism” once, let alone naming the problem as “white supremacy." We are not going to solve these problems if President Simon refuses to use language that acknowledge they exist.
The administrators of Michigan State University, Dr. Maybank, Ms. Granberry-Russell, and President Simon, owe our community an apology. If they are not willing to be accountable to the concerns of the community, and if they continue to manipulate their mistakes into PR shows, then they are unfit to be heads of our university.
This letter was written by the members of activist student group Ask Critically, Act Bravely.
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