Why experts say MSU's efforts to change its culture after Nassar aren't working

EAST LANSING – For nearly a decade, Michigan State University has continually revised its policies and procedures to improve the school’s response to sexual assault on campus.

Last week was no different.

A statement from MSU sent in response to the Michigan Attorney General's Office's release of the final 6,000-plus university documents related to Larry Nassar's crimes and his time at MSU on Wednesday bears similarities to statements issued in recent months and years.

This time the statement came from Emily Guerrant, MSU’s vice president for communications.

“Since 2016, the university has taken significant steps to improve campus safety and culture through comprehensive prevention, support and response efforts,” she said. “We work every day to become a more responsible organization, guided by an unwavering commitment to providing a safe campus and equitable environment for all.”

The records, which the school tried to keep secret for years, offered no satisfactory answer for the survivors and the community. No explanation for how Nassar could have abused hundreds of girls and women over two decades under the guise of medical treatment.

Rachael Denhollander, who was the first to publicly admit to being abused by Nassar, said MSU's actions speak volumes.

“Michigan State really wanted to set a precedent for transparency with these documents,” she said. “They knew that releasing the documents and being transparent in our case would set a precedent that would require transparency in other cases.”

“It was never so much about the content of the documents, but rather about the concept of transparency itself. And that tells us a lot about where the university and its leadership really stand.”

Unresolved “cultural problems”

Marianne Jennings is a professor at Arizona State University who specializes in business and organizational ethics. The State Journal interviewed her in November, and even then, the university's out-of-state opinion was not positive.

“I can clearly state,” she said at the time, “that they have not solved the cultural problems.”

Jennings has written extensively on corporate ethics, including examining General Motors' response to the 2014 ignition switch scandal, in which defective parts caused car crashes that killed over 100 people.

“It's just really disappointing to see this behavior (from MSU),” she told the State Journal on Thursday, “because when you have a breakdown like this in an organization, people learn from it and change.”

“But I see no interest in change. I see nothing but tactics and manipulation.”

MORE: Survivors: ‘Truly horrific’ MSU actions revealed in Larry Nassar documents

For its part, the university “respects the efforts” made by the attorney general's office in its “thorough” investigation and believes it “fully complied with the requirements,” said Guerrant, who joined the university in 2018 shortly after former Gov. John Engler was named interim president. His appointment followed the resignation of President Lou Anna Simon hours after Nassar's conviction in Ingham County.

Nessel pointed out Wednesday that the documents are incomplete. For example, Simon routinely deleted her text messages until January 2018, around the time she resigned. That leaves a gap of more than a year between Denhollander's exposure of Nassar in September 2016 and Simon's departure.

Engler's term as interim president did not last long. He resigned less than a year later after survivors had been demanding his removal for months, partly because he had criticized them publicly and privately.

In May 2019, MSU hired its first permanent successor to Simon, who served as president for 13 years: Samuel Stanley Jr., a physician who served as president of Stony Brook University for a decade.

The turmoil at the university was not limited to Nassar’s crimes

On the day the university's board approved Stanley's hiring, Jim Blanchard, a former Michigan governor and MSU graduate, said the new perspective would help the university overcome its well-known challenges.

“I think we've done too much inbreeding here,” Blanchard said. “This gives us a whole new perspective.”

Stanley held out for nearly 3 1/2 years. In October 2022, he announced his resignation, saying he had lost confidence in the board of trustees, some of whom had pressured him to retire early.

The eight-member university board is currently chaired by Dan Kelly, one of two trustees who have served on the board long enough to have led the university during Nassar's criminal trial. The other is Dianne Byrum, who was first elected in 2008 and has been criticized by survivors.

Byrum and Kelly's terms end this year. Byrum, a Democrat first elected in 2008, announced in January that she would not run for another term, and Kelly has not been nominated for another term by the state Republican Party. Kelly, a lawyer who was elected to his first term in 2016, was named chairwoman in March after Democrat and trustee Rema Vassar of Detroit resigned from her role as board chairwoman amid controversy over her service as a board member.

Half of the eight-member panel are currently non-new party, as Democrat Dennis Denno of Vassar and East Lansing was reprimanded by his colleagues earlier this year and asked Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to fire them. Whitmer has made no public moves six months later and it's unclear whether they can stay on the panel.

W. Scott Sherman, a management professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, said the most important job of a company's leadership is to shape and maintain its culture.

“Culture is very fickle,” he said. “There are places where people believe, 'We have our culture and it will never change.' Culture is a living organism. It lives or it dies. How can you make it grow or can you let it die?”

MSU: More policy changes coming

Bringing new voices into an organization helps integrate those new voices and perspectives into a culture that should evolve as its environment evolves, Sherman said, citing the MeToo movement, the proliferation of social media and the expectation of transparency.

If new voices are not heard, he added, the organization's attitude toward negative events can become: “We are a fortress. We have to protect ourselves from these people from outside instead of serving them.”

The documents released by Nessel this week show the extent to which General Counsel Brian Quinn and his office influenced not only the university's public statements and actions, but also how they limited the information shared through public records requests and with Nessel's office.

Sherman and Jennings said that legal advisors play an important role in organizations, but that role relates to advising on legal risks, which may be only one of several types of risks an organization faces in crisis.

“They shouldn't drive, but they should have a say in the navigation,” Sherman said of the school's lawyers. “Too many organizations let (their general counsel) drive the bus.”

In December, MSU hired its newest permanent president, Kevin Guskiewicz, who succeeded two interim presidents who left their posts amid further controversy at the university.

In a statement released Friday, Guskiewicz said this was “a deeply troubling chapter” in MSU's history, and referred to the university's reforms of the “last six years.”

That six-year period would have begun in 2018, nearly two years after a police investigation of the university yielded the first sexual assault charges against Nassar. And three years after the U.S. Department of Education said MSU failed to respond in a timely manner to complaints of sexual assault and harassment, potentially contributing to a “sexually hostile atmosphere” on campus.

“Over the past six years, the university has taken significant steps to improve our policies on relationship violence and sexual misconduct and will take the next step this spring with our ongoing assessment of campus climate and culture,” Guskiewicz said. “However, we recognize there is more work ahead.”

Jennings said focusing on policies and procedures misses a more important element.

“Even dictators have policies,” she said. “The key is how they implement them. I see that as an important difference in this case. There were many (internal) investigations and many trials, but were the people who were responsible for this honorable?”

When asked Wednesday how MSU's long struggle to keep information secret has affected its ability to heal, Denhollander had a simple answer.

“It’s absolutely exhausting.”

Contact reporter Matt Mencarini at [email protected].

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Why experts say MSU's efforts to change its culture after Nassar aren't working

Unresolved “cultural problems”

The turmoil at the university was not limited to Nassar’s crimes

MSU: More policy changes coming

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Why experts say MSU's efforts to change its culture after Nassar aren't working

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