Breaking down MSU's Board battle

With the all the backlash and controversy surrounding MSU and the Board of Trustees, we're here to discuss what's been going on during this "week of friction." 

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(Alex) It's Thursday, November 2, and this is the 1909 state news weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. This week I'm joined by fellow administration reporter Theo shear to talk about a week of friction at MSU. 's Board of Trustees. It started last Sunday night with a letter making wide ranging various serious allegations against the board's chair. It accused her of bullying colleagues interfering and legal disputes victim blaming a sexual harassment survivor and even attempting to keep word of her meddling out of an official report about the February campus shooting. And what followed was a lot I can't put it into a catchy little summary. But today on the night tonight, we're going to take the whole episode to break it all down. We'll tell you what the letter allege the board chair did what she said in response, what we found in our reporting that contextualized or corroborated or challenge the allegations, and what's already been done, or could be done going forward about any of this. So with that, I should introduce my guest and someone who's been reporting on this all week with me. Do you want to say hi, yeah, Hey, Alex. I mean, it's great to be back on the 19th. You're like a regular Yeah, yeah, I am. I am. And I should, you know, just as a disclaimer for the audience, spoil the magic just a little bit. It's Tuesday, we're recording this. You're hearing this Thursday at the absolute soonest. So if anything happens, we should now and then it's not going to be in the show. But we will be covering it. We will knock on wood, but it sounds bad with the mics. So anyhow, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's great to be here. It was definitely a hectic week for the both of us on. Was it Sunday evening, you broke the news. You got a letter from board chair. Brianna. Scott, do you want to tell us what that was all about? We did. So you know, last weekend, Brianna Scott, who's one of the members of that misuse board. It's an elected board elected statewide and partisan races, sent a letter to the board. And you know, I got a copy of it that night. And we wrote a story about it. And you know, we'll get into specific allegations, but sort of in like the broadest view, it paints a picture of a fractured and contentious board with Remo Vassar, who's the board's chair orchestrating major universities decisions without the knowledge or consent of, you know, other board members or administrators like the interim president. And it gives real stakes to that by talking about these, you know, legal entanglements and public controversy that have come out of that. And it seems to jump from scandal to scandal, all these MSU controversies that you previously know that we've previously reported on, you know, the business Dean Gupta, his controversial removal, the Nasr documents, the rapid turnover of all these presidents, you know, this seemingly looming legal battle battle over the firing of Mel Tucker, for those sexual harassment claims. All these scandals that you know, about it seems to paint this picture of actually, behind the scenes, vassals had a much larger role than was previously publicly understood. And it ties a lot of that meddling to the board's code of conduct. And, you know, Scott's argument in the letters that because she's violated that code of conduct, she should resign, and if not, she should be removed. And we'll go through the allegations right now. So the first one, Scott accuses Basler of bullying the interim president Teresa Woodruff, and you know, usurping her authority. You know, and this is both interpersonal things, Scott says Ambassador demanded Woodruff speaking schedule and insisted on being added to every single event so that she could also speak there. And it also has to do with these sort of university decisions that are being made. You know, with Vassar, the board does governance, right. They're supposed to oversee the president, they select the president, and they take the sort of this big picture, look over the university. Scott saying that would Vassar is doing day to day meeting with, you know, campus figures meeting with figures outside of campus and local government, other universities and negotiating these partnerships, that things like that are sort of meddling in the administration's business and she thinks that that has created a real danger. You know, the next allegation, she accuses Vassar of trying to get a report that was released last week that kind of goes through MSU is handling of the mass shooting on campus in February. She accuses Vassar of trying to get word of a board members meddling out of it, saying that she told consultants to soften language saying that a board member got too involved outside of their expertise in the handling. She accuses Vassar of violating ethics policies by flying on a donor's private jet to the New York March Madness tournament. Last year, she says that she you know, accepted sort of a free trip everyone else flew. We've seen travel travel documents that show that everyone else flew commercial for reimbursement at the University, where she thinks Basler created a conflict of interest by accepting something of great value from a donor. And then in the Gupta Mater, which I've now said a couple times in the 1909. I'm going to explain in a future episode. I haven't yet I'm sorry. But you know, this matter of this business Dean, who is controversially removed last year over his handling of sexual assault by subordinate. You know now there has been this outside investigation into the matter and a lawsuit by Gupta who's saying he was wrongly fired. And part of this sort of presidential succession plot by the interim president Scott's accusing Vassar, of overstepping and meddling both in releasing that interim that outside investigation earlier than she should have, at least in Scotts opinion, and also accuses her of overstepping and trying to negotiate a settlement to this lawsuit without the guidance of the administration. And Scott says that, you know, the administrators who were being sued said that was actually really detrimental to their settlement talks. She sort of accuses her of overstepping and violating some board policies there. And then there's the matter of these Nasr documents, it's this now infamous set of about 6000 documents, that MSU board has for years refused to release to the Attorney General so she can investigate, you know, how MSU allowed, you know, Larry Nasser to sexually abuse so many women on this campus for so long. In April, the Attorney General sent a letter to a misuse board asking for them again. And at first, it was sort of a mystery of, you know, why is the Attorney General making this an issue again, and then it came out, you know, the Attorney General told us at state news that Vassar had actually gone to her and said, I've got the votes to release them. You just send me the letter, and I'll do it. Scott saying and this letter Master never discussed that with the board. She didn't have the votes. And she feels like she kind of illegitimately pulled this issue up. That was sort of a had been put to bed by doing that when the board had never discussed it. And we'll get into the details of that more, because that's one of the more complicated allegations, it's very messy. And then there's the matter of the Brenda Tracy leak investigation. So, Brenda Tracy, she's a prominent rape survivor and advocate she was consulting for MSU football team a couple years ago, when she says that she sent successfully proved through MSU you know, investigatory process that Mel Tucker sexually harassed her. But you know, she's publicly come forward, and she said the only reason she did so is because someone at MSU leaked her name to the press. And in her letter, there is now an ongoing investigation MSU into who did that leak. Scott is saying that Vassar is refusing to comply with that investigation, and that she thinks it's going to be inconclusive, because Basler won't turn over her phone. Another issue there is that Scott is accusing Vassar of sort of victim blaming Brenda Tracy in these text messages with a former trustee Pat O'Keefe, where VAs replaced a heart on a text where O'Keefe is explaining all the ways he feels that Tracy could be best discredited. And then, you know, he's saying you can fire the president over this the General Counsel, you can discredit her. And then Basser sends a text saying, you know, call me now. And so Scott saying that she's engaging in that victim blaming by being a part of that. Only a couple more, I swear. She also vaster appeared in an ad with former trustee Brian McCollum for his wealth management firm. You can take a look at the ad. I think we have it on our site in the story. But you know, she's sitting next to masala and basically kind of endorsing his firm as board chair. And there's this message that you know that a Spartans greatest strength is the warrior next to her. And then masala is next to her with this warrior helmet. I guess there's an implication that like, you know, your wealth is protected by take a look at the ad. It's complicated. Anyway, Scott's just saying, you know, the chair of embassies board shouldn't be appearing in advertisements for private businesses. Yeah, and so those are the allegations that she levels in this letter that was really Sunday night. That's a lot. And it took about a day for vassal to respond. And Theo, you know, you got that response. You reported on it. Do you want to take us through sort of what Vassar said in response?

(Theo) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a lot to respond to is a seven page letter, that original letter from Tracy, I'm sorry, from Scott. But she she addressed about all of these accusations and really disputed most things. First of all with that, that after action review of MSCs response to the shooting, she said Vesser said it was another another trustee who raised concerns about the language of that, that shooting, and then it was it was it was rightfully so that they did so. So she's saying that it wasn't her who asked that it was that review to be softened, but it's fine. Exactly. She defended whoever this this trustee she claims. Yeah, she didn't say who. But she defends that saying it was it was appropriate to engage the firm on the contents of the report, particularly around recommendations for their roles during the crisis. So it gets another big part of that was that whole language of bullying. Vassar said that she she quote she she rejects the coded language in there, and she's sort of hinting towards, I guess, kind of kind of a racialized, you know, view of this,

(Alex) we should say remasters, the first black woman to be elected Chair of MSU sports Scott's also black woman. But she has said, you know, in numerous public statements that she feels this is a racially motivated attack, you know?

(Theo) Absolutely. Yep. And that's the same thing. Yeah, for Woodruff. She's saying, you know, that's, I'm not a bully. And I think at the Board of Trustees Meeting, not to get too far ahead here, but she said, You know, that's just, I'm confident, and that's how I am. Yeah. And yeah, she basically just denied everything in regards to her and Woodruff saying, none of the assertions made regarding the interim president are true.

(Alex) Yeah. And I shouldn't say, you know, because this whole language of bullying, it is its coded language. It's sort of confusing in the abstract. We've found in our reporting a couple sort of specific examples that might put it into context. You know, you can decide whether you think it's bullying, I guess. Yeah. So one example that was sent my way was this donor dinner last Friday night, and it's one of these events that Basler has spoken at, and it was a an event for donors held at Woodruff's house, cows house and in this email exchange that we've obtained and people in advancement, which is the office that handles donor relations that we've talked to Vasseur attempted to keep Woodruff out of this trying to you know, force her out of this dinner at her own house. And then another example not so much of the bullying, but of the kind of usurping the overstepping is this meeting in July that we've reported on pretty extensively, where Vasseur along with trustee Danau and the executive vice president of Health Sciences, Norbert champ, meet with leadership from the City of Lansing and Andy shore, the mayor of Lansing has described it to us as these wide ranging discussions about you know, real estate investment and really MSU is hold presence downtown, and that Woodruff was and that meeting was done without Woodruff's knowledge, or consent. And Woodruff hasn't really weighed in on whether she felt bullied by these incidents. She has said that work under Vassar has been challenging. I'm quoting her they're challenging is her word. But yeah, so that, again, is a little bit unclear. But the I'll let you get into the rest of the responses.

(Theo) Yeah, absolutely. Well, so a big part of that was her her relations with donors, specifically about private private travel. Again, Scott accuses her of traveling with donors to, you know, MSU, March Madness games, for example. But Vassar, she said that her trip, didn't cost the university anything. And then she was invited. It was a friend that also was a donor, invited her to the basketball game, and she didn't put that bill on the university. And she sort of turns this into, you know, a kind of, you know, look, look what I did. I didn't cost the university for for these travel costs. I see. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And again, with that relationship with with other outside donors, she appeared in an ad as Scott mentioned, she didn't address that in her in her response. But she did address the the Tracy investigation, the investigation into who allegedly leaked the identity, the identity of the rape survivor and advocate, Brenda Tracy. Again, Scott claimed that Vassar didn't give up her phone for that investigation. Vassar said that, actually, no, no. Trustees have done that. So far. It's not just her. And that's part of an ongoing discussion between the board and the firm. It's conducting the investigation this whole, you know, phone.

(Alex) Yeah, thing up. And I think that, you know, there was a lot of confusion last week around that we talked to someone close to the board who, you know, had speak anonymously, because they couldn't talk about this ongoing investigation with their name per se. But they said that, you know, one trustee had already agreed to have the phone reviewed, but investigators just hadn't. So they had agreed but they haven't investigators haven't gone through with it. Some other trustees hadn't had their interviews yet that it was this whole kind of complicated, it was it was much more complicated than one trustee refusing or everyone refusing, but then at the board meeting on Friday. That's why I said that, you know, in the middle of last week, on Wednesday, and Thursday, they had discussions and basically every trustee agreed to turn over the front. We haven't confirmed that faster so that there would be documents that would show that we're still waiting on those. But that matter seems to be settled at this point. It feels like but we'll see that when we get those documents down the line. But anyway, through going Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the other part of that whole situation was these texts that Scott described as victim blaming. Between Vassar and Pat O'Keefe He's a former trustee Vassar says that she did not interact with with the texts at all. That was one side that was just pat O'Keefe, you know, texting her saying some things that are a little bit questionable about Brett Linda Tracy, and that. And that's when we're we, you know, she says she described them as completely one sided with no input in her letter, we have a copy of the text, we've gotten them through a Freedom of Information Act request. And you know, that's not true. We've seen the texts, you know, she hearted a message in which like, you know, on the iPhone, when you'll hold down on a text and press the heart, in a message for Pat O'Keefe is describing different ways that he believes Tracy could be discredited and sort of like how her allegations could be twisted. And then, you know, at the end of the conversation, after all this vaster text them, I need to talk to you and then presumably, I guess they have a phone call that's not documented in the text they talk about, you know, there's text where he's like, one second, like, you know, I'll call you back in a second. But it's definitely not one sided. That one, we can kind of for sure, say we've seen the text and that's not an accurate description.

(Theo) Right, right. Another big one was the NASA documents, as you said, while Scott claimed that Vassar tried to, again, coordinate this release of the documents with the Attorney General, but it just sort of, you know, did not work out. And there's miscommunication. Vassar is saying that it's actually Scott who interfered with her attempts to release the documents.

(Alex) Yes. So that Vesser says, you know, if I remember correctly, that Scott comes to them after the Attorney General sends a letter and says to the board, actually, the Ag doesn't even want these documents. And that, you know, Scott has publicly said that that didn't happen. And this is a matter that, you know, I think, is still publicly being litigated this, like what exactly happened with the board with the NASA documents, you know, there's been talk of them having a special meeting in the next couple of weeks to have a vote on the release. So I don't know how much further we want to get into this. This is definitely one of the messier ones and ones that I will point people to state news.com, just because I don't know if in this conversation, we're going to get through all of that. So I'll let you move on from that one to that server.

(Theo) That is a more complicated one. As for the Gupta lawsuit, those again, the lawsuit owing to the former business Dean who was fired for failing to report a case of sexual misconduct. She She claims that she didn't try to single handedly settle the lawsuit, like Scott said, and she says that the entire board is still engaged in the lawsuit. And she criticized Scott for sharing in her letter, what she said was, was more confidential information about about that.

(Alex) And the timeline is interesting here too, because, you know, these two instances that Scott's talking about? Vas are trying to settle the suit in January of 2023. And then releasing this investigation in March 2023. Neither of those times in January, there wasn't even a lawsuit yet. He hadn't filed his suit until February. And so it's interesting that those conversations that they were occurring were occurring before then. And you know, in March, when Scott is saying that Vassar was releasing the independent investigation, at a time when the board was being sued. He had not added the board as defendants yet at that time. So it seems like either they were one step ahead, or there's a miscommunication about the timeline. You can go on to just

(Theo) Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, she also said that, that that that investigation of a problem that Scott mentioned, was that it was allegedly released without the consent of the rest of the board. That wasn't really something they agreed to do. Vassar says that it was actually released after a majority of the board voted to do so.

(Alex) I think that's a one where, you know, people are being careful with their words, because, you know, the Board did vote in February to release this independent investigation into the Gupta matter. And then, you know, Scott is saying that that decision made in March to actually release it at that time in its current state that wasn't with the consent of the full Board master saying they did affirm that, you know, we those are attorney client privilege discussions, I have not been able to get many records about them. But we do have an email from that day. We're Vassar is saying you know, we're going to release this tonight. And Rene, Kentucky, Jefferson, another one that trustees voices of concern, and she says, You know, I'm quoting from the email. Now, as you know, Gupta has now sued the university. In addition, we now have guidance from not only our General Counsel, but also our outside counsel, advising, and then the advice is redacted. Scott has said that that advice was to not release the report. So again, you know, we don't know exactly what happened in these very closed meetings that we do not get to be a part of sadly. But it does seem that there was disagreement that day about releasing this investigation.

(Theo) Yeah, several of these claims we're still we're still working out they're still a little bit unclear. But I believe that's all the claims the vessel responded.

(Alex) Well, I think you know, when we talk about this being unclear They're what we're headed to is that and you reported this Monday night, that because so much of this is happening in these private meetings in these closed rooms where and there's a lot of subjectivity to about like, what exactly is bullying? What constitutes a conflict of interest? Dan Kelly, another trustee who chairs the Committee on audit risk compliance, said, You know, we're going to do an investigation, we're going to hire an outside firm, and they're going to figure out, you know, look at not just Vassar, but all the board members, has anybody in any of these instances violated the code of conduct and presumably put together a report that, you know, he said, will be released. We're not sure exactly what that looks like yet. But yeah, but as if you're listening to this podcast, and you're thinking, you know, wow, they really have no idea what's going on. I think we have somewhat of an idea, but really, we have no idea what's going on. And so you know, this investigation, I think, will hopefully provide some clarity to people who are wondering what all is going on, you know, that's where we're at. Now, that's a lot of, she said one thing, she said, another thing we get the state news have kind of half of a thing that seems to cooperate or challenge one or the other of those things. But what about, you know, people who are concerned about these allegations concerned about just all of this sort of fighting, and then what's been described as dysfunction on the board? What can happen? Can trustees remove each other? Can someone else remove a trustee? You've done some great reporting on this deal? Tell us what's going to happen?

(Theo) Yeah, well, again, I think it does go back to the investigation. I think a lot of people are waiting for that to be released, including the Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. So she as a governor, she has the power to remove a board chair, or any elected any elected public official. And part of that power involves looking for any accusations of of misconduct on their part. I'm going to pull up exactly what's what's the criteria for that, but I believe it's just neglect of duty is a big part of it. And she does have sort of these allegations now. Yeah, Scott's letter. And she's released statements saying, you know, I'm not taking a sign on this yet until I see the evidence, but I'm very concerned about it, and I'm watching the situation. So if she does decide to remove Vasseur, again, we're thinking that she's waiting for more evidence to come out before she does make a decision. But if she does decide to do so, she would first have to notify her of that. And then hold a hearing. That's typically what happens when this this this law, this Michigan law is utilized, which it rarely is. But when it is, there's typically a meeting held a hearing held in which in this case, Vassar would have a chance to sort of respond to some of the accusations, etc. And then it's really all this, this whole process is all up to the governor, it would be all up for her to decide whether that response was sufficient whether she's going to proceed with the removal of her and everything. But this is a very rare case, though. This is really never I mean, typically when this happens, the person in question resigns before they actually get to be removed.

(Alex) Yeah. It's really more of, I think, sort of a threat that kind of hangs over. Exactly. officials had that. I mean, you talked to one expert, who was a previous governors counsel, who's, you know, studied a lot of this, and he, I think, couldn't think of a single example where it was actually yeah, under the current constitution, he controlled removal proceeding. Yep. They've all either resigned or, you know, they've actually been found of criminal conduct, and then they are fired by the university. Yeah. Yeah. Could be history. It could be history. It's all up to Whitmer. Yeah. And, you know, in the meantime, there's also you know, while Vassar is on the board, she is currently the chair, which, you know, allows her to set the agenda, she represents the board to the public. It's a powerful position. And, you know, Scott did talk, she told me last week that she was hoping to remove as her as chair just in the in the meantime, so she would just be sort of a regular board member, and then it would go to the next most senior member of the board, who's Dan Kelly. There was not an attempt to do that at Friday's board meeting. So some trustees, Kelly, and Jefferson had said that, you know, before they necessarily get there, they again want to see the results of this audit risk compliance investigation, which I think if you're hearing sort of a recurring theme here, that everyone's sort of waiting on this audit risk compliance investigation before anything else happens. But you know, and Kelly didn't necessarily say anything specific about the allegations, I should say, Trustee Jefferson did kind of go down the list of the letter and say that she either didn't know anything that would dispute any of the allegations, or had first hand knowledge that would collaborate each of them. And so you know, that seems to be some measure of support, but you know, it wasn't like I'm gonna vote to remove remove that So it was very much like, let's wait for this investigation. Let's get all the evidence. And then let's do it. So I think that's kind of where we're at. Right? I mean, we're right.

(Theo) And well, that being said, I believe Bairam mentioned at that meeting that they did, she did propose adding adding a section to the meeting where they could have the opportunity to vote to remove her. But in order to add something like that to an agenda, they would need three votes of Trustees. But Byram said they failed to get those.

(Alex) Yeah. And that's something that Scott had said to me last week is that like, she feels like somewhere down the line. She has the six votes, she would need to remove that from the board. But the hurdle of you know, getting three people to put that on the agenda for a vote that they feel could potentially fail could go either way she felt wasn't going to be there by Friday. And you know, and that's what we saw play out. So yeah, so I guess that's where we're at after a week of a lot. And it's probably a lot to listen to, too. But thank you for sticking with us if you're here this long. So yeah, so that's our show. I think that's all we have for this week. I'll be back next Thursday. With more until then the stories we discussed plenty more everything else that happens. Way more detail. It's all available state news.com. Thank you to our incredible podcast director Anthony Brinson. My guest Theo for once again, lending us his time and his voice and his thoughts. And most of all, thank you for listening for the 1909 I'm Alex Walters.