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Welcome to The 1909, the podcast that takes an in-depth look at The State News’ biggest stories of the week, while bringing in new perspectives from the reporters who wrote them.
(Alex) It's Thursday, February 1, and this is the 1909, the state news weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. This week I'm joined by state news administration reporter Theo shear. First, he is going to walk us through some common misconceptions about what can and can't be reported to MSU, his title nine office, then he's going to talk to us about his revelatory reporting on the after action review of MSU, his response to the February campus shooting. With that, let's start the show. All right. Joining me now is the incredible Theo Scheer Yo, welcome back. Good to have you back on the show. It's really good to be back. Yeah, you're a frequent guest. You've been on I am. I mean, good. You could I think half of them. Just love the 1909. Yeah. And you don't get paid to come on here and host. So he's good to see your heart. Yes. Yeah. Which is kind of cool. You know, I think the audience might appreciate that. All right. Well, enough joking around, we've got serious news to talk about. We've done a lot of reporting here on the state news about what goes on in MSU, whose Office of Institutional Equity, colloquially known as the title nine office, but as you've reported pretty extensively on Title Nine, is that all they're doing? Nobody, we've talked to a lot of people who have gone through that process survivors of sexual violence, and, you know, the decision to report I think the survivors that we've talked to most extensively have come to regret that they have not had great experiences with it. And I think a lot of things are surprising to them, but they didn't have a full expectation of exactly what it was going to look like when they did choose to report or when they're sort of forced into that process by some sort of mandatory reporting. But anyway, so you did some great stories over the last couple of weeks, just kind of helping people have maybe a little bit more information being more fully informed about what that decision to report looks like. And so I wanted to have you on, you can talk about it, I think it'd be great. So first of all, and this is the biggest misconception is that, you know, we have a very narrow view of what kind of things can be reported to the lie, I think people tend to think of purely sexual violence, right? It's the only thing to think about. But it's a lot broader than that, can you talk the listeners that it 909 through what's everything that can be reported to the lady
(Theo) So it's gonna be easier to think of it in two categories. So first of all, you have this title nine and RVSM. So that's sexual assault, stalking, sexual violence in general, relationship, violence, and just misconduct. In that variety, you have that but then you also have the anti discrimination policy or ADP. So that would cover you know, racial discrimination, harassment, different, you know, hate speech. But it's kind of it's a little bit tricky, because with all of these things, you know, there are instances where you might report speech that you perceive as hateful, however, MSU won't end up agreeing with you, you know, they'll they'll say, this doesn't violate our policies for harassment. And it just depends on whether it sort of reaches this level of, you know, unwelcome conduct. That's, you know, objectively severe, persistent, persistent and pervasive and MSU is the one who decides that, generally, it goes through those tunnels, but there are exceptions. Yeah. And so let's say, you know, someone has experienced conduct that they feel victimized by, they want to report it to the OIG, how do you do that? Yeah, so no matter whether it's under again, this title nine RVSM, or ADP, you can always report it through the public incident reporting form, I believe it's called this is all online on their website. And it's just this whole, this, this form that you fill out, just basically describe on your own your experiences, and then MSU, again, decides what category it falls into. And the process kind of goes from there. You know, and so, you know, process going from there, talk me through what's the you report, right? You've said this is the kind of that they experienced? What's the what's the next thing that happens? What are they going to do? Yeah, so MSU, Office of Institutional Equity, ie, they receive the port, they have an investigator, basically, look at it, and then reach out again, to the person who filed it, that person is called the claimant. And you know, that they asked for more details, sometimes. They ask for a little bit of clarification. But the really important thing is that they offer these, these supportive measures to the claimant. Like, for example, if you have a class of somebody who you've had, you know, faced harassment with or something and you don't want to see them, they can sort of coordinate like moving classes, they can coordinate schedule changes, you know, they can put in no contact directives with them. Like during the time of the investigation, they can enact some manner of sanctions. Yes. Even before there's a finding. Exactly. And this is all Yeah, this is before they make any sort of official decision in regards to those things. Yeah, so and the process really starts off with that. At that point, it It's up to the claimant to decide whether they want to move forward and go kind of this official route, whether to pursue or pursue an investigation into the claims of misconduct to, you know, go through this whole process of having a hearing, and then a final decision to see whether they violated MCs policies officially. Yeah. And so that is a whole nother process.
(Alex) Talk us through, you know, before we get through to kind of results that we talked about investigation, the investigatory process, the oh, he goes through if you report harassment or discrimination or anything like that, is it you know, parties are submitting evidence, interviews, talks? I mean, what do you have to do during this process?
(Theo) Yeah, so the report is gonna be referred to investigator if they decide to go through. And then there's more of these interviews, the investigator reaches out to the claimant, and they piece together, what happens in full, then the investigation, the investigator uses information to compile this big report, a formal complaint is what it's called. Once they have that, the claimant reviews and signs the complaint. And then, and I know this is getting kind of bogged down and all of these details, but now the investigation officially begins now that they have to sign a complaint. More interviews, basically, not only with the claimant, but also the people, the rest of the people that involves, you know, the respondent, witnesses witnesses accused and the claimant respondent, sort of legal terminology, I think, and more common terms be kind of accused accuser. Right. For every the respondent, the person being accused. Yeah, exactly. They have all of these interviews, and then they have a hearing. So yeah, yeah, basically, they have this sort of cross examination. A where official, you know, third party investigators kind of question each each individual is involved in it, they have this. I think I'm blanking on the term but a credibility
(Alex) Building credibility assessment is something that we reported on where they kind of, you know, a lot of these cases are things that people perceive things that happened between two people in rooms, people weren't in, other people weren't in and so they do this kind of assessment of who's credible and who's not. And, you know, we've talked to survivors who've gone through that process and felt victimized by it talk to an expert on the kind of psychology you felt like it was real, rather unscientific, but that's the process that they use. Right. Right. That is, but anyway, Theo. So this whole thing is this process of reporting to you know, the talking about sanctions to the signing the formal complaint to the exchange of evidence during the investigatory period, to the hearing all of this, can you talk me through how long all of that that takes?
(Theo) Right. So I mean, officially, it provides 90 days to complete the investigation, 60 days for that hearing process, then 38 days to resolve the whole, you know, somebody decides to appeal 38 days for that. But in total, I mean, realistically, we can expect almost about a year of all of this investigation. And I mean, you know, you've talked to survivors, and people have told the state news that that can be kind of triggering to have that prolonged
(Alex and Theo) Cause you're you're making me do after Thea, which is tricky, but 9060 was a 10 at the end. 9060 3838. That's 180. Right. We know from we know that on average, it takes 361 days. So let's extend that period. Yeah, well, they are. Yeah.
(Theo) And part of that, I mean, you report on this a little bit ago is that they're kind of under over? understaffed. And they have some problems with that. So it takes much longer than what they allow. Officially. Yeah, but they can extend and we did so
(Alex) Like you said, we did some reporting over the summer and got a hold of some of these. They hired outside consultants to kind of diagnose like, why are these cases taking a year to complete and then, you know, just the biggest finding was just understaffing. But the university wasn't hiring enough people to operate this office in a way where cases could go closer, shorter than a year. And like you said, you know, a lot of the survivors that we've talked with the state news say that that your long timeline having to relive these experiences over and over again can kind of be re traumatizing almost ridiculous them. Exactly. Yeah, literally reminded of these things. But thank you. It's, you know, the the stories that he was put together, he's put together a couple of online explainers that you'll be able to find on state news.com kind of talking through this is a great service for people to know exactly what they're getting into when they're making a decision, whether or not to report conduct the experience. So yeah, thank you for doing that. Speaking of great reporting done by Theo shear, we've got another story to talk about. Theo. Flip over my notes. Get into it, you know, shoe topics, right? One man, he's impressive. Okay. You've been doing a lot of reporting. This after action review of the Michigan State University, the shooting that occurred last February, February 13, which we talked about a lot in the 1909. And, you know, in the wake of that shooting, a lot of questions are raised about the police response, you know, why did it take so long to take the shoot or why were these delays in response time from MSU PD? And so you know, in the spring, the university decided they were going to have an outside firm come in, and review it and do some sort of This investigation of exactly how it went, why it went the way it did, and then make some recommendations. And you know, you have been following since that began, and then through to the release of it this very closely, you tell me a little bit about, you know, a couple months ago, we got the report the result of that outside investigation, just before we get into all the things you found about the process, just tell us what was in the report? What did it say?
(Theo) Yeah, well, I mean, that's the interesting thing. Like you said, there were a lot of questions after the shooting. I mean, for example, the 13 minute gap between when the government gunman fired and when the emergency alert was sent out, or, you know, the fact that Bercy Hall didn't have lockable doors, all of these things. And I think people were sort of looking towards the after action review to critique, you know, really analyze those those. What went wrong? Yeah, the thing is, it didn't, it didn't address either of those, those major things and a lot of the other aspects of the shooting that would have been heavily, you know, scrutinize. Yep. And bridge Michigan did a great article on this. They, they showed through some some public documents, that MSU didn't specifically ask firms to analyze what went wrong, it was only what could be improved. And you can kind of see that in this report, it was 26 pages, which is a lot shorter than a lot of other reports of this nature. And it just didn't really go too in depth into you know, Officer responses that may call for a little bit more communication, coordination, more officers in MSU DPS, but not much more than that.
(Alex) So instead of asking the firm's to sort of answer some of the questions people had about, you know, what went wrong, that night of the shooting. Instead, the firm's are asked just to provide feedback for you know, in future emergencies, what would be done ethically differently. I see. And so then, you know, we get this report, you write a great story about about people, it's always about the differences between sort of the questions that had been raised, what was answered, but then in October, we heard something that sort of, I think, sparked a lot of curiosity for us. Yeah. Tell us.
(Theo) Yeah, I mean, we talked about this on the 1909. Before, you know, a trustee Brianna Scott, sent a letter to the board calling for the board chairs removal, just for for a number of reasons. This is long list of reasons. Yeah. One of them is with the review. Yeah, one of them has to do with the review. She's claimed that the board chair removed Vassar, the Vassar told investigation investigators for this review, to change the wording originally, apparently there's this wording that was really kind of tough on the trustees, they said that they were It was chaotic. They they were went beyond their role, yes, as Trust
(Alex and Theo) Which is a sensitive thing for them, as you've already just had a president resigned, saying that they were interfering and overstepping. So there's a long history of that sort of And apparently, according to Scott's letter Vassar, had that changed, softens and into this thing that we see in the current after? Yeah. So that's curious about we should say, though, the October board meeting, vaster than she denied that allegation, saying that was actually it was another trustee who asked for it to be changed. But that she she supported that she just was the first one, right? Yeah.
(Alex) But anyway, so that I think, in here raised a lot of questions, because we were like, we did this review. And now it's being said that parts of this review could be changed if they upset leaders at MSU, who didn't like the way that things were done. And so we started clamoring for like, Okay, well, what else was changed? Right? What else is different in the first version than the last version? And you you started doing some reporting just going right to right to the firm? Do you want to talk us through I think, a lot of communication with the firm
(Theo) The most direct route, so I called the firm. You know, they said that they really weren't able to tell me anything. In fact, they told me that they had a an NDA, for the university, preventing them from saying anything to the press. You know, and then I was like, alright, that makes sense. I called MSU. spokesperson who told me that there is actually no NDA, and that maybe they don't want to talk to the press, but an actual NDA doesn't exist. So I went back to them, and I kind of asked for a little bit of clarification on that. And they said, I mean, they gave me kind of a kind of a hard to decipher answer. They basically said, you know, that's just the under the impression that we're under, you know, you can interpret that however you'd like, but we really can't comment on Yeah, these findings.
(Alex) And I guess, you know, I'm not an NDA expert, but I guess NDA could be enforceable, even if one party is denying its existence. In fact, to me, maybe part of the NDA is NDA itself. That's kind of meta, but like, that could be the structure. Yeah, but so you got back in the firm. They denied you. They actually didn't I remember being there that day, and he did that they they blocked your phone. Yeah. Anytime from my phone.
(Theo) Yeah. It's interesting. So I don't know that sort of set off. A few things. I was just wondering, you know, how can I you know, see what else they might have changed in this review. So, yeah, basically, we filed a public records request
(Alex) We did. And we got lucky. We got sort of in a way, because you know, normally, for the 99 listeners who aren't familiar with the intricacies of the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, I don't know why it would be it's so boring. But anyway, if you, because this makes great podcast talking about it. But anyway, if they love listeners love that, but no, you can't get drafts made within a public body because they say that, like, you know, please like MSU, even though it's subject to record requests, taxpayer dollars, they want public officials to be able to have sort of Frank communication. And so stuff like a first draft is hidden from records requests. Not this was not a draft within a public body. It was a draft from an outside party, this third party firm, to a public body. Right. So we were able to get around that. And you were able to get your hands on this much talked about first draft in the shooting review.
(Theo and Alex) Well, it wasn't easy. I mean, the FOIA office, they they denied the request at first, but then we appealed. We got it eventually. We got it. Yeah.
(Alex) Anyway, you got this first draft. And there were a couple big things in it that you wrote about first, just tell me you kind of got to close the loop on this allegation about the trustee thing.
(Theo) Yeah, basically confirmed that originally, the draft had reported and let me pull up the exact wording. Because it is interesting. initially reported, the Board of Trustees members desperately wanted to help and became became involved in the incident, beyond their expertise and outside of their appropriate role. So so this really kind of accusatory, yeah, you know, finding what was the final version? Yeah. So it softened of the wording, it said instead said that trustees wanted to help but became involved in incident beyond the customary role and expectations of a governance board during an emergency. Yeah, so it's a lot harsher. The first finding. Exactly, yeah. So that does confirm, you know, part of what was being talked about. Between the trustees that yes, it was changed. I mean, the details of how we still there are disagreements between board members. But yeah, I mean, so I just, I spent a little bit comparing the two documents and seeing what else Yeah, different.
(Alex) Well, you found a big something that was you're not presently whatsoever in the final version, which is kind of the focus of your story. And tell us about that.
(Theo) Yeah. So I found that originally, the draft reported that agencies and officers that responded to the shooting, refused to comply in the investigation in the in the after action review, as a whole. They didn't want to talk about or review what went on. And in fact, said, Yeah, we should also know, we should also the language from the first draft. Yes, yeah. This is the first draft on we should also know that some law enforcement officers, including federal agencies, refused to participate in the review. This decision and lack of trust is unfortunate. And this, you know, kind of sparked something in me. I mean, what is lack of trust mean, and I tried to figure out exactly who might have not participated. I mean, I talked to Martin Lynch, he's the MSU dpps. Vice President, I believe, and chief of police. He said that MSU did comply with everything. He wasn't able to confirm again, all this stuff is done in secrecy, right. They they don't have the names of the people, they interview public. So Marlon Lynch wasn't able to confirm that every officer that was asked to be interviewed agreed to be interviewed, he did say that the final review, you know, made a point to acknowledge MSUs cooperation in review, the second version? Yeah. Oh, well, actually, both versions of that. So he's using that as proof of their compliance. Yeah.
(Alex) And what about other because you reached out to so many agencies, I distort what are other agencies? But yeah, tell you
(Theo) t's kind of it's interesting. The only agency was the FBI. And they said that they would not comment basically on this, that they supported their law enforcement officer on the scene, but they wouldn't comment on that specific allegation. But every other local agency, I contacted about a dozen now, East Lansing Police Department, Lansing, Meridian, township and county, state police, etc. They all said that they weren't contacted for the review at all. The investigators didn't even reach out to them. Really. Yeah. So it's, it kind of raises even more questions now about the extent of this review as a whole. I mean, they're saying that people, you know, refuse to participate. But who exactly was that mean? The only person who again, declined to comment on this was the FBI, and the other federal agencies, what did they say are the there are four federal agencies, FBI was one of them. The other three, they all said that they weren't contacted either.
(Alex) Really? So the firm saying, you know, none of the agencies complied. That's so disappointing. Right. The agencies are saying from Nebraska and asked us Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, FBI aside, yes. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Thiele, you've done so much. Great. work on this. They don't they don't want to tell you anything you're going up against them getting the facts. I'm sure you're gonna keep doing it, answer some more of these questions for us. Thank you so much for coming on the show for doing all this great work.
(Theo) Thank you so much, Alex Shea being on here.
(Alex) That's all for now. But we'll be back next week with fresh reporting from the great minds here at the State News. Until then, the stories we discussed and plenty more available at state news.com. Thank you to our incredible podcast editor Anthony Brinson, my guest Theo and most of all, thank you for listening for the 1909 I'm Alex Walters.