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.
It's Wednesday, March 19, and this is the 19 o nine, State News' weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. This week, covert after hours mission to snoop for secrets, an investigation into who ordered it and the sudden exit of one of Michigan state's top administrators. If you're thinking that's a more dramatic tale than you're used to in the nineteen o nine, you might just be right. We've got a good one this week.
Alex:Here to talk about it is administration reporter Owen McCarthy, who worked on this fascinating story. Owen, thanks for coming on the show.
Owen:Thanks for having
Alex:me. So what we've got is actually two stories here, right? And we're not going to get into what they call causation correlation fallacy, We have a story about an administrator who's leaving MSU, and we have a story about this investigation into her that's ongoing. Before we get into the investigation part, I know that's what the people are here for. First, let's talk about this administrator and why I'm being so weird and saying like exit, departure, leaving, not just saying resignation, termination.
Alex:Mhmm. How do I this is like a mystery exit. Tell me about, you know, Christina Bragdon. What's up with her?
Owen:Yeah. You're right to be careful there. I mean, MSU will not say exactly what the circumstances of this were. We obtained from MSU the sort of message that they sent out to other administrators announcing this. And they said basically sort of framed it as like a parting ways.
Owen:Brogden's pursuing other opportunities. Right? But sort of framed it as something that seems sort of mutual in any case not saying whether it was a voluntary resignation or if an involuntary termination and
Alex:very directly on this.
Owen:You've asked the top guy.
Alex:We did. We sat down with the president last week. We asked him and they they are explicit to say, we are not gonna say if she resigned or was terminated.
Owen:Exactly.
Alex:And there's been situations at MSU before that introduced kind of a third option, I should say. You know, this obsession with like, did she resign, was she terminated? There's also this weird third thing. I don't know, listeners of the show might remember Sanjay Gupta, dean of the Broad College, until he has this meeting with the president, Theresa Woodruff, where she says, you know, Sanjay, I don't like what you're doing. It's not good.
Alex:And where are we gonna go from here? Maybe you should resign. And then he resigns. And MSU will say that's a resignation. At least, I think Woodruff argued that's a guy resigning voluntarily.
Alex:Gupta and a lot of his supporters argued, is it really a voluntary resignation if you get in a room with your boss and your boss tells you to resign and then you resign? Yeah. So maybe it's the third option.
Owen:Yeah.
Alex:Who knows? Who knows? We don't. Anyway, but let's get back after we reported that, you and I got together Mhmm. And tried to learn a little bit more about what was going on, and we ended up putting together a story about this ongoing investigation into this administrator Yeah.
Alex:For something that actually happened a couple years ago, triggered by a complaint filed last year. Let's go back, set the scene for me. This is a relatively new face around MSU, only hired in 2022. Take me through, know, she's hired, and then what happens after this with this kind of relationship that develops that spills into, allegedly, this misconduct that's being investigated.
Owen:Right. So according to the complaint that spurred this investigation, Christina Brogdon, who we've been talking about here, sort of like in early twenty twenty three, befriended sort of like a more junior staffer Mhmm. Within the HR department, specifically unit services assistant Courtney Hanneman. The complaint says that they had become friendly in the months before the saga really takes off. And it says that they quote enjoyed gossiping.
Owen:It says, Brogden is like me, the complaint alleges Hanneman once said. We love having dirt on people. Right? It's
Alex:sort of a bond over like, if you're the vice president of HR or this like lower level staffer in the HR office, lot of interesting personnel files to thumb through. What's alleged is, maybe they were viewing that more so as something interesting to kind of peruse.
Owen:Right. In any case, the implication in the complaint is that the way they were talking about this work was unbecoming of the top or anyone working in HR at a at a university like this and that it was unprofessional. Issue with
Alex:that saying Exactly. This isn't the way you're supposed to talk about this stuff.
Owen:Exactly.
Alex:Well, then take me through where does this relationship lead? What is like this kind central, this covert mission that we reported on that spurs this saga?
Owen:Yeah. Yep. So in April 2023, what's alleged is that Brogden asked Hanneman to stay late after work one day because there was an urgent records request. And basically, Brogdon instructed the staffer to look into specific people, into their personnel files, and try to pick out anything that quote derogatory or disciplinary and pull that. And in the course of pulling those records, delete any evidence that they had done so and also not tell her direct, superior that she had been doing that work.
Alex:And we should say that, you know, this like relationship and this bonding over the dirt and the gossip, that comes from this like complaint which is being investigated. Exactly. That's an allegation.
Owen:Yep.
Alex:The details of this mission that like spurs from that are things that we've actually seen firsthand. We have these emails the night of this, like, sort of accomplice is emailing, hey, Bragdon sent me on this secret mission to get these records. Yeah. It's not very secretive. Right.
Alex:And there's even emails in there, funnily enough, talking about, yeah, Bragdon told me to delete all records of what I was doing because she didn't want it to come out in Freedom of Information Act requests, which I think is a funny thing to say in an email that a couple guys like us just looked at through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Owen:Exactly.
Alex:But like this this secret mission is something that's documented in emails.
Owen:Yeah. Specifically, once Hanneman's direct supervisor who was initially kept in the dark about this, they pop online and see the activity that this stuff had been that these files were being pulled and they sort of inquire into it. And then the junior Safra Hanneman writes back and says, she referring to Brogden, Brogden did not want anything foiable, which refers to the Freedom of Information Act, which is why I had deleted the items as she told me after I compiled some. She did not want a lot of people on the request as it was a high request.
Alex:And Bogen even chimes in herself at one point and says like, she asked basically for the staffer to be paid overtime for this mission. Yeah. Exactly. And says that she got an urgent request and she asked her to do this.
Owen:Right. Exactly.
Alex:And we should, you know, to this staffer's kind of secrecy credit, say, while she did, you know, leave this email trail for us to find Yeah. The deletion of, like, the record of what she pulled seemingly was successful. Yeah. Because, you know, there's screenshot of the spreadsheet Yep. Where you can see that someone was in there pulling records
Owen:Yeah.
Alex:But we don't know whose records she was pulling. Yeah. So whatever this urgent request was, you know, we don't necessarily know like who was being looked into.
Owen:Exactly. Yep. That's right. Oh, and and one detail I want to add on this is the direct supervisor to Hanneman, who we see in these emails kind of like questioning like, what's going on here a little bit? You know,
Alex:they
Owen:mentioned that there's like a tracker, a spreadsheet that the office keeps of all requests that come in. Right? This is like standard protocol in HR. When hiring decisions are being made, search committees, whatever it is, that, you know, people say, hey, I need this from this personnel file. And they basically track that throughout the day.
Owen:This person looked to try to see if requests for these specific things had come in that day and there was none, right? Which is another interesting detail here.
Alex:So whatever this request that Brogden was asking the staffer to come in after hours and quietly fulfill Yeah. Was not like listed on the official Well, brings me to the next thing which is like, you know, this was not, it seems like some like personal curiosity. The complaint alleges that the request came from an MSU board member. Yeah. Presumably.
Alex:Tell me about, you know, this isn't something documented in emails we've seen. Tell me about this allegation of like a broader conspiracy that, you know, is raised in the complaint that MSU is investigating.
Owen:Right. So the complaint alleges that Brogden assigned this task to the junior staffer at the behest of then Board of Trustees Chair Rima Vassar and the university's Presidential Search Committee, which was just underway. And this is the committee that ultimately selected Kevin Gusen Kevin. President Kevin. It's a new one.
Owen:President Kevin Guswicks. The the complaint alleges that this was done for quote, Rima and the search committee. So that's kind of like this broader conspiracy here that that's alleged.
Alex:Well, it's interesting because like if you think about the timing of this is going on in April of twenty twenty three, there's kind of two ways to read it. Yeah. This is, you know, trustee Dennis Denno has been picked to chair the search committee at this point, but they haven't publicly announced its members. And so like you can read, I'm pulling these files for Remai and the search committee, which is the language in the complaints. Yeah.
Alex:And say, oh, like maybe they were pulling it so that she could vet the people she was looking to appoint for the search committee. Mhmm. Or they were pulling files to look at people that the search committee might be looking for
Owen:Yeah.
Alex:To be president. It's kind of interesting. There's like two different ways to read this. Yeah. We asked Vassar and Deno about this.
Alex:And Vassar said, I don't I I didn't do anything like that, but maybe the search committee knows. Yeah. And said we should reach out to Deno. And then when we reach out to Deno, he said, I don't recall doing anything. Or I don't recall asking Christina Bragdon to do anything in April '20 '20 So, know, I guess this is something that MSU is looking at in its investigation, but not something that we know either way whether that really happened.
Alex:Yeah. Well, and even
Owen:it's it's true and we're gonna get to this that MSU is investigating this and and what was in this complaint. But, you know, what they're looking at specifically, who's to say at this point, right? Because that was one mention in the complaint, that this was done at the behest of Rima and the search committee. But we, at this point, don't know the full scope of AHRQ's investigation. That's the audit risk and compliance office.
Alex:Well, brings me kind of to my last question, which is this Office of Audit Risk Compliance, which is like an internal investigator within MSU. We know that they're conducting some sort of ongoing investigation, which is triggered by this complaint. But I mean, like you said, I guess we don't know what they're looking at. Can you say, is there like an end date for that investigation? And then is the public gonna be privy to like what they find?
Owen:Right. So, yeah, we've we've asked MSU about these things and at this point, we don't have a good answer on that. It is interesting. I mean, Brogdon's already out, but presumably from what MSU has told us, this investigation is still happening. But, yeah, we don't know when it will end, whether it will be released publicly at times Yeah.
Alex:Audit risk investigations have been released publicly.
Owen:Yeah. That's But
Alex:not necessarily I I don't think, you know, I asked MSC about this. They don't have like a standing policy under FOIA, I guess, for like which ARC reports they do and don't release. They just in the past have released some. So this maybe will be a test of that, whether or not they want to release this to us.
Owen:Yeah. I mean, I guess then if there's no like uniform standard, I guess they're making that determination based on the public interest in it, the PR interest. So, yeah, I'll be very curious to see whether this is the thing that they keep quiet or whether they say, Okay, we've finished looking into this. We'll release it publicly. And then, of course, we'll be back to report on it if that happens.
Alex:I'm sure. We'll be sure to to follow this to the best of our abilities. Yeah. Well, that's all for now. We'll be back next week with fresh reporting from the great minds at State News.
Alex:You can read both the stories we discussed and plenty more, as always, at statenews.com. Thank you again, Owen, coming on the show.
Owen:Thanks for
Alex:having And to our podcast coordinator, Taylor, for everything you hear. But most of all, thank you for listening. For The nineteen o nine, I'm Alex Walters.