Public Statement from Trustee Jefferson at Board Meeting 12/18/20

December 18, 2020

Trustee Renee Knake Jefferson Statement on Review of MSU Documents

In December of 2019, I joined the Board of Trustees after Nancy Schlichting resigned over a disagreement amongst the Board on whether or not to release a body of documents related to the Nassar scandal that Michigan State University claimed were privileged. Although the Board approved an independent review of these documents in June 2019, it later declined to move forward. I understood from conversations with survivors and others from the MSU community that it was important to them to know whether those documents contained information that could help prevent something like the Nassar scandal from ever happening again. While it typically would not be an appropriate role for a trustee to review documents like this, I asked if I could do so given the special circumstances and was provided full access to them. I’ve now completed my review and would like to explain how I went about it, why it took so long, and what I learned.

First, how I went about conducting the review. I am a licensed lawyer in Michigan, but I am not Michigan State’s lawyer and I did not review the documents as a lawyer. In other words, I was not reviewing them to determine whether privilege was properly claimed, whether document redaction was appropriate, etc. I would note that District Court Judge Richard Ball did this review in 2019 and determined that most documents were appropriately not produced, and ordered disclose of a few that needed to be turned over. I limited my review to searching for information that the public, and particularly survivors of the Nassar scandal, would want to know. For my purposes as Trustee, I also reviewed the documents to determine whether the Board could implement governance policies or procedures to prevent a recurrence of that tragedy. 

Second, why it took so long. I’m a law professor, a mother of two children, and a wife. I had to fit this document review in around my professional teaching, speaking, and writing obligations as well as family commitments. I began my review in early 2020 and was able to make good progress during my semester break Being a trustee is a volunteer role, and one that I didn’t have much time to adjust my schedule for, since my appointment followed on the heels of another trustee’s resignation. When COVID struck, finding time became much more difficult. My review also took longer than I had hoped because as it turned out, the total number of documents was not 6,000 as had been reported in the media but actually 9,769, nearly 4,000 more than what I had anticipated. Some documents consisted of numerous pages, sometimes dozens of pages for one document. So, I have now reviewed far more than 10,000 pages.

Third, what I learned. As part of the vetting process before my appointment, I had a remarkable and sobering opportunity to speak with survivors who believed learning about the substance of these documents could be helpful to both understand what happened in the past and to create the condition for leaders at the university and concerned members of the public to ensure that nothing like this ever occurs again. I cannot ever possibly claim to understand how any survivor of the Nassar abuse feels, but I want each of them to know that I heard the frustrations voiced over how the proposal for an independent review of the documents was handled.  I wanted to do all within my power as a trustee to be responsive to the survivors’ concerns, which is why I decided to personally review the documents. 

I cannot speak about any specific documents reviewed because I am treating them as privileged, as previously determined by Judge Ball, as I explained earlier in my remarks. I can report, however, that what I learned from reviewing these documents is consistent with information that is already in the public domain regarding Nassar. The best resources for understanding who knew what and when, and what steps were taken in response are the following documents, all publicly available: (1) March 29, 2018 letter from Miller Canfield to the Michigan House of Representatives; (2) September 1, 2020 Memorandum to the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights regarding Lawrence Nassar Employee Action Review; and (3) September 1, 2020 Memorandum to the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights regarding William Strampel Employee Action Review.

Those public documents are not fully prescriptive, however.  I believe, as the survivors surely do, that we must fully embrace the reality that structures in place at the university were not an adequate safeguard against the kind of abuse Nassar inflicted. Accordingly, I  propose several measures for the future in addition to the reforms that were already underway before I joined the Board.

First, I discovered that Michigan State did not have an official policy in place for Trustees’ review of the president. Best-practices for university governance call for both an annual review of the president’s performance and, every three-5 five years, a comprehensive review with wide-ranging internal and external input. I have raised my concerns about this in the midst of conducting the document review over the past few months, and I’m pleased that the Board unanimously approved an official policy for presidential performance review today. This policy will be transparent and publicly available, as will the outcomes of the performance reviews.

Second, I call for more uniformity, transparency and timeliness across colleges and departments regarding the actions taken when discipline occurs after a finding of sexual misconduct. Related to this, I also want to see a more transparent process to ensure accountability for situations where an investigation into alleged employee sexual harassment or misconduct is found not to have risen to the level of an official finding under university policy, but nonetheless flags inappropriate behavior for which changes in behavior and or policy are warranted. The administration is currently working on reforms to implement these recommendations, and I will urge that it become public once established. This responsibility falls heavily upon the Provost’s office, and I want to make clear that even though she has been her only for a very short time, and had to start her work in the midst of a pandemic, Provost Woodruff has already been very responsive to my concerns and I have confidence in her ability to do the very difficult work needed for making the requisite structural changes in this institution. We are so very fortunate that she decided to join us, and I look forward to continuing to work with her. 

Finally, I recommend that the Board release these documents for an independent review, after which the body conducting that review issues a public report, along the lines of what the Board had previously approved in June 2019. I mentioned earlier that I cannot even begin to understand the trauma the survivors experienced.  But as I read through these documents, I became convinced that a university as great as ours can do so much better.  That was driven home to me by the MSU Museum exhibit, created last year, that chronicles the very disturbing series of events and omissions that facilitated the sick conduct Nassar displayed.  The exhibit’s creators should be commended for preserving that timeline, as it reminds us that there were several points along the way where, with more vigilance, this crisis may have been averted.  I hope that the exhibit is made a permanent part of the MSU museum collection, and that these documents be preserved with it. We must remember what happened and why, so that we can prevent its recurrence. The university and its leaders have an opportunity to equip this institution with additional tools to ensure accountability and continued attentiveness, intervening early in the face of inappropriate conduct. There is no better way to start that process than by recognizing that the survivors, had they not acted courageously, may have continued to suffer in silence. 

So, that’s how I conducted the review, why it took so long, and what I learned. 

I do not know whether the Board of Trustees will be revisiting the independent review discussions again in the future, but my hope is that we do so, especially given that we have two new trustees joining us in January. I can promise you that for the remainder of my time as a trustee, I will use what I have learned from my review of these documents to fight for the structural changes needed to hopefully prevent sexual misconduct from ever occurring in the first place but, if it does, to make sure that the reporting process for it does not cause further harm to the individuals involved and discipline is handled fairly, uniformly, and transparently across all colleges and departments.

Thank you.