Michigan State Failed Women, No Apology Suffices: An Alum's View

Back in the winter of 1986 or 1987, there was a warning issued by campus police at Michigan State University: a series of rapes had occurred, and women were urged to take precautions.

Stay out of the shadows on the massive campus, walk in lighted areas, and don't walk alone, we were told. That way you'll be safe.

I was a junior that winter, and I had a job on campus. Male friends drove me back and forth on the nights I was working, and I remember a general feeling of the campus being united in protecting women against this threat in the shadows.

Maybe that's why, 30-plus years later, it makes me so angry to read the reports coming out of East Lansing of how Larry Nassar, the sexual predator sentenced to 175 years in prison, was allowed to thrive in the MSU community and even was emboldened by an unwillingness to protect women.

I live in New Jersey, so I have watched this scandal unfold from afar. Anger doesn't even quite describe my feelings. I'm enraged that the university I called home for four years — where I felt supported as a woman and as a second-generation Spartan — turned its backs on women so blatantly, and has continued to do so even as Nassar was sentenced this week.

The resignation letter from former President Lou Anna K. Simon was tone deaf and insulting to all of the victims. To label the words Rachael Denhollander and all the survivors who spoke as politicizing a tragedy is nauseating. (If you haven't read Denhollander's victim impact statement, I urge you to do so.)

That trustee Joel Ferguson — who became a trustee when I was a student — would minimize what happened in a Lansing radio interview by saying the Board of Trustees had "so many more things going on" than what was happening in the courtroom of Judge Rosemarie Acquilina, where woman after woman was speaking of the abuse suffered at the hands of Nassar, is beyond contemptible.

That Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo would even allow the phrase "I hope the right person was convicted" to pass his lips as woman after woman lined up to speak truth to the power that once was Larry Nassar, is disgusting.

That William Strampel, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, mocked Rachael Denhollander's gut-wrenching interview with the Indianapolis Star makes me want to vomit.

That Athletic Director Mark Hollis dared to say in his resignation letter Friday that he is not running away from anything but running toward "Comfort, compassion and understanding for the survivors," is just clueless and distasteful. Comfort and compassion shouldn't be something that need to be chased.

And the allegations that Michigan State gymnastics coach Kathy Klages, who two women say they told in 1997 of Nassar's assaults, and athletic trainer Destiny Teachner-Hauk, who two other women say they notified, not only did nothing but discouraged the women from filing written reports, are so upsetting I can't even find the right word.

Women's basketball coach Suzy Merchant says Simon was a champion for women because she made certain Merchant had the support to coach while at the same time being a mother. Tom Izzo and football coach Mark Dantonio have praised Simon as a great leader.

She is neither.

The avalanche of information that continues to come out, including Thursday's report that the university withheld documents during the 2014 investigation of the allegations against Nassar, and Friday's reporting by ESPN on issues with the basketball and football teams, underscores this, and if you buy the university attorney's defense that they were overlooked, I have a bridge for sale. Cheap.

I'm tired of the vacuous apologies every time someone "misspeaks." Stop defending what has happened. Stop pretending that people did their jobs and did them well. Because they did not. Simon especially.

Michigan State University — my alma mater — failed. It failed Rachael Denhollander and Aly Raisman and Simone Biles and Jordyn Wieber and Tiffany Thomas Lopez and Larissa Boyce and all of the girls and women Nassar assaulted. By not protecting them, by refusing to stand up for them, it failed all women.

Ferguson, during that radio interview, said, "This is not Penn State."

My daughter is a college athlete who, ironically, attends one of Penn State's Commonwealth campuses. When she chose Penn State, I had more than one person throw the Sandusky scandal in my face.

You're right, Joel Ferguson: This is not Penn State. It's much worse. More than 10 times as many victims. Much more coming out by the hour. And yet all we get are tone-deaf statements as the leadership of the university I was proud to call home scrambles to protect a rapidly crumbling facade that the leaders actually give a damn about its students.

As an alum, it infuriates me. The second verse of MSU's alma mater, "Shadows," talks of memories lingering "where light and shadows played."

The shadows cannot be allowed to linger any longer. The light needs to be shined into every corner, every crevice, and the lies and secrecy that have infected MSU and that allowed Larry Nassar to flourish need to be eliminated so this never happens again. And everyone who had the power to stop this, everyone who failed to step in and protect these girls and women needs to be punished.

MSU was the first land-grant college in the United States. It has an important legacy. And right now that legacy — and all the good things done by so many of its alumni — is in tatters. I cannot sing my love for alma mater, I cannot sing praises for MSU until it does what's right.

Start telling the truth. Start living up to what MSU is supposed to stand for. Stop hiding in the shadows.

Karen Wall is a 1988 graduate of Michigan State and an editor/reporter in Patch's Jersey Shore region.

Photo: Rachael Denhollander speaks in court Jan. 24 before the sentencing of Larry Nassar, who has admitted sexually assaulting athletes when he was employed by Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics. Photo by Carlos Osorio/Associated Press