East Lansing — The Board of Trustees voted Wednesday to choose former Gov. John Engler as interim Michigan State University president in a bid to steady the school after the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.
Engler, a Republican who graduated from the university in 1971 with a degree in agricultural economics, was Michigan’s governor from 1991 to 2002 and will now lead MSU during a troubled time of intense public scrutiny and criticism in the aftermath of convicted doctor Nassar’s two decades of sexual abuse.
The board of four Democrats and four Republicans unanimously selected 69-year-old Engler, who has vowed to tap former Democratic Gov. Jim Blanchard to be his adviser. Board members, including Democrats, praised the former GOP governor as the right person for the job.
“It doesn’t get any stronger than this,” said trustee George Perles. “Blanchard and Engler together. That’s quite a team. I know that these students, these women are counting on us to make sure that something like this never happens again. We shall work hard to make sure that all those loose ends are tied up.”
But MSU faculty and students at the meeting are bucking the decision and say they were not truly involved in the trustees’ pick. A faculty committee representative and another representative for graduate students said in a statement to trustees that they first learned about the decision to select Engler from the media, signaling to them that their input was not a serious factor in the consideration.
The faculty steering committee announced that it will call for a vote of no confidence to oust the entire Board of Trustees at its next meeting.
Twenty-two-year-old world politics senior Connor Berdy climbed onto the table around which the trustees sat to deliver a statement in protest on behalf of other students, saying “this was not a democratic process.”
Berdy was not affiliated with the student government, but said he felt he needed to involve himself as a member of the university.
“We want change. As an average person I don’t have power in this university structure and that’s something that needs to change.”
The appointment comes a week after President Lou Anna Simon resigned and five days after the retirement of Athletic Director Mark Hollis. Public pressure mounted for the resignations after former MSU sports doctor Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for first-degree sexual misconduct charges following court statements by more than 150 victims who said he abused them.
He was previously sentenced to 60 years in prison for possession of child pornography.
The Nassar controversy has thrust Michigan State into the national spotlight. It is being investigated for potential legal and rule violations by the U.S. Department of Education, two congressional committees, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, state lawmakers and a special prosecutor for Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette.
A Detroit News investigation found eight victims told at least 14 MSU representatives about Nassar’s sexual misconduct over two decades.
University officials have been criticized for being tone-deaf to the problems revealed by the Nassar scandal. Longtime trustee Joel Ferguson apologized after saying in a recent radio interview that “there are so many more things going on at the university than just this Nassar thing.”
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