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Photo: Deposit Photo
Too many institutions care too much about their image and their funding, and not enough about the people they serve.
The Catholic Church for decades shuffled around pedophile priests from one parish to another instead of firing them and turning them over to authorities for prosecution. Forget the congregants. The church apparently felt it was far more important than the people it served.
Ditto for Penn State University, which let assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky molest boys. Heaven forbid someone would have fired him or turned him in. What would wealthy alumni have said?
Now we have the Larry Nassar scandal at Michigan State University, my alma mater. There also are reports that the university tried to minimize sexual assaults involving athletes over the years.
NCAA president Mark Emmert was alerted in 2010 about dozens of sexual assault allegations against Michigan State athletes, The Athletic reports. In a Nov. 17, 2010 letter to him from Kathy Redmond, founder of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, that she gave to The Athletic, she wrote:
For example, despite recent reports of sexual violence involving two Michigan State University (MSU) basketball players, one of which admitted to raping the victim, neither man was charged criminally or even disciplined by the school.
An earlier report of similar violence involving two other MSU basketball players also went un-redressed. In the past two years alone, 37 reports of sexual assault by MSU athletes have been reported, but not one disciplinary sanction was imposed by school officials against any of the men involved.
In the Nassar case, though there were investigations, he wasn't fired until September 2016 -- something that should have happened years earlier. It's hard to believe that investigators couldn't consult with other physicians and determine that the techniques Nassar used on patients amounted to sexual assault.
Ever try to seek information from universities like MSU and the University of Michigan through the Freedom of Information Act requests? They often find exemptions so they can withhold information. Transparency is not a top priority.
They forget that they're public institutions. Raising money and enhancing images seems far more important.
So, it's not really surprising that MSU finds itself in the midst of one of the biggest college scandals in a long time. The secretive culture and the drive to protect MSU's image created it.
MSU and other institutions won't be free of such scandals until they change the culture and remember why they exist.
