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This pagetop, with a "commitment to do everything in my power to fix the situation," leaves MSU's site next week.
John Engler returns to private life next Wednesday, nearly 12 months after becoming interim president of the scandal-shaken unversity where he graduated in 1971 with an agricultural economics degree
He submitted "an 11-page resignation letter to the school's board chair, Dianne Byrum, shortly after 6 p.m.," writes David Jesse of the Detroit Free Press.
"In compliance with your request that I resign & in order to ensure an orderly transition to my interim successor, I hereby resign the office of President of Michigan State University effective 9 am, Wednesday, January 23," the letter started. "It has been an honor to serve my beloved university."
The letter came 14 hours before MSU's eight trustees gather in the Hannah Administration Building's fourth-floor boardroom for a hastily called meeting to vote on his future. Engler's lengthy submission acknowledged to Bryrum: "You have advised me that five Democratic members of the MSU Board, including yourself, have requested my resignation as MSU President."
♦ Letter text: The Freep helpfully posts it.
The breaking point was a dismissive comment to The Detroit News editorial board last Friday, when Engler spoke of Larry Nassar abuse survivors "who've been in the spotlight, who are still enjoying that moment at times, you know, the awards and recognition."
'The wrong choice,' senator says
No bonfires at Cedar Village celebrate Engler's departure soon, but thankfulness is voiced on and off campus.
At The State News student paper, an editorial asks: "What took so long to get Engler out of office?"
John Engler should never have been the interim president of Michigan State. Less than an hour after his appointment, student protesters expressed outrage with the board’s decision. The outrage never went away.
He should have been fired last March when he testified before a Senate subcommittee that Nassar survivors were "driven by attorneys."
The editorial lists four other "should have been fired" justifications from last April through this month "as soon as three new trustees — all in favor of Engler’s termination — joined the board."
"John Engler was the wrong choice to lead MSU," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., tweeted Wednesday afternoon as news of the drama's final act was foreshadowed. She graduated from MSU in 1972, a year after Engler, and added a social work master's degree in 1975.
Michigan's other Democratic senator also welcomes the 70-year-old's resignation. "It’s been clear the healing process could not happen with him in charge," tweets Sen. Gary Peters (Alma College, '80).
Newly seated Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly (Cornell University, '88), also comments from Washington, according to Jesse of the Freep:
"It has been clear from Interim President John Engler's repeated disparaging remarks toward survivors that he is not the person to be charged with creating a safer environment at MSU. I called on him to resign in June, and I support his decision to step down now."
Rachael Denhollander tweets her view
Rachael Denhollander, a Louisville attorney, speaks out -- again -- with an earned sense of personal authority. Her pathbreaking Indianapolis Star interview in 2016 led dozens of other survivors to come forward and pushed law enforcers and eventually MSU to investigate Nassar. He sexually assaulted her when Denhollander was a 15-year-old gymnast being treated for lower back pain, she says.
"It was no secret who [Engler] was and how he'd lead. He was brought in to shut down a 'problem' that no one wanted to honestly deal with," she tweeted last weekend in reply to board chair Byrum. "You all put him as head and he serves at your discretion."
In an insightful analysis Wednesday at Crain's Detroit Business, Chad Livengood (Central Michigan, '05) suggests that the former three-term Republican governor's "bare-knuckle style of confrontation with his opponents — legendary at the state Capitol — has routinely gotten him into hot water during his tumultuous, yearlong tenure at MSU."
Engler didn't bring to campus the compassion and dignity that Nassar's victims demanded.
Byrum tells the reporter: "It has just been one episode or example after another — and that culminated in the special board meeting tomorrow."
Another trustee, Brian Mosallam, calls the interim president "a distraction." Livengood quotes him Wednesday afternoon before the resignation letter arrived:
"He's taking away from all of the great things that are going on at this university. We're always hearing about John Engler's comments and his continued adversarial relationship the survivors.
"What he failed to realize is every time he speaks, he's not speaking as John Engler the governor. He's speaking as Michigan State. And all it does is cast another dark cloud over this university — and for that he has to go."
A Fox 2 sports reporter who graduated from Western Michigan ('88) tweets her personal view:
The only thing that surprises me about John Engler's resignation as MSU interim president, is that it took them this long to get rid of him.
— Jennifer Hammond (@HammerFox2) January 16, 2019
A fitting wrap-up comes from a Detroit News politics and government editor, a 1984 University of Oregon alumnus:
IRONIC QUOTE OF WEEK: “I’m ready to go next week," MSU interim President John Engler told @detroitnews editorial board Friday when asked how much longer he'd be there. "But I don’t think they have a president quite ready yet. But as soon as the president is hired and arrives"
— Richard Burr (@RichardBurr_DN) January 16, 2019
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