griz4life said:
While I agree with you, Royce Engstrom is still telling a story very much in line with what Meseroll wrote: Athletics in general and football in particular had run amok. I heard him say so just last week.
Recall that Engstrom had just had a series of major violent sexual assaults, on campus, committed by a Saudi student, at least two, and "Main Hall" in essence didn't want to do anything about it, finally gave the offender every opportunity to "get out of town," then, having provided the victims with no closure whatsoever, issued a statement that it was "all for the best."
UM has had a history of problems with the "Saudi" students, but in contrast to the programs that Pflu had set up for the football team, UM has never had the integrity to "insult" foreign students with lots of money by requiring them to culturally acclimate themselves to this culture, i.e., "uncovered women are not 'pieces of meat'." And then, not only unwilling to protect UM women, it practically assisted the perpetrator to escape, sending a distinct "message."
Recall his next step: his much heralded "outside study." This was the PC "I'm a leader!" approach -- which was to give it -- "the problem" -- as much publicity as possible. So he hired somebody who never in her life done anything like this and the first thing she DIDN'T do was to compare the available campus statistics to any other campus or community.
She didn't even think of it, although it is usually the first thing that experienced folks do for a project like this: identify the problem, i.e. do we HAVE a problem?
The next thing she DIDN'T do was find anything.
Recall that? She basically thought the staff reacted appropriately to allegations as they came up, and her only real complaint was that she thought maybe students weren't telling her all that she wanted to hear. She didn't seem to find anything wrong with the way the coaches or AD had handled various matters. Notably, she did not point any fingers at them whatsoever.
She didn't seem aware that the Saudi incident had happened.
To that point, Engstrom's PR machine had failed just about completely. He was looking like an idiot. Failsafe mode? Fire somebody.
In contrast to MSU's problems unrolling quietly at the time, with a tenured professor using University facilities, paid trips, and his power as a professor to elicit sex from students, including having made improper advances to a high school student, as well as a rate of campus sexual assaults nearly double UM's, and an internal investigation which DID confirm the University's worst nightmares, Engstrom managed to attract state-wide attention to UM simply by his own mishandling of virtually everything he touched.
Engstrom is the kind of guy to always shift the blame. Of course the athletic department had "run amok." That's his story and it's all he's got to deflect from his own shameful mishandling of the entire episode.