Reflections on Michigan State

The news the past few days has been filled with stories of Larry Nassar, the now disgraced gymnastics doctor for Michigan State and USA Women’s Gymnastics. Although he has now been sentenced to 40-175 years for his actions over the past 20 years, people are also questioning how this went on for so long and whether the culture of Michigan State athletics is partly responsible. Although it’s been over 45 years since I attended MSU, I’d like to relate a couple of personal stories from my time there that may shed some light on that culture – from long before Larry Nassar and the others who have been in the news such as the now resigned President Simon or the athletic director or even Tom Izzo, the long-time basketball coach.

As I’ve posted before, I took an extra heavy course load during my undergraduate years so that I was able to receive my BS in only 3 years (1966-1969). However, I remained at MSU for two additional years and received two master’s degrees. In the fall of 1969, I had a graduate assistantship in the Computer Science department that not only gave me an income, but enabled me to qualify for in-state tuition ($13/credit hour instead of $31/credit hour). My assistantship had me in charge of the “help desk” for CPS101, the intro to computing course that was essentially a FORTRAN programming class.

As background for the below stories, I should explain that MSU in those days ran on a quarter rather than a semester basis, so classes were 10 weeks in length. The fall quarter started in September and was over before the Christmas holidays. CPS101, like all other 101 courses on campus, had no prerequisites and tended to be pretty basic in content. Anyone who was enrolled in the colleges of Engineering or Natural Science would have it as a required course, and it was open to students from all other colleges on campus. With such a large demand, it was one of the courses that was taught in multiple sections, with a professor giving the lectures to a TV studio audience which was simultaneously broadcast to other campus locations. The lectures were then replayed in the afternoon and again in the evening. Since there was only one professor for all those sections, the individual sections were staffed by graduate assistants to answer questions, collect homework, and monitor any tests.

There was also a central help facility, in a large corner room on an upper floor of the Computer Science building. This help facility was overseen by a graduate assistant (in this case myself), but was primarily staffed by upper level CPS students (juniors and seniors). We had access to all the grades and attendance reports for all the sections so could answer questions about these to any students who came to see us. The room was divided into several small cubicles, each containing a small desk and a couple of chairs. The cubicles were divided by partitions which consisted of metal walls about 3’ high topped by large pieces of frosted glass to about the 5’ level. There was a central waiting area where students could line up for a first-come-first-served queue to see one of the help desk assistants who were on duty. I had a corner cubicle and was available for any problems that the undergraduate assistants couldn’t handle and I also kept track of the hours that each of the assistants worked.

With that as a background, let me relate two incidents that happened that fall, both of which have some bearing on the current MSU situation in the news.

I’ll Do Anything

One afternoon a female student came in looking for help. The next person available was in the small cubicle next to mine. As I noted above, with only a glass-topped metal partition, one could hear clearly what was going on in the small cubicles around you. The undergraduate assistant in that cubicle was someone whom I had known for a couple of years as he and I were the same age and had taken some classes together, but he was now a senior while I had graduated the previous spring. He had gotten married during the past summer and he and his new wife were both scheduled to graduate in the spring.

As I recall, the female student was a freshman, but like many new freshmen was having trouble adapting to the self-directed nature of college without parental guidance, so her grades were suffering. It was just after the 5-week midterms and she was failing. But she thought that she might be able to use her “feminine charms” to her advantage. So, after asking how she was doing, she made a plea to the undergraduate assistant.

I’ll never forget the words that I heard over the top of the partition – “I’ll do anything to get a passing grade in this class, and I do mean anything! [emphasis hers]” While there were no sexual words used, it was very obvious what she meant. However, the assistant had a lot of integrity, and I suspect that his being married helped him answer that the thing that she had to do was study really hard and if she got an A in her work the rest of the quarter, then she might be able to get a C in the class. That was not what she wanted to hear and she left shortly thereafter. The rather flustered assistant came into my cubicle with a very red face to talk to me after she left, knowing that I had heard what had transpired.

My point in relating this story is not to diminish any of the current events relating to Larry Nassar or any of the other stories about sexual assault charges against other MSU athletes. Rather, it is to show that a culture of sexuality is not new at MSU. I do not condone any of the actions taken by those to take advantage of other students. But we must be careful to understand both sides of any reported stories.

I’ll Talk To Coach

The other story involves a student who came to see me in my corner cubicle instead of one of the undergraduate assistants. He was a large African-American student and he had a similar-sized friend with him. I did not know him at the time, but in investigations after he left the room I discovered that he was one of the co-captains of the MSU football team and his friend was also on the team.

I asked for his name and student ID so I could look up his grades thus far in the quarter. It was very apparent that he had not been attending class thus far and had grades of zero on all the assignments, all the quizzes and on the mid-term exam. Being over 5 weeks into the quarter, the option of getting A’s for the remainder of the quarter would not be an option like with the student in the prior example. It was too late to drop the class (which had to be done in the first two weeks), and too late to get anything other than an F in the class, not matter how much he might improve.

I was sitting down and he and his friend chose to stand, so they were towering over me. I’m not a small person and there were several undergraduate assistants in other cubicles, so I was not physically afraid, but I definitely had the sense that he was trying to intimidate me. I explained to him that there was no way that he could avoid getting an F in the class and that it was too late for him to drop it.

He explained that because it was football season, that he was taking a minimum number of credits (you had to take 12 credits to be a full-time student), so he couldn’t drop it or he would lose his eligibility to play the remainder of the football season. Also, if he got an F his GPA would fall below a 2.00 and he would then not be eligible to play in any bowl game (which would be in January after the fall quarter grades came out). I told him that I was sorry for that, but that he should have considered the consequences a month before and either dropped the class or started attending class and doing the homework.

He then simply stated to me, “I’ll talk to coach,” and he and his friend left. I thought at the time that I had just signed an “athletic death warrant” for a member of the football team, but I had to do what was right. But as I followed the football team for the next several weeks, he continued to play, his name disappeared from the CPS101 class lists, and he suffered no consequences.

I suspect that the coach “pulled some strings”, got his name removed from the class list, and got him signed up for some no-requirements athletics 101 course where he got a good grade just by being in the class.

So, how does this relate to the current crisis at MSU? It’s been obvious to me that even as far back as the late 1960s that the athletes in the big-name sports programs at our universities get to operate by different rules. They get accepted into universities when their academic abilities would not qualify them for enrollment, they receive special treatment, personal tutors, or even get to break the rules as this one football player did in CPS101.

While the above example is only about academics and not about dismissal of sexual conduct, it is not at all surprising to me that not only does the university have a different set of standards for its star athletes vs. others, but that they are quite willing to be complicit in protecting those athletes and ensuring that there are no/limited consequences for any improper activities of those athletes. They are blinded by the goal of having a nationally ranked team.

While it’s been over 40 years since I have even visited the MSU campus, it still pains me to see the name of this university being dragged through the mud because of these recent incidents. But the only thing that’s surprising to me is that it’s taken this long for actions to be taken and investigations to be made.

I am still not convinced that real change will happen or that the needed culture shift will take place – either at MSU or at the many other universities where this problem exists. But I hope that it will.