Michigan State alum: Choose the right leader for MSU

By Matthew Clayson
Detroit Free Press
March 27, 2018

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2018/03/27/michigan-state-alum-choose-right-leader-msu/456944002/

People March along Grand River in East Lansing in January on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing while speaking out against sexual assault following the Larry Nassar case. Photo by Ryan Garza

As the collective outrage inevitably wanes in the aftermath of Michigan State University’s botched efforts to effectively address campus sexual assault, there remain serious questions about who will be selected to lead the university as the permanent president and how that person will lead.  

Michigan’s citizens need answers about how survivors will be made whole, what efforts will be championed to ensure a safe campus and accountable leadership and what MSU will look like in five years. Interim leadership by its nature is temporary and is not well positioned for compensating survivors, healing a divided campus and leading a strategy to restore trust with Michigan’s citizens. There needs to be a robust conversation about securing a permanent president at MSU, how that individual will engage with the campus community and what sort of future that individual will chart.  

Getting this decision right is of utmost importance, especially given the increasingly complicated nature of MSU’s budget and the ramifications that any permanent president’s  budgetary priorities will place on survivors, the MSU community and Michigan’s taxpayers.  The university has always been on the short end of the stick when it comes to federal and state appropriations, historically receiving less per pupil than Wayne State University, the University of Michigan and its Big 10 peers. Correcting this discrepancy is long overdue, but MSU shouldn’t expect to receive a cent more from state or federal sources until it has earned back the public trust that has been broken. Attempting to derail a long overdue package of bills aimed at addressing systemic sexual violence with threats of tax and/or tuition increases does not help MSU’s case in correcting this deficiency.  

MSU's costs to respond to, fulfill and process survivor claims will be in the hundreds of millions; costs to develop and implement programs to ensure MSU is the national leader in sexual assault awareness, prevention and response could be in the tens of millions; costs to restore a sense of safety and trust in administration will be still more millions. These costs will be necessary for doing right by the many who leadership at MSU has wronged, healing a divided campus and restoring public confidence in the university.

As a former MSU campus leader and liaison to the MSU Board of Trustees, I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to leadership styles and how they use budgets to advance their priorities.  

The good leaders are courageous. They scour a budget: looking across discretionary line items for waste, questioning third-party contracts, postponing costly construction projects, nixing vanity projects and leveraging sacred cows — such as investment returns on MSU’s $3 billion endowment and its $130 million a year athletics budget — for additional resources.  They invest in their students, faculty and staff, recognizing that they are central assets to the vitality of the campus community and the quality of an MSU education. They have a robust feedback loop with students, faculty and staff and they use this feedback to advance an inclusive and meaningful vision.

The bad leaders are indifferent. They leave the budgeting to the accountants and offer little vision or direction. Their sole purpose: self preservation.  Their mantra: delegation and deference.  Their output: mediocrity.    

The ugly leaders are rabid cost cutters.  They hide behind promises of low tuition and excuses of decreased state appropriations to hack away at core programs, services and commitments.  Under such leadership, the systematic outsourcing that left the state and local governments dealing with poor services and unsubstantiated savings would extend to MSU; the meager wage increases enjoyed by faculty and educators, who are already among the lowest paid in the Big 10, would be easy targets for a symbolic haircut; long overdue investments in student support services, would be pushed down the road until business conditions improve. The output: a university whose purpose is to enrich the well-connected few, whose future reeks of mediocrity and whose fundamental flaws remain unfixed.        

As a business leader who relies on MSU talent, as a MSU alumnus who wants to see integrity restored to MSU and as a Michigan citizen who has to justify yet another hit to our state's reputation, I am acutely aware of need to get this hire right; I am deeply concerned about the lack of discussion regarding what this process looks like and when it will happen. Michigan’s citizens have an opportunity to identify and recruit a courageous leader for MSU who will make the hard decisions necessary to support survivors and set a sorely needed new vision for MSU.  Now, more than ever, MSU needs a President that is good.  We have had enough of the bad and the ugly.