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The University of Michigan's Faculty Senate chair said Wednesday he believed the university should have released a report detailing what the $12 million investigation and "culture review" of its athletic department found.
Faculty Senate Chair Kentaro Toyama said in an email that by not doing so, the administration of President Domenico Grasso risked losing the confidence of staff, faculty and students that it will do the right thing when future issues are reported.
The university said no comprehensive investigative report was released because none was conducted or written. Instead, the university summarized the findings and recommendations compiled by Jenner & Block, the Chicago-based law firm that conducted the athletic department's "culture review," in a question-and-answer format that was posted to the university's website, along with a video statement from Grasso. The regents were only verbally briefed on the firm's findings and the investigation's specifics, the university said.
The university said the related investigation found misconduct was not "widespread" throughout the Athletic Department, but it wasn't always addressed "consistently, promptly, or in accordance with University expectations."
However, the fact that no report was requested or written is a "failure of transparency," said Jodi Balsam, a professor of clinical law and director of the Sports Law Clinic at Brooklyn Law School.
"The most constructive step the university could have taken is to release a full report," Balsam said. "You cannot say there are issues with transparency and accountability and then not act with transparency and accountability."
Toyama said the way the investigation and former football coach Sherrone Moore's inappropriate relationship with a direct subordinate were handled seemed to fit the pattern of what has happened at the university in the past.
"The University of Michigan does a lot right, but it's not strong on public accountability when things go wrong," he said. "The situation around Moore seems to fit a pattern of the university enabling the masking of bad behavior in the short term, only for it to resurface later with worse consequences. We saw that with the (Dr. Robert) Anderson case, with former Provost (Martin) Philbert, with less prominent cases, and now potentially again."
In the case of Anderson's sexual abuse and Philbert's sexual harassment, reports were released to the public.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan should have released athletics probe report, faculty leader says
