America’s Overpaid and Underachieving Elites Outdoing Themselves in East Lansing

After Michigan State President Lou Ann Simon postmaturely reigned in the wake of a staggering institutional failure, MSU asked a greasy Republican hack to replace her. This is going about as well as you’d expect:

While speaking at a tense Michigan State University board meeting today, Kaylee Lorincz, who said she was sexually abused by former MSU doctor Larry Nassar, detailed a troubling interaction with interim president John Engler. According to Lorincz, Engler attempted to “coerce” her into settling a civil lawsuit against the school without her attorney present.

Lorincz, 18, alleged Engler offered to cut her a check for $250,000 to drop the suit, even after she insisted that she was only interested in helping solve the problem. The crowd gasped as Lorincz spoke about how Engler tried to dismiss her claims and castigated her for simply trying to score money with the lawsuit.

“Mr. Engler then looked directly at me and asked, ‘Right now if I wrote you a check for $250,000 would you take it?’ When I explained that it’s not about the money for me and that I just want to help, he said, ‘well give me a number.’”

In talking recently about the damage that people who follow bad principles can do, I certainly don’t want to deny the damage that can be done by people so venal and indifferent to the suffering of anyone less privileged they’re unable to even conceive of people acting out of motives other than immediate profit-maximization.

The board then tried to cut her off, and police even approached the podium, but Lorincz managed to finish reading her statement after attendees in the meeting chanted “Let her speak!”

The end of Lorincz’s statement was scathing, as she said of MSU, “They tried to make us feel like we were the problem and MSU was the victim because of the civil suits. This is how it works. When you protect and promote a sexual predator and foster a culture of lies and cover-ups, you are responsible.”

Engler continued to get embarrassed at the meeting, as he later proposed a 2.97 percent tuition increase, shortly after “teasing” a large increase to cover legal fees from the Nassar case.

Oh, and needless to say Engler is also a massive liar:

MSU Pres Engler lied to a sister survivor and said I met with him and demanded money. Truth: He's refused to meet with me when political leaders asked him to, and I've never discussed money with anyone. He, and the Board who chose him, must go.

— Rachael Denhollander (@R_Denhollander) April 13, 2018

How a comprehensively dishonest con artist who boasted about sexually assaulting women became the Republican candidate for president and earned the full support of party elites is truly a mystery that will never be solved.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why tuition keeps going up and up even as academic institutions rely more and more on instructors making starvation wages, here’s one reason:

A public relations firm billed MSU for more than $500,000 for January as it tracked social media activity surrounding the Larry Nassar case, which often included the accounts of victims and their families, journalists, celebrities and politicians.

The work, which also included collecting and evaluating news articles, had previously been done by members of Michigan State University’s Office of Communication and Brand Strategy, some of whom continued to do so in January.

No matter what’s going on an contemporary academia, you can bet there’s a consultant being lavished with huge sums of money for some shitty advice or a service that could be provided by people the university is already paying. There needs to be some clever phrase to describe the fact that no matter how much austerity is being imposed elsewhere the budget for high administrators and consultants is apparently always limitless.