A French movie poster for 'Dumb and Dumber' says a lot about MSU's Board of Trustees

About 30 years ago, I was waiting on a platform in the Paris Metro for a subway car to arrive when I spotted a poster promoting "Dumb and Dumber," which had just come out in France.

The tagline said: "Lequel est le plus intelligent? Aucun!" which translates roughly to: "Which is the most intelligent? Neither!"

I came to the same conclusion after reading a report from the law firm MSU hired to investigate allegations leveled against former board chairwoman Rema Vassar. The investigation expanded after Vassar raised questions about the conduct of some of her fellow trustees. In the end, investigators found "a fractured Board plagued by distrust." Vassar takes plenty of blame. But her ally, Dennis Denno, the board's newest member, emerges as the biggest villain in this tragi-comedy.

The report, which came out last month, along with Vassar and Denno's responses, portrays the board as a den of vipers and two-bit hustlers, narcing on each other, flying on private planes with donors, doing favors for friends, bullying university employees and manipulating students to further their agendas, kneecap their enemies and cover their butts.

It's enough to make a Spartan wish they went to school anywhere else ... except Ann Arbor.

As Vassar's lawyers will tell you, not all of the allegations were proven. Whistleblowing trustee Brianna Scott even gets singled out for censure. And I have concerns about what the investigators didn't disclose to those of us who, as Spartans and Michigan taxpayers, will pick up the million-dollar tab for this latest probe into the eight-headed monster charged with overseeing our state's largest and best university. (Hey, no matter how hard the folks in charge in East Lansing make it, I'm still a proud Spartan!)

But we're breaking some news here today. Perhaps the biggest revelation is contained in Vassar's response to the investigation. She now asserts that a trip she and her daughter took on a donor's private plane occurred a month before the university's lawyers provided trustees with guidlines on when it may be acceptable to take a free trip. I'm also revealing the identity of a consultant Denno helped get a gig paid for with MSU money. The consultant is a former boss of Denno's who spent 10 months in jail after shooting at his ex-wife in 2015 as she fled from his house. Denno helped his ol' pal four months after a shooting on campus in 2023 left three students dead.

Unlike Vassar, Denno, who is a media consultant, declined to answer my questions on the record. And the nine-paragraph statement he released a week after MSU's report came out makes no mention of his role in helping the trigger-happy consultant get work from MSU.

Instead, Denno's statement begins with: "When people often ask me: 'What's wrong with the MSU Board of Trustees?'..."

By the time you're done reading this column, I think the answer to that question will be obvious.

Misery may love company, but I don't

If you're thinking Michigan State has cornered the market on dysfunctional administrations, dyspeptic governing boards — or even disgraced football programs — think again.

In Ann Arbor, they're still celebrating a national championship in football tainted by cheating, two suspensions of their head coach that caused him to miss half the regular season, the firing of one assistant coach for lying and a long-running investigation into another assistant coach that involves the feds. Oh, and their newest assistant football coach resigned last week after being charged with drunken driving in Ann Arbor on March 16. In 2022, the University of Michigan fired its president for an inappropriate relationship and fired its head hockey coach for lying. Less than two weeks ago, the Wolverines fired their head basketball coach for losing (it only suspended him two years ago after he punched another team's coach).

In 2021, Northern Michigan University President Fritz Erickson quit after beefing with his board.

And a few years ago, Wayne State's Board of Governors feuded over the fate of its president. He survived, but recently retired.

Still, my Spartans are the leaders and best when it comes to drama at the top of the food chain.

The latest investigation was triggered after Scott, who was elected to the board in 2018, went public in October with a letter accusing Vassar of, among other things, violating the board's code of ethics and conflict of interest policies by bullying, interfering in university business and legal matters, and taking a private flight to a basketball game. Vassar, who was chairwoman of the board at the time, denied the allegations and accused her fellow board members of committing many of the same sins.

For four months, the Washington, D.C. law firm Miller & Chevalier interviewed trustees, university employees and students. They reviewed emails, text messages, social media postings, documents, trustees' cellphones and a secret recording of Vassar and Denno meeting with students. Only Vassar and Denno did not provide their cellphones for examination. Vassar's attorney Melvin "Butch" Hollowell told me Vassar was willing to share her phone if investigators had agreed to set parameters that would have protected the identity of students and suvivors of the Larry Nassar scandal contained in her phone.

Miller & Chevalier's report — no one from the firm returned my call seeking comment — says they "considered" over 50 separate allegations. Vassar's attorneys faulted the firm for what they consider less-than-rigorous investigation of Vassar's claims that her colleagues were engaged in conflicts of interest, took free trips from donors on planes, RVs and yachts, and leaked confidential information.

Miller & Chevalier, in so many words, copped to not digging too deeply into Vassar's allegation that Scott and former trustee Joel Ferguson were involved in a dirty deal. It said it "has not identified evidence of a quid pro quo or vote trading," but added "events related to this allegation took place several years ago and recollections were not entirely clear."

The law firm also said Vassar didn't always give them enough evidence to prove allegations.

On the matter of who leaked the names of the two finalists for MSU president, Miller & Chevalier said "it is likely a Board of Trustee member or members were responsible for the leak," but added "the investigation was unable to identify sufficient evidence to determine which Trustee(s) was the source of the leak."

For those of you reading this at freep.com who have the fortitude to scrutinize the Miller & Chevalier report, the response from Vassar's attorneys and Denno's statement, we've included those documents as PDFs.

For those of you reading this in print (or who have better things to do), I'm going to hit some of the highlights or, more appropriately, the lowlights. Not because I take any glee in pointing out the foibles of my fellow Spartans, but because sunlight is the best disinfectant and whatever energy we have left to deal with this mess should be expended fixing what's clearly broken.

Vassar the disrupter

Vassar met with investigators from Miller & Chevalier three times, for a total of 15 hours.

"I was foolish and naive," she told me last week. "I thought this report would finally show where there are shortcomings, where we're shortsighted, where there are governance issues that could be shored up. I thought for sure that would be one of the outcomes of this report — to highlight some of the shortcomings that I have found on the board."

Instead, she believes, "the assignment was to investigate me and, later, to investigate Dennis Denno."

That shouldn't have come as a surprise given that the investigation was triggered by Scott's letter targeting Vassar.

Investigators found that Vassar committed multiple violations of the board's code of ethics and conflict of interest policies by improperly participating in lawsuit settlement negotiations with former business school dean Sanjay Gupta; telling Attorney General Dana Nessel to ask the board to release thousands of pages of Nassar documents; interfering in negotiations between the university and a donor seeking permission to use MSU trademarks. They also found that Vassar and Denno used students to "embarrass and unsettle" interim President Teresa Woodruff and attack Faculty Senate Chairman Jack Lipton.

Vassar says she has been working to improve the top-down culture of MSU and increase transparency and acountability.

"I didn't get to MSU to be a fan, I came for disruption," she told me. "That was my role as a trustee."

Still, there's nothing disruptive about taking free tickets on a private plane and courtside tickets to watch the Spartans play at Madison Square Garden in New York. Vassar now says she would not do it again, but told me "what happened in this space is what was normal or routine behavior by others."

"Thinking that I could move with the freedom and agility of other people on the board was a mistake," said Vassar, who has said she believes she is being targeted because she is a Black female leader, an assertion that doesn't address the fact that Scott, whose accusations launched the investigation, also is a Black woman.

Vassar and her attorneys and I discussed at length her trip to New York with MSU booster Steve St. Andre, one of two donors who funded the university's massive contract to retain then-head football coach Mel Tucker. We talked about how it looks when public officials take free things from fat cats (In a word: "bad"). And we delved into investigators' finding that Vassar ignored the university's March 11, 2023, email warning that accepting private travel from a donor "has the appearance of [influencing the Trustee's decision-making] and could implicitly influence the decision-making."

Vassar swore to me that she never got the email.

"I'm not saying he didn't send it," she said of the university's lawyer. "I'm saying he didn't send it to me."

A day after we spoke, Vassar's attorney, Kevin O'Shea, called to tell me he and Vassar reviewed their records and discovered that Vassar's trip with St. Andre actually occurred on Feb. 4, 2023 — more than a month before the university sent its email warning about free trips. O'Shea said attorneys for Miller & Chevalier and Vassar's own team somehow missed this point when they sat down to discuss the trip that they believe happened on March 23, 2023 — nearly two weeks after MSU attorneys warned about avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest. Again, Miller & Chevalier didn't return my call last week, so I could not ask them how this might change their findings.

Perhaps the most damning finding in the Miller & Chevalier report is that Vassar and Denno, who pride themselves on being the most in touch with students, manipulated students to harass their perceived enemies.

A key piece of evidence came from Palestinian student activist Saba Saed, who told The State News she gave investigators a recording of a meeting with Vassar and Denno.

During the Nov. 1, 2023, meeting, investigators said Vassar and Denno strategized with students before a scheduled meeting with Woodruff. Miller & Chevalier said Vassar urged the students to apply pressure to the administration by working with other groups.

It quotes Vassar as saying: "There's so many other groups that you could partner with to crucify her."

Miller & Chevalier quote Denno as telling students to tell Woodruff they're working with the Black Student Alliance "whether you are or not ... that will terrify her."

Vassar and her legal team have criticized Miller & Chevalier for not releasing the recordings, identifying their sources, or providing transcripts of recordings and interviews. It's a fair criticism, and opens investigators to allegations that they took comments out of context or cherry-picked quotes.

"I think they even lied about the attribution of those quotes," Vassar told me, calling herself an advocate for students.

"I give them the strategies that I would give anyone else," she said, adding that she was not surprised the meeting was recorded because she says that's what activists are trained to do.

Miller & Chevalier said Denno told investigators he didn't recall those comments. In his March 3 statement, Denno wrote: "As to my conversations with students, there are words I used that, when taken out of context, were inappropriate."

Miller & Chevalier's report says: "The recordings literally speak for themselves."

Except they don't, because Miller & Chevalier didn't release them.

Of greater concern may be a transaction that is not in dispute.

Denno flexes his muscle

The Miller & Chevalier report says — and Denno does not dispute — that he contacted university officials to make sure the child of a friend would get the rooming assignment he wanted: "It would be a priority for them and me to be housed together," Denno wrote.

Denno also does not dispute that he asked a university official to connect a friend in business with the MSU Apple Developer Academy — "I want him to see the Academy and hopefully build a relationship with them."

I don't condone that kind of flexing, but it's small beans compared to the July 4, 2023, email Denno sent advising a former boss on how best to get work on a contract through MSU. In an email to former state lawmaker Virgil Smith, for whom Denno had worked as a legislative aide, he offers specific strategies for writing a better proposal.

Miller & Chevalier wrote that Denno's input "constitutes Board overreach" and "also constitutes an appearance of impropriety given Trustee Denno's prior work with the Former Representative, now the recipient of consulting work with the University." They found that Denno violated the university's code of ethics and conflict of interest policy.

Investigators said Denno "initially denied he assisted in defining the scope of the consulting agreement, until confronted with email evidence to the contrary." They said Denno also said the deal was Vassar's idea, but later acknowledged it was really his idea. (Investigators said Vassar denied that it was her idea.)

It will be interesting to see how Spartans and their parents see Denno's role in this deal. Smith resigned from the state Senate in 2016 after cutting a deal with prosecutors to resolve a case that began in 2015 when he fired a rifle in the direction of his ex-wife after she fled his home. The bullets riddled her Mercedes-Benz. Smith was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, use of a firearm while committing a felony, domestic violence and felony malicious destruction of property. He cut a deal requiring him to plead guilty to destruction of property, resign from the Senate and serve 10 months in jail.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Smith, who has had multiple convictions for drunken driving and had plenty of run-ins with the law back when he was a student at Michigan State, would come to campus and begin shooting.

But trust me when I tell you that, as an adjunct professor at MSU with plenty of still-traumatized students and as the parent of a Spartan who was under lockdown on Feb. 13, 2023, that gun violence is still a hot topic on a campus where a deranged man went on a deadly shooting spree four months before Denno tried to help Smith get some of our money.

Where do we go from here?

For the more than $1 million we've spent on the Miller & Chevalier investigations, and the law firms hired to represent trustees under the microscope, we were treated to a little unintentional comedy when investigators concluded that their review uncovered activity that "fell short of the conduct expected of Trustees and fiduciaries of a public institution like MSU."

They recommended "corrective action" for Vassar and Denno that involves referral to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has the power to remove them.

They recommended a censure for Scott, whose airing of the board's dirty laundry included some privileged information.

Miller & Chevalier noted that the board has taken steps to improve the way it interacts with administrators and, presumably, each other. They said board members also have had two meetings with coaching and leadership consultants. But investigators added: "... certain Trustees did not participate in some of these governance or professional development sessions." They did not provide names.

They also call for reviewing guidelines and more training, all of which is well and good and as predictable as Tom Izzo turning red while arguing with a ref.

In the interest of creating positive change and keeping tuition down, I modestly offer the following course corrections:

Don't take free stuff from donors or vendors. Even though you say you're saving us money, the subsequent investigations are costing us a fortune!

Let the people hired to run the university run the university. When they're not doing a good job, tell the rest of us in a calm and professional manner.

Treat each other with respect and, when you find wrongdoing, tell the proper authorities. If they sit on their hands, call me. I work a lot cheaper than Miller & Chevalier.

Miller & Chevalier says at one point in their report that efforts to embarrass the university president "is akin to inviting public embarrassment of the institution itself."

They could not be more wrong, at least about who is most important at Michigan State.

It's not the president.

It's not the Board of Trustees.

It's the students.

So here's some free advice: Knock off all the foolishness and never forget who really matters in East Lansing.

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on X at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: French movie poster says a lot about MSU Board of Trustees