Nichols College president on leave amid investigation into past handling of abuse reports

DUDLEY — Nichols College President Glenn Sulmasy is on voluntary leave and the college says it will commission an outside investigation into his time at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

Spectrum News 1 reported Monday that a letter was sent from the college’s board of trustees to alumni announcing Sulmasy's status.

Tuesday morning, a college spokesperson confirmed the news and said that Bill Pieczynski, vice president for advancement, would serve as acting president. The school declined to comment further and would not provide a copy of the letter that was reportedly sent to alumni.

In July, CNN published a story about the Coast Guard’s “most sweeping investigation into sexual assaults at its academy,” in New London, Connecticut, which examined a “disturbing history of rapes, assaults and other misconduct being ignored – and at times – covered up.”

The probe, known as Operation Fouled Anchor, was launched following the allegations of an officer who said she had been sexually assaulted while at the academy in the 1990s, but was “discouraged” by two academic attorneys from “pursuing the issue any further — telling her she should instead focus on her graduation prospects,” the CNN story said.

One of those two academic attorneys, the CNN story said, was Sulmasy, who left the Coast Guard in 2015. He would later work as an administrator at Bryant University before being named president at Nichols in 2021.

Jeffrey S. Robbins, an attorney for Sulmasy, sent the T&G a statement strongly disputing the CNN report.

"In July, CNN published a story claiming that in 2014, a former Coast Guard cadet had told investigators in connection with a general review of the Coast Guard’s internal procedures and historical performance that it was her recollection that in 1997, seventeen years earlier, President Sulmasy had been one of two Coast Guard lawyers with whom she had met at the Coast Guard Academy to discuss her assault by a fellow cadet," the statement said. "That story was not only wrong, but egregiously and demonstrably wrong, among other things because President Sulmasy was not even a lawyer until 1998 and because he was not at the Coast Guard Academy at the time.

"Nevertheless, because it is understandable that the Nichols College Board would want to conduct an investigation into the matter, President Sulmasy offered to voluntarily go on leave while the Board conducts its investigation, which the Board has represented it will conclude promptly. He hopes and expects that the investigation will be concluded in short order and, of course, he is cooperating fully with it."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Nichols College president Glenn Sulmasy on leave after CNN report