A year later, Whitmer silent on MSU board's request to remove 2 trustees for misconduct
EAST LANSING ― A year after she was asked to remove two Michigan State University trustees for misconduct that included accepting free flights and courtside tickets from donors and trying to change the findings of an investigation into the 2023 mass shooting on campus, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer hasn't taken any public action.
In the meantime, the restrictions placed on March 3, 2024, on Trustees Rema Vassar, D-Detroit, and Dennis Denno, D-East Lansing, expired on Dec. 31.
Both sought and were granted seats on the board committee for academic affairs and the board committee on budget and finance in January. They had been prohibited from serving on committees and stripped of liaison positions when they were censured by their fellow trustees in March.
Despite their return to previously-held responsibilities, and board Chair Kelly Tebay telling the State Journal she felt the board wanted to move on and present a united front behind President Kevin Guskiewicz, the request to remove Vassar and Denno is still active. Guskiewicz started at MSU as president in March 2024.
In October, Danny Wimmer, press secretary for Attorney General Dana Nessel, confirmed Whitmer's office reached out to Nessel's office to review the request.
Stacey LaRouche, press secretary for Whitmer, didn't respond to multiple requests in recent weeks about the status of the board's request to the governor.
Wimmer did not respond to an inquiry Wednesday about whether Nessel was still reviewing Whitmer's request.
Whitmer and Nessel, like Vassar and Denno, are all members of the Democratic party.
Asked about the pending board request to Whitmer, Denno said the referral was a "non-issue" and that "no one thinks about it anymore." He added that he was excited to be back on board committees.
Vassar did not respond to a message left seeking comment.
Former Faculty Senate Chair Jack Lipton has been advocating for the two to be removed, believing they encouraged students to attack him and label him a racist. He sued the board in October for retaliation, and the lawsuit is pending.
"Since we haven't heard anything from the governor in so long, we were hoping a creative solution through the court system could put pressure on the university to make the right decisions," Liz Abdnour, Lipton's Lansing-based attorney, told the State Journal in October.
In October 2023, now-Vice Chair Brianna Scott sent a letter to her fellow trustees and local media, detailing 10 allegations against then-Chair Vassar's misconduct and bullying. The letter sparked an investigation into Vassar's behavior, for which MSU hired Washington D.C.-based law firm Miller & Chevalier. That investigation later expanded to cover allegations of misconduct by Denno and other trustees.
The investigation, which MSU has spent $2 million on, found evidence to support some, but not all, of Scott's original allegations.
The law firm found evidence Denno tried to get the who analyzed MSU's response to the mass shooting to change their findings after the report criticized the trustees' response.
Vassar also accepted courtside tickets and a private jet flight from a donor for her and her daughter to attend a basketball game.
Both trustees acted outside the authority of their roles, investigators found, as well as evidence that both Vassar and Denno attempted to "embarrass and unsettle" former interim President Teresa Woodruff and attack Lipton.
Miller & Chevalier concluded its report with several recommendations, including that the two trustees be referred to Whitmer so she could consider removing them. The board also censured Scott for making her allegations public.
Vassar and Denno have maintained that Miller & Chevalier's investigation was incomplete and misleading.
"I refute most of the allegations in the Miller & Chevalier (MC) report," Denno said in an email to the State Journal last year. "I will accept a censure but contest any other form of punishment. What has been proposed is overly-punitive in nature."
Through her attorneys, paid for by MSU, Vassar released a statement calling the report 'profoundly flawed.' She is involved in a dispute with the university over legal fees for attorneys MSU hired on her behalf.
Whitmer has used strong language previously to describe the turmoil. In October 2023, the governor called the allegations against Vassar "deeply concerning."
"I'm taking it very seriously," Whitmer said during a news media scrum. "I think the allegations, if accurate, amount to a serious breach of conduct in what we expect of our board members and ... the oath that they took."
Whitmer has the sole authority to remove the trustees as governor. MSU's trustees, along with the University of Michigan's Board of Regents and Wayne State University's Board of Governors, are the only college governing bodies whose members are elected in statewide elections in Michigan, and as elected officials the only person who can remove them is the governor.
In 2020 Vassar was elected with over 2.3 million votes and in 2022, Denno was elected with 1.9 million votes, according to records from the Michigan Secretary of State.
Eric Lupher, president of the Livonia-based nonprofit public affairs research organization Citizens Research Council, told the State Journal last year that a governor removing an elected official in Michigan was so rare there was no defined process.
The last high-profile effort to remove an elected official by a Michigan governor was over a decade ago, Lupher said. And the elected official in question, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, resigned before Gov. Jennifer Granholm could announce a decision.
Contact Sarah Atwood at satwood@lsj.com. Follow her on X @sarahmatwood.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: A year later, Whitmer mum on MSU board's request to remove 2 trustees
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