My old school

April 10, 2023

One Sunday morning about fifty years back, I woke up in my dorm room sick to my stomach, with a bad case of the runs besides. Luckily, the student health service at the University of Michigan was only a few blocks away. The doctor was middle-aged, with a grey brush of a mustache and an easygoing bedside manner. He admitted me to the infirmary and made sure I drank plenty of fluids, and by the next day whatever afflicted me had passed. I saw him again when I caught mono during my junior year.

I’d all but forgotten these unremarkable events until another physician — the man then in charge of the health service and later the doctor for several sports teams — was unmasked as a monstrous sexual predator. I could easily have been among his victims if he’d been on duty that morning. Like many former students, I got the above letter from the university, asking me to come forward if I had anything to report.

Unfortunately, the doctor is just one of a legion of abusers at U-M. The latest case emerged when USA Today published a blood-boiling article about Quinn Moffett, who was allegedly raped by a Michigan football player in 2018 while two others watched. Her life fell apart and ended in an overdose, yet the local police, who learned of the incident after her death in 2021, never tried to question the athletes. The university wouldn’t open a Title IX investigation either. And long before Quinn’s tragedy, a pattern of sexual misconduct took root.

The football team’s star kicker was expelled for such conduct in 2013 but four years passed before authorities acted. A music professor was sentenced to prison for taking a minor across state lines for the purpose of having sex. Another music professor was fired because of his “harassing, abusive and exploitative” behavior with students and was charged with felony sexual assault in Texas. The university provost got canned when investigators found he’d harassed women for over 15 years. Last and definitely not least, the university president who signed the letter I received was dumped by the Board of Regents over an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.

“The Harvard of the Midwest” has always been riddled with institutional arrogance and hypocrisy, and now it’s destroying lives. I still have great memories of my time on campus. But if I had children, especially daughters, my school is the very last place on earth I would ever send them.

Originally published at http://davesswan.wordpress.com on April 10, 2023.

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