We know that there is a crisis of sexual assault on campus, here and throughout the United States, and that to make our campus and society safe for women, LBGT people, and all of us that we need to challenge rape culture, hold abusers accountable, and support survivors. Sadly, Michigan State University has failed in preventing sexual assault on campus and in supporting survivors. Indeed, the Federal Office of Civil Rights found in its investigation of Michigan State University in the past year that the university had critically and systemically failed in its investigatory and disciplinary practices and in doing so had created a hostile and discriminatory environment. 

In response to this investigation and finding of critical failure, the university has established a new protocol for investigating violations of the Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct policy, which included the creation of an independent Office of Institutional Equity to determine if the RVSM policy was violated and the creation of a new board to administer penalties for violations of the policy. The OIE and disciplinary board both have processes to ensure an unbiased investigation and provide an appeals process.

However, this policy has been systemically undermined by the actions of Denise Maybank, the Vice President for Student Affairs and Services. The RVSM policy empowers the Vice President to adjudicate final appeals of the OIE finding of fact or the disciplinary board's decisions, beyond the appeals that those organizations have also instituted. If we are to have confidence in the infrastructure for investigations and punishments put into place to address the university's civil rights violations, Maybank should rarely have to change any decision. 

But this has not been the case. In one recent case, a person found guilty of sexual assault and whose conviction was upheld in the internal appeals process made a final appeal to Denise Maybank, she not only reviewed the information provided by the investigatory body, but -incredibly- hired her own legal team to re-investigate the entire case, ending with her overturning the conviction. In a recent case, after a student had been found to have sexually harassed two women and after he had been found guilty in a court of law, the disciplinary board recommended expulsion. Yet, in his final appeal Denise Maybank chose to reduce his suspension from an expulsion to a two year suspension because it was his first offense. It is incredible that Maybank not trust the institutions put into place to protect students under federal supervision.

Indeed, Denise Maybank's pattern of overturning the decisions of the Office of Institutional Equity (and its predecessors) and otherwise interfering in the university's established systems destroys the work done to try and make our campus a safer place. It enables rape culture and it serves to make our campus a worse environment for all of us. The Vice President of Student Affairs and Services is not an investigatory position, and as such they should stay in their lane. We ask you to join us in demanding that this power of final appeal be removed from the Vice President and in demanding that Denise Maybank voluntarily relinquish this power.