EAST LANSING (WXYZ) — Michigan State University officials could have acted sooner to suspend or even terminate head football coach Mel Tucker, according to an attorney who specializes in sexual misconduct litigation, but failed to do so.
Since Sunday, MSU has maintained it was hamstrung to take action against Tucker until next month, when a hearing is scheduled to weigh allegations of sexual misconduct made by Brenda Tracy, an advocate for victims of sexual violence. Tracy made the complaint last December.
Bloomfield Hills attorney Deborah Gordon, who has handled Title IX and relationship violence and sexual misconduct litigation for decades, said MSU’s own policies allowed it to initiate parallel investigations into Tucker’s alleged behavior that could have led to his ouster.
Only yesterday was Tucker suspended without pay.
“This is not a very complicated fact situation. This is very straightforward,” Gordon said. “You have an employee who admitted the conduct of which he is accused. The only question is was it consensual or non-consensual.”
Gordon says MSU’s own Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct policy—or RVSM-- says most investigations should be wrapped up within 90 days of a complaint being filed. That would mean the case against Tucker should have been finished in March. Instead, it has dragged on for more than nine months.
She also says MSU could have launched a separate HR investigation into Tucker while the RVSM investigation was ongoing. Once Tucker admitted to sexually gratifying himself on the phone, Gordon says, it should have triggered a meeting over Tucker’s contract.
“On the contract side, the university can look only at his admission,” Gordon said, adding later: “You admitted doing this. In our opinion, this is a terminable offense. We’re going to let Title IX run its course, and in due time they can decide whether Title IX was violated, if they want to do that.”
MSU says it had reason for allowing the RVSM investigation to run its course. Because the nature of the allegation was sexual, a spokesman says having a trained, trauma-informed investigator handle the case is most sensitive to the victim.
He also said it avoids unnecessarily re-traumatizing the alleged victim by putting her through the same questions with different investigators.
But according to Johanna Kononen, the director of Law and Policy for the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, most victims find the slow pace of Title IX complaints to be the bigger problem.
“Who is this process protecting if I’m making these allegations and providing tons of information and it takes 10 months for anything to happen?” Kononen asked.
The university has said its board and interim president were not aware of the specific details of the claims against Tucker until USA Today broke its story Sunday.
Prior to that, they were only aware that a sexual harassment complaint had been made against Tucker.
Contact 7 Investigator Ross Jones at ross.jones@wxyz.com or at (248) 827-9466.
