There isn’t anything “new” in this post, just a compilation of many things that have already been reported and discussed. The volume of it is sickening. Given this coming Saturday could (and probably should) be the last game Dantonio coaches against UM it is worthwhile to look at his real MSU legacy.
Glen Winston attacks hockey player AJ Sturges without Sturges being able to defend himself. MSU (i.e. the PR side of the athletic department, which is essentially what drives MSU these days) tried to characterize this as a “fight” but it was a surprise attack on someone who had no reason to think he’d be attacked. He didn’t do anything other than walk out of his house.
Dantonio then welcomes Winston back to the team with open arms. After Winston serves almost 4 months in jail he literally goes straight from the jail cell to practice. Think about this. In East Lansing, where the prosecutor’s office is beholden to MSU football and basketball, it takes something absolutely horrific and undeniable for a football player to get jail time (even then they generally find a way to avoid jail). The victim, himself a MSU varsity athlete (though not in football or basketball, so he doesn’t matter), is adamant and out spoken about Winston not being allowed back. Yet Dantonio, with NO phase back period involved (not even MINUTES), brings Winston straight from jail to practice. You couldn’t sky write it any clearer that Dantonio/MSU don’t care at all about victims, nor at all about the safety of MSU students in general, nor at all about doing what is right. The message to MSU football players is clear: if you are good enough and we need you, we’ll go to extreme measures to keep you eligible. You don’t need to be concerned about consequences for your actions. The statement from AJ Sturges in the article below explains the dynamic very clearly. Victims don’t matter to Dantonio or MSU at all. Dantonio did not make Winston even issue an apology. Not even one of those lame apologies clearly written by PR people. No apology at all. Think about that. This is the coach of the football team, the supposed “leader” of young men. Reprehensible.
https://www.mlive.com/spartans/2009/08/msu_hockey_player_aj_sturges_r.html
From the above article:
Coach Mark Dantonio said Winston's reinstatement was approved by athletic director Mark Hollis, who said in a statement it was important to support Winston and Sturges.
At MSU football media day Tuesday, Dantonio reiterated that the incident never should have occurred, apologized to Sturges, his family and the other people hurt during the incident, but said he must support Winston.
This is Sturges' complete statement on the matter:
"My name is A.J. Sturges and this is my statement regarding my assault, injuries and the reinstatement of Glenn Winston to the Michigan State football team. In my opinion, the immediate reinstatement of Glenn Winston to the football team reflects very poorly on Michigan State athletics
"This decision has established weak precedent for future athletes involved in violent crimes.
"Last October, I was assaulted by Glenn Winston. This was not a fight, or a disagreement. I was in bed in my room and came downstairs after hearing the commotion caused by three cars pulling up filled with screaming and violent people.
"I was standing in my front yard trying to figure out what was going on when Glenn Winston punched me in the head from the side. I never saw him. I did not have any chance to protect myself at all. Neither did his other victims.
"That night, I received a fractured skull, five stitches inside my mouth, and a subdural hematoma, or bleeding on the brain. I was not involved in a college fight, as this story is perceived. After having nothing to do with any events that occurred earlier that night, I was attacked in my own house.
"As a hockey player, I know what a fight is. What happened that night was not a fight. What happened was a violent crime. Pure and simple.
"The injury I suffered took away a lot more from me than a season of hockey. I was unable to participate in any form of physical activity for months. I could not join my teammates on the ice until after the season was finished.
"My academics were also compromised. I was forced to drop classes during my recovery due to memory issues and headaches.
"I now look at myself as naive. I believed that the people involved in the assault, and those at MSU charged with handling policy, would do the right thing. They haven't.
"Me and the other victims have not received any form of apology from Glenn Winston. Nothing. He has not acknowledged to us in any way the damage he caused. While this fact remains ignored, I cannot allow myself to believe that his debts have been paid, or even understood.
"While the victims of his actions still recover from what he did, Winston's obligations have been deemed fulfilled by the football program and athletic department. I think his immediate reinstatement after a shortened jail sentence in my opinion is the wrong decision by our athletic program.
"While I hope what happened to me will never happen again, I am afraid the precedent set by this decision will only enable similar incidents in the future. With no formal athletic standards or means to deal with student athletes convicted of a violent crime, this cycle will continue.
"Beyond legal and team issues, there is a simple human obligation of respect and character that still remains unfulfilled. Until that occurs, I question what has been learned.
"After all these months since my injury, and listening to many comments from coaches and administrators, I felt it was fair for me to make my own statement.
"I am speaking my piece with the hope that all Spartan student athletes, including me and Glenn Winston, can learn something from this and maybe live up a to higher standard than the one set by this incident."
John Lewandowski, associate athletic director for athletic communications, said the case is closed as far as the football program is concerned.
"There is no new information in the statement that wasn't already taken into conideration before Winston's reinstatment," Lewandowski said. " We're moving forward and will be issuing no further statements on this matter."
So what does Glen Winston do with the opportunity handed to him from Dantonio? This brings us to the Rather Hall attack. In response to Glen Winston getting into some sort of altercation at an event on a Saturday night, Winston and several teammates planned to get “revenge” the next night by attacking frat members at a fundraising potluck that also had women present who were assaulted by the football players. The players went DIRECTLY from a MSU football team meeting to the potluck. Think about that. This was not a heat of the moment response to something. It was a planned attack by at least 10 football players who feared NO CONSEQUENCES from the coach or university. These were players conditioned to believe that MSU would find a way to keep them eligible and not punish them. They attacked people who had nothing to do with the original altercation. People at a potluck related to community service.
https://statenews.com/article/2009/11/police_mum_regarding_rather_hall_altercation
Excerpts from the article above: Witnesses and students involved in the incident said a group of 15 to 20 men, who some described as MSU football players, stormed into the dormitory and hit and injured about seven students, some of them women.
Brent Mitchell, a communication junior who said he was sent to Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital after being punched in the face, said some of the men wore ski masks, but others were recognized as football team members.
“I walked up and said, ‘It isn’t worth it.’ A guy with dreadlocks hit me and in the scuffle slapped, hit females to get them out of the way,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said members of his fraternity, Iota Phi Theta, had just finished a potluck event and were folding chairs in the lounge when the men entered. The men said they were looking for a man who had been involved in a spat with one of them the night before during an Iota Phi Theta event at The Small Planet, 16800 Chandler Road, Mitchell said.
Mitchell said he was struck after the men realized the person they sought wasn’t there.
Mechanical engineering sophomore Andrew Green said he saw one of the men hit another student on his way out.
“He was coming downstairs and looked at him and punched him in the jaw,” Green said.
Journalism freshman Mitch Lex said he entered the lounge as police arrived. About eight police officers were in the lobby and blood was on the floor, Lex said. Before bystanders were asked to leave, Lex said he saw one injured man.
“There was some medic treating this kid sitting in lounge area,” he said. “It looked like he had a baseball in his cheek.”
Mitchell said, above all, he was upset the event symbolizing the end of a week of community service ended with violence.
“Physically, I’m okay,” he said. “But I’m just saddened that (the event) ended the way it did.”
https://www.mlive.com/spartans/2009/12/report_eight_michigan_state_fo.html
https://www.wilx.com/home/headlines/78456932.html
Beauty of a quote from Lou Anna Simon in the above article regarding the Rather Hall attack: "I worry about Michigan State's reputation every day on lots of dimensions," MSU President Lou Anna Simon said Thursday -- her first public comments on the incident since it first came to light. "You move forward with a great coach and a value statement that's important for the institution," Simon said.
That quote is from 2009. Lou Anna went on to prove that what she really does care about is MSU’s reputation and pretty much nothing else, certainly not people who were harmed. You also see the attitude of “let’s move on” without addressing/fixing the problem. It is all about PR with Lou Anna and MSU. It is baked into the culture. Dantonio has been a big part of setting that culture and keeping that culture intact.
The Dantonio/MSU strategy is to repeat over and over how much integrity Dantonio has (despite clear, strong, and plentiful evidence to the contrary), and to “move on” quickly from events/issues relying on the lap-dog local media to let things go and never dig (the lap-dogs know their access will be cut off if they don’t comply). It has worked really well for them, which is why MSU as a whole tried it with Nasser. That hasn’t worked out so well for them since national media became involved.
Now let’s turn our gaze toward Dantonio and sexual assault.
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/i...on-michigan-state-goes-larry-nassar-case-espn
From the article above:
Since Dantonio's tenure began in 2007, at least 16 MSU football players have been accused of sexual assault or violence against women, according to interviews and public records obtained by Outside the Lines. Even more, Dantonio was said to be involved in handling the discipline in at least one of the cases several years ago.
Yet former Michigan State sexual assault counselor Lauren Allswede, who left the university in 2015 over frustrations about how administrators handled sexual assault cases, told Outside the Lines that MSU administrators' entire approach to such cases has been misguided for years. The biggest issue? Complaints involving athletes were routinely investigated and handled by athletic director Hollis' department, and sometimes even coaches, she says.
"Whatever protocol or policy was in place, whatever frontline staff might normally be involved in response or investigation, it all got kind of swept away and it was handled more by administration [and] athletic department officials," says Allswede, who worked at MSU for seven years. "It was all happening behind closed doors. ... None of it was transparent or included people who would normally be involved in certain decisions."
Allswede told Outside the Lines that about seven years ago, an attorney from the university's general counsel's department came to her office to try to reassure her that coaches were taking allegations of sexual violence seriously. Allswede says the attorney told her how Dantonio, the football coach, had dealt with a sexual assault accusation against one of his players: He had the player talk to his mother about what he had done.
"That did not reassure me at all," Allswede says. "There's no guarantee that that had any effect, any help, whatever."
THE CRIMINAL SEXUAL assault charges against the football players that Dantonio addressed at the news conference in June stemmed from two incidents: A January 2017 report by a female Michigan State student who told police she was dragged into a bathroom during a party and forced to perform oral sex on three football players; and an April report that a defensive end had sexually assaulted a woman at her apartment, for which he was charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct. All four players were kicked off the football team and dismissed from the university.
"We had one incident that involved three people. We had another incident that involved one. We have 120 players usually on our football team," Dantonio told reporters, again emphasizing the time span of 11 years.
The previously unreported cases that Outside the Lines discovered include three reports of physical violence and three reported sexual assaults by football players. Each was investigated by campus police.
The reports that involve the football team:
· On Aug. 31, 2009, campus police responded to a domestic dispute involving a junior offensive tackle and his girlfriend in which each accused the other of destructive and violent behavior. The woman admitted to police vandalizing some of his belongings, and he admitted to trying to drag her out of her car, during which she said he removed her left shoe and began to bend her foot down "like he was trying to break it." Both declined to pursue charges.
· On Dec. 18, 2009, a woman told campus police that her boyfriend, a freshman defensive lineman, shoved her up against the wall of an elevator, pushed her to the ground, kicked her in the torso and punched her in the collarbone and under her left eye after she smacked him in the face. The football player told police he had been trying to restrain her while she tried to hit him, and he never kicked or struck her. Prosecutors dropped the case after the woman declined to press charges.
· On Jan. 17, 2010, a woman told campus police that a freshman wide receiver and another football player had raped her in November 2009, prompting her to start drinking excessively and become suicidal. She said she went to the players' dorm room after a fraternity party, and the players took off her clothes and began kissing her, to which she consented. They asked her to perform oral sex on them, but she refused. She told police that when she decided to leave and bent over to put her pants on, she was raped. The players said the sex was consensual and that they took her home as soon she said she wanted to leave. Court records show no charges were filed.
· On Aug. 31, 2013, a woman told campus police that a freshman running back grabbed her with both hands around her arms and slammed her up against a wall after she asked him to say "please" when he told her to take her feet off a chair in his dorm room. The woman had a scrape on her left elbow and on the upper side of her left buttock. The football player told police he had pushed her but never grabbed or threw her up against a wall. The woman told police she only wanted him to apologize, which he did in an officer's presence, and no charges were filed.
· On Oct. 29, 2013, a woman told campus police that she became extremely intoxicated at a party the night before, came back to her dorm room and passed out on her bed. The report states, "the next time she woke up, she was having her pants and legs tugged on by" a freshman football player. She said he "inserted his penis into her vagina" and "would stop and sometimes insert his penis into her mouth then return to vaginal intercourse," to which she said she did not consent. The player told police, "at no time did [the woman] tell him to stop." The woman texted him the next morning expressing regret, he told police. The woman told campus police that she did not want to seek criminal prosecution but did want to report the incident to Michigan State judicial services. No criminal charges were filed.
· In May 2014, the parents of a deceased Michigan State student filed a report with campus police after they found a notebook from one of their daughter's therapy sessions. The writings detailed a 2007 gang rape that named four football players. Detectives started what would become a monthslong investigation involving multiple records, analysis and interviews. In June 2015, campus police sent its report to the Ingham County prosecutor's office, which declined to file charges against any of the players, noting that the woman's writings could not be used as evidence and investigators were unable to independently corroborate her claims.
Allswede, whose former office worked with students who reported assaults, told Outside the Lines she is not familiar with any of the sexual assault reports discovered in the police documents but that does not mean they had not been reported. She says she counseled at least five women who reported being sexually assaulted by male student-athletes and was aware, via her colleagues, of possibly 10 others. She said she suspected even more, especially cases in which the person reporting the assault was also a student-athlete, because of the practice of the athletic department to keep such issues in-house.
"As a Big Ten university with high-profile football, basketball and hockey programs, they want to protect the integrity of the programs -- don't want scandal, don't want sexual assault allegations, or domestic violence allegations," Allswede says. "None of it was transparent. It was very insulated, and people were a lot of times discouraged from seeking resources outside of the athletic department.
"I think that the athletic department wanted to keep control over that information."
Think about what Lauren Allswede stated. She is NOT familiar with ANY of the specific incidents ESPN uncovered, BUT she knew of at least 5 MORE, heard of others from her colleagues AND suspected more BECAUSE of the practice of the Athletic Department to keep these things in house and not with authorities. Victims were discouraged from seeking resources outside of the…..ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT. Think about that. The Athletic Department, which cares only about football and basketball get to “handle” situations that could make those programs look bad and/or force players off the team. How many more victims of this SICK culture are out there? The culture of enabling so football and basketball players can stay eligible. The football and basketball players felt completely emboldened to do whatever they wanted to do. Why wouldn’t they? They are very aware of what the athletic department at MSU does to protect them.
The 2017 gang rape by 3 spartan football players and the rape by Auston Robertson shortly thereafter have been in the news more recently but still warrant some attention. These are players who think they can do anything they want whenever they want. That is the culture set by the coach and athletic department at MSU. Robertson should never have been recruited. It was Dantonio’s decision alone to take him on (against the recommendation of his assistants, of Hollis, and of the HS principal and coach). A decision he won’t take responsibility for publicly. He graduated cum laude from the “Lou Anna Simon School for Shirking Responsibility”. Tom Izzo also graduated from that school with a major in “Blaming everyone around other than myself”, but that is a whole story unto itself.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news...y-demetric-vance-charged-in-sex-assault-case/
https://statenews.com/article/2018/...-auston-robertson-sentenced-to-up-to-10-years
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/s...-robertson-michigan-state-recruit/2378486001/
So how much does Dantonio care about the safety of MSU students? It is pretty clear from the recruitment of Robertson that Mark has NO concern for the safety of students at MSU. It also is very clear that Dantonio doesn’t want to take ANY responsibility regarding his decision to recruit Robertson. He hasn’t stood up and said it was his decision. He make Blackwell the fall guy. Are those the actions of a leader? Of someone with integrity? Someone with integrity would not have recruited Robertson in the first place. Here are excerpts from the article linked above:
"Ron Burton looked at me," Blackwell said in his deposition, which was given under oath. "I mean, what he said to Coach Dantonio and Dave, 'Like I have a daughter on that campus and I wouldn't feel comfortable with Auston Robertson being on campus with my daughter."
Robertson eventually came to Michigan State, despite previous sexual misconduct claims in his home state of Indiana, as well as being kicked off his high school football team and being barred from stepping foot on his high-school campus during his senior year in Fort Wayne.
Blackwell, in his deposition, also accuses Dantonio of working with the academic office to get Robertson admitted, despite a substandard academic record.
At the time of Robertson's signing, Dantonio said he had earned his opportunity at Michigan State, despite Blackwell saying in his deposition that several people from Robertson's high school in Indiana, including the principal, had warned Michigan State against Robertson's recruitment. By the time Robertson announced Michigan State as his choice, several major colleges had already backed away from him.
It was in an on-campus meeting when Blackwell, Burton and Warner all gave recommendations to steer clear of Robertson, Blackwell said. The meeting began with 30 to 40 staffers, Blackwell said, before Dantonio cleared the room of just himself, Blackwell, Burton and Warner. Each spoke for several minutes making their case on Robertson's recruitment. The three recommended passing on Robertson.
"All of these red flags started coming up," Blackwell said in his deposition. "He would be a horrible fit for a college campus."
"He overrode everyone else," Blackwell said of Dantonio.
Dantonio’s finger prints are all over the brutal attack on AJ Sturgis, the Rather Hall attack, and numerous rapes that have occurred at MSU. That is his real legacy at MSU. A culture of enabling violence and one completely devoid of integrity. The numerous victims and their families are going to be dealing with the fall out of Dantonio’s legacy for the remainder of their lives. I’ll end this post with some tweets from the mom of a victim of an MSU football gang rape:
Glen Winston attacks hockey player AJ Sturges without Sturges being able to defend himself. MSU (i.e. the PR side of the athletic department, which is essentially what drives MSU these days) tried to characterize this as a “fight” but it was a surprise attack on someone who had no reason to think he’d be attacked. He didn’t do anything other than walk out of his house.
Dantonio then welcomes Winston back to the team with open arms. After Winston serves almost 4 months in jail he literally goes straight from the jail cell to practice. Think about this. In East Lansing, where the prosecutor’s office is beholden to MSU football and basketball, it takes something absolutely horrific and undeniable for a football player to get jail time (even then they generally find a way to avoid jail). The victim, himself a MSU varsity athlete (though not in football or basketball, so he doesn’t matter), is adamant and out spoken about Winston not being allowed back. Yet Dantonio, with NO phase back period involved (not even MINUTES), brings Winston straight from jail to practice. You couldn’t sky write it any clearer that Dantonio/MSU don’t care at all about victims, nor at all about the safety of MSU students in general, nor at all about doing what is right. The message to MSU football players is clear: if you are good enough and we need you, we’ll go to extreme measures to keep you eligible. You don’t need to be concerned about consequences for your actions. The statement from AJ Sturges in the article below explains the dynamic very clearly. Victims don’t matter to Dantonio or MSU at all. Dantonio did not make Winston even issue an apology. Not even one of those lame apologies clearly written by PR people. No apology at all. Think about that. This is the coach of the football team, the supposed “leader” of young men. Reprehensible.
https://www.mlive.com/spartans/2009/08/msu_hockey_player_aj_sturges_r.html
From the above article:
Coach Mark Dantonio said Winston's reinstatement was approved by athletic director Mark Hollis, who said in a statement it was important to support Winston and Sturges.
At MSU football media day Tuesday, Dantonio reiterated that the incident never should have occurred, apologized to Sturges, his family and the other people hurt during the incident, but said he must support Winston.
This is Sturges' complete statement on the matter:
"My name is A.J. Sturges and this is my statement regarding my assault, injuries and the reinstatement of Glenn Winston to the Michigan State football team. In my opinion, the immediate reinstatement of Glenn Winston to the football team reflects very poorly on Michigan State athletics
"This decision has established weak precedent for future athletes involved in violent crimes.
"Last October, I was assaulted by Glenn Winston. This was not a fight, or a disagreement. I was in bed in my room and came downstairs after hearing the commotion caused by three cars pulling up filled with screaming and violent people.
"I was standing in my front yard trying to figure out what was going on when Glenn Winston punched me in the head from the side. I never saw him. I did not have any chance to protect myself at all. Neither did his other victims.
"That night, I received a fractured skull, five stitches inside my mouth, and a subdural hematoma, or bleeding on the brain. I was not involved in a college fight, as this story is perceived. After having nothing to do with any events that occurred earlier that night, I was attacked in my own house.
"As a hockey player, I know what a fight is. What happened that night was not a fight. What happened was a violent crime. Pure and simple.
"The injury I suffered took away a lot more from me than a season of hockey. I was unable to participate in any form of physical activity for months. I could not join my teammates on the ice until after the season was finished.
"My academics were also compromised. I was forced to drop classes during my recovery due to memory issues and headaches.
"I now look at myself as naive. I believed that the people involved in the assault, and those at MSU charged with handling policy, would do the right thing. They haven't.
"Me and the other victims have not received any form of apology from Glenn Winston. Nothing. He has not acknowledged to us in any way the damage he caused. While this fact remains ignored, I cannot allow myself to believe that his debts have been paid, or even understood.
"While the victims of his actions still recover from what he did, Winston's obligations have been deemed fulfilled by the football program and athletic department. I think his immediate reinstatement after a shortened jail sentence in my opinion is the wrong decision by our athletic program.
"While I hope what happened to me will never happen again, I am afraid the precedent set by this decision will only enable similar incidents in the future. With no formal athletic standards or means to deal with student athletes convicted of a violent crime, this cycle will continue.
"Beyond legal and team issues, there is a simple human obligation of respect and character that still remains unfulfilled. Until that occurs, I question what has been learned.
"After all these months since my injury, and listening to many comments from coaches and administrators, I felt it was fair for me to make my own statement.
"I am speaking my piece with the hope that all Spartan student athletes, including me and Glenn Winston, can learn something from this and maybe live up a to higher standard than the one set by this incident."
John Lewandowski, associate athletic director for athletic communications, said the case is closed as far as the football program is concerned.
"There is no new information in the statement that wasn't already taken into conideration before Winston's reinstatment," Lewandowski said. " We're moving forward and will be issuing no further statements on this matter."
So what does Glen Winston do with the opportunity handed to him from Dantonio? This brings us to the Rather Hall attack. In response to Glen Winston getting into some sort of altercation at an event on a Saturday night, Winston and several teammates planned to get “revenge” the next night by attacking frat members at a fundraising potluck that also had women present who were assaulted by the football players. The players went DIRECTLY from a MSU football team meeting to the potluck. Think about that. This was not a heat of the moment response to something. It was a planned attack by at least 10 football players who feared NO CONSEQUENCES from the coach or university. These were players conditioned to believe that MSU would find a way to keep them eligible and not punish them. They attacked people who had nothing to do with the original altercation. People at a potluck related to community service.
https://statenews.com/article/2009/11/police_mum_regarding_rather_hall_altercation
Excerpts from the article above: Witnesses and students involved in the incident said a group of 15 to 20 men, who some described as MSU football players, stormed into the dormitory and hit and injured about seven students, some of them women.
Brent Mitchell, a communication junior who said he was sent to Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital after being punched in the face, said some of the men wore ski masks, but others were recognized as football team members.
“I walked up and said, ‘It isn’t worth it.’ A guy with dreadlocks hit me and in the scuffle slapped, hit females to get them out of the way,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said members of his fraternity, Iota Phi Theta, had just finished a potluck event and were folding chairs in the lounge when the men entered. The men said they were looking for a man who had been involved in a spat with one of them the night before during an Iota Phi Theta event at The Small Planet, 16800 Chandler Road, Mitchell said.
Mitchell said he was struck after the men realized the person they sought wasn’t there.
Mechanical engineering sophomore Andrew Green said he saw one of the men hit another student on his way out.
“He was coming downstairs and looked at him and punched him in the jaw,” Green said.
Journalism freshman Mitch Lex said he entered the lounge as police arrived. About eight police officers were in the lobby and blood was on the floor, Lex said. Before bystanders were asked to leave, Lex said he saw one injured man.
“There was some medic treating this kid sitting in lounge area,” he said. “It looked like he had a baseball in his cheek.”
Mitchell said, above all, he was upset the event symbolizing the end of a week of community service ended with violence.
“Physically, I’m okay,” he said. “But I’m just saddened that (the event) ended the way it did.”
https://www.mlive.com/spartans/2009/12/report_eight_michigan_state_fo.html
https://www.wilx.com/home/headlines/78456932.html
Beauty of a quote from Lou Anna Simon in the above article regarding the Rather Hall attack: "I worry about Michigan State's reputation every day on lots of dimensions," MSU President Lou Anna Simon said Thursday -- her first public comments on the incident since it first came to light. "You move forward with a great coach and a value statement that's important for the institution," Simon said.
That quote is from 2009. Lou Anna went on to prove that what she really does care about is MSU’s reputation and pretty much nothing else, certainly not people who were harmed. You also see the attitude of “let’s move on” without addressing/fixing the problem. It is all about PR with Lou Anna and MSU. It is baked into the culture. Dantonio has been a big part of setting that culture and keeping that culture intact.
The Dantonio/MSU strategy is to repeat over and over how much integrity Dantonio has (despite clear, strong, and plentiful evidence to the contrary), and to “move on” quickly from events/issues relying on the lap-dog local media to let things go and never dig (the lap-dogs know their access will be cut off if they don’t comply). It has worked really well for them, which is why MSU as a whole tried it with Nasser. That hasn’t worked out so well for them since national media became involved.
Now let’s turn our gaze toward Dantonio and sexual assault.
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/i...on-michigan-state-goes-larry-nassar-case-espn
From the article above:
Since Dantonio's tenure began in 2007, at least 16 MSU football players have been accused of sexual assault or violence against women, according to interviews and public records obtained by Outside the Lines. Even more, Dantonio was said to be involved in handling the discipline in at least one of the cases several years ago.
Yet former Michigan State sexual assault counselor Lauren Allswede, who left the university in 2015 over frustrations about how administrators handled sexual assault cases, told Outside the Lines that MSU administrators' entire approach to such cases has been misguided for years. The biggest issue? Complaints involving athletes were routinely investigated and handled by athletic director Hollis' department, and sometimes even coaches, she says.
"Whatever protocol or policy was in place, whatever frontline staff might normally be involved in response or investigation, it all got kind of swept away and it was handled more by administration [and] athletic department officials," says Allswede, who worked at MSU for seven years. "It was all happening behind closed doors. ... None of it was transparent or included people who would normally be involved in certain decisions."
Allswede told Outside the Lines that about seven years ago, an attorney from the university's general counsel's department came to her office to try to reassure her that coaches were taking allegations of sexual violence seriously. Allswede says the attorney told her how Dantonio, the football coach, had dealt with a sexual assault accusation against one of his players: He had the player talk to his mother about what he had done.
"That did not reassure me at all," Allswede says. "There's no guarantee that that had any effect, any help, whatever."
THE CRIMINAL SEXUAL assault charges against the football players that Dantonio addressed at the news conference in June stemmed from two incidents: A January 2017 report by a female Michigan State student who told police she was dragged into a bathroom during a party and forced to perform oral sex on three football players; and an April report that a defensive end had sexually assaulted a woman at her apartment, for which he was charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct. All four players were kicked off the football team and dismissed from the university.
"We had one incident that involved three people. We had another incident that involved one. We have 120 players usually on our football team," Dantonio told reporters, again emphasizing the time span of 11 years.
The previously unreported cases that Outside the Lines discovered include three reports of physical violence and three reported sexual assaults by football players. Each was investigated by campus police.
The reports that involve the football team:
· On Aug. 31, 2009, campus police responded to a domestic dispute involving a junior offensive tackle and his girlfriend in which each accused the other of destructive and violent behavior. The woman admitted to police vandalizing some of his belongings, and he admitted to trying to drag her out of her car, during which she said he removed her left shoe and began to bend her foot down "like he was trying to break it." Both declined to pursue charges.
· On Dec. 18, 2009, a woman told campus police that her boyfriend, a freshman defensive lineman, shoved her up against the wall of an elevator, pushed her to the ground, kicked her in the torso and punched her in the collarbone and under her left eye after she smacked him in the face. The football player told police he had been trying to restrain her while she tried to hit him, and he never kicked or struck her. Prosecutors dropped the case after the woman declined to press charges.
· On Jan. 17, 2010, a woman told campus police that a freshman wide receiver and another football player had raped her in November 2009, prompting her to start drinking excessively and become suicidal. She said she went to the players' dorm room after a fraternity party, and the players took off her clothes and began kissing her, to which she consented. They asked her to perform oral sex on them, but she refused. She told police that when she decided to leave and bent over to put her pants on, she was raped. The players said the sex was consensual and that they took her home as soon she said she wanted to leave. Court records show no charges were filed.
· On Aug. 31, 2013, a woman told campus police that a freshman running back grabbed her with both hands around her arms and slammed her up against a wall after she asked him to say "please" when he told her to take her feet off a chair in his dorm room. The woman had a scrape on her left elbow and on the upper side of her left buttock. The football player told police he had pushed her but never grabbed or threw her up against a wall. The woman told police she only wanted him to apologize, which he did in an officer's presence, and no charges were filed.
· On Oct. 29, 2013, a woman told campus police that she became extremely intoxicated at a party the night before, came back to her dorm room and passed out on her bed. The report states, "the next time she woke up, she was having her pants and legs tugged on by" a freshman football player. She said he "inserted his penis into her vagina" and "would stop and sometimes insert his penis into her mouth then return to vaginal intercourse," to which she said she did not consent. The player told police, "at no time did [the woman] tell him to stop." The woman texted him the next morning expressing regret, he told police. The woman told campus police that she did not want to seek criminal prosecution but did want to report the incident to Michigan State judicial services. No criminal charges were filed.
· In May 2014, the parents of a deceased Michigan State student filed a report with campus police after they found a notebook from one of their daughter's therapy sessions. The writings detailed a 2007 gang rape that named four football players. Detectives started what would become a monthslong investigation involving multiple records, analysis and interviews. In June 2015, campus police sent its report to the Ingham County prosecutor's office, which declined to file charges against any of the players, noting that the woman's writings could not be used as evidence and investigators were unable to independently corroborate her claims.
Allswede, whose former office worked with students who reported assaults, told Outside the Lines she is not familiar with any of the sexual assault reports discovered in the police documents but that does not mean they had not been reported. She says she counseled at least five women who reported being sexually assaulted by male student-athletes and was aware, via her colleagues, of possibly 10 others. She said she suspected even more, especially cases in which the person reporting the assault was also a student-athlete, because of the practice of the athletic department to keep such issues in-house.
"As a Big Ten university with high-profile football, basketball and hockey programs, they want to protect the integrity of the programs -- don't want scandal, don't want sexual assault allegations, or domestic violence allegations," Allswede says. "None of it was transparent. It was very insulated, and people were a lot of times discouraged from seeking resources outside of the athletic department.
"I think that the athletic department wanted to keep control over that information."
Think about what Lauren Allswede stated. She is NOT familiar with ANY of the specific incidents ESPN uncovered, BUT she knew of at least 5 MORE, heard of others from her colleagues AND suspected more BECAUSE of the practice of the Athletic Department to keep these things in house and not with authorities. Victims were discouraged from seeking resources outside of the…..ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT. Think about that. The Athletic Department, which cares only about football and basketball get to “handle” situations that could make those programs look bad and/or force players off the team. How many more victims of this SICK culture are out there? The culture of enabling so football and basketball players can stay eligible. The football and basketball players felt completely emboldened to do whatever they wanted to do. Why wouldn’t they? They are very aware of what the athletic department at MSU does to protect them.
The 2017 gang rape by 3 spartan football players and the rape by Auston Robertson shortly thereafter have been in the news more recently but still warrant some attention. These are players who think they can do anything they want whenever they want. That is the culture set by the coach and athletic department at MSU. Robertson should never have been recruited. It was Dantonio’s decision alone to take him on (against the recommendation of his assistants, of Hollis, and of the HS principal and coach). A decision he won’t take responsibility for publicly. He graduated cum laude from the “Lou Anna Simon School for Shirking Responsibility”. Tom Izzo also graduated from that school with a major in “Blaming everyone around other than myself”, but that is a whole story unto itself.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news...y-demetric-vance-charged-in-sex-assault-case/
https://statenews.com/article/2018/...-auston-robertson-sentenced-to-up-to-10-years
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/s...-robertson-michigan-state-recruit/2378486001/
So how much does Dantonio care about the safety of MSU students? It is pretty clear from the recruitment of Robertson that Mark has NO concern for the safety of students at MSU. It also is very clear that Dantonio doesn’t want to take ANY responsibility regarding his decision to recruit Robertson. He hasn’t stood up and said it was his decision. He make Blackwell the fall guy. Are those the actions of a leader? Of someone with integrity? Someone with integrity would not have recruited Robertson in the first place. Here are excerpts from the article linked above:
"Ron Burton looked at me," Blackwell said in his deposition, which was given under oath. "I mean, what he said to Coach Dantonio and Dave, 'Like I have a daughter on that campus and I wouldn't feel comfortable with Auston Robertson being on campus with my daughter."
Robertson eventually came to Michigan State, despite previous sexual misconduct claims in his home state of Indiana, as well as being kicked off his high school football team and being barred from stepping foot on his high-school campus during his senior year in Fort Wayne.
Blackwell, in his deposition, also accuses Dantonio of working with the academic office to get Robertson admitted, despite a substandard academic record.
At the time of Robertson's signing, Dantonio said he had earned his opportunity at Michigan State, despite Blackwell saying in his deposition that several people from Robertson's high school in Indiana, including the principal, had warned Michigan State against Robertson's recruitment. By the time Robertson announced Michigan State as his choice, several major colleges had already backed away from him.
It was in an on-campus meeting when Blackwell, Burton and Warner all gave recommendations to steer clear of Robertson, Blackwell said. The meeting began with 30 to 40 staffers, Blackwell said, before Dantonio cleared the room of just himself, Blackwell, Burton and Warner. Each spoke for several minutes making their case on Robertson's recruitment. The three recommended passing on Robertson.
"All of these red flags started coming up," Blackwell said in his deposition. "He would be a horrible fit for a college campus."
"He overrode everyone else," Blackwell said of Dantonio.
Dantonio’s finger prints are all over the brutal attack on AJ Sturgis, the Rather Hall attack, and numerous rapes that have occurred at MSU. That is his real legacy at MSU. A culture of enabling violence and one completely devoid of integrity. The numerous victims and their families are going to be dealing with the fall out of Dantonio’s legacy for the remainder of their lives. I’ll end this post with some tweets from the mom of a victim of an MSU football gang rape:
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