Remember how a student was raped and murdered in her dorm room at Eastern Michigan University last fall, and how the university administration didn’t bother to tell her parents or the other students for several months?
YPSILANTI, Michigan (AP) — Three Eastern Michigan University administrators, including the president, have been forced out, months after top school officials were accused of covering up the rape and slaying of a student by publicly ruling out foul play.
President John Fallon was fired, and Vice President of Student Affairs Jim Vick and Public Safety Director Cindy Hall lost their jobs at the 23,500-student public university, the chairman of the school’s governing board said Monday.
Board of Regents Chairman Thomas Sidlik also said the board would put a letter of discipline in the file of university attorney Kenneth McKanders.
The body of the slain student, Laura Dickinson, 22, was discovered December 15 in her dorm room. At the time, university officials told her parents and the media that she died of asphyxiation but that there was no sign of foul play, despite evidence to the contrary.
It was not until another Eastern student, Orange Taylor III, was arrested in late February and charged with murder that her family and students learned she had been raped and killed. Taylor has pleaded not guilty to murder and criminal sexual conduct charges in Dickinson’s death, and is scheduled for trial Oct. 15.
So not only did they cover up the fact that she was raped and murdered in her dorm room (and I don’t recall if she had a roommate, but just imagine finding your roommate dead, and then finding out more than two months later that she’d been raped and murdered by another student — likely someone you knew and continued to interact with during that time). According to an earlier report, Dickinson was found partially clothed, with a pillow over her head, on the floor of her room.
University officials told her parents and other students that Dickinson had died of asphyxiation — I guess that pillow just up and attacked her one day.
The coverup was pretty damn bad, and in violation of federal law, according to an independent report commissioned by the university’s Board of Regents:
The report is especially critical of Jim Vick, vice president for student affairs, and Cindy Hall, public safety director. It says both knew within hours of the discovery of Dickinson’s body that it may be a homicide. But both chose to continue to call the case a “death investigation” rather than a “homicide investigation” throughout the course of the two-month investigation, the report states.
The report also says that Vick at one point directed the shredding of an initial police report that typically makes its way to campus attorneys for review. The report says attorneys likely would have been alerted to the seriousness of the criminal probe and would have advised that the campus community be warned according to the federal Clery Act, which requires institutions to give timely warnings of incidents that represent a threat to campus.
I know I was critical of the several-hours delay in warning students during the Virginia Tech shooting (a stance that many disagreed with me about), but this really takes the cake. And the reason for the coverup?
Tension between faculty and administrators. Contract negotiations. Cost overruns on a new house for the University president. Reduced recruiting.
Well, congratulations, folks — your coverup just hurt EMU’s reputation far more than a frank acknowledgement would have done. Heckuva job!
H/T: Thomas and Julia.
Hi, I was pointed over here from Feministe, and what a surprise to see a post about EMU as soon as the page loads!
I’m a student at Eastern, and I’ve been trying to keep track of everything that’s been going on here for the past several months.
To clarify, no, Laura Dickenson didn’t have a roommate. The building she was in consists entirely of single rooms set up into suites, were two students share a bathroom, and the bathroom doors between the rooms can be locked.
The backlash against the university has been intense in the past couple of months; I only wish our top people had been a little smarter about handling this mess. It’s a good school.
I used to be a student at EMU, and I still live in the area, and this whole thing has been tremendously upsetting. This has put such a huge black mark on the school. Which is sad, because, as kayla says, it’s actually a good school. The instructors are fantastic, but the upper administration is just awful.
This isn’t the first time the admin have tried to cover up a crime on campus, either. They were in danger of violating the Clery Act over a rape case last year, too, but several teachers and students raised such a ruckus about it, and alerted the media, so they had to take action.
I really hope that the school can recover from this- it’s a shame that the students and teachers have to suffer because of the actions of a administration.
This story is beyond amazing. A much more reasonable cause for outrage than the heckling of Minutemen.
Zuzu, did you move? This place is new to me. Great name.
Yep, Roy, I just started it up a few days ago.
And this *is* an amazing story. What if this student had killed someone else? Clearly, they were willing to cover up previous crimes until they got busted by the faculty; apparently, the lesson they learned wasn’t “get out ahead of the story,” but “don’t let anyone *at all* know about the crime so you won’t have embarrassing calls to action.”
Zuzu:
Yeah, that does seem to be the “lesson” learned, doesn’t it? And this is on top of the actual crime itself, the strike, and all the other debacles that have occured in the past few years.
But, thankfully, things are going down within the administration. I just hope we have more of a change than simply “fire them!”
The guy who’s been charged (his trial’s in october, i believe?), had been picked up before for breaking and entering some of the campus building. So he already had a bit of a previous record, at least at EMU. But rape and murder is far beyond b&e.
Argh. *headdesk* I love this university, but things that happen, and the people in charge!
What kills me is that the people who were fired still won’t admit they did anything wrong!
Good luck with this blog, Zuzu. Looks good.
Cool new digs, Zuzu, and ditto on the fine name, as Gaeilge.
We will never really know the truth about why EMU made the decision it did about the murder of Laura. Those who are the top will privately tell you that the Ypsilanti Police and the State Police gave the University bad advice about keeping things quiet so the perp would not run. Then the thought keeps going through my mind about the possibility that Orange Taylor could get off. The cops and the medical examiner and the prosecutors screwed up the first trial.