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.
Recent Comments