Michigan State University | Susan J. Demas
It wasn’t that nobody at Michigan State University could believe that the dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine was sexually harassing students — it was that nobody at the university cared, former student Nicole Eastman told the Michigan Advance.
In 2007, Eastman was a medical student at MSU. She recalled the dean of her college, William Strampel, telling her at a flu shot clinic that it was easier to have sex with women when they’re drunk, and then laughed about a female student that had been caught cheating and had begged him to be allowed to stay in school.
“Here I am a medical student … it’s a person who has power over your career,” Eastman recalled in an interview last month.
She was in her mid-20s and didn’t know what to do. So Eastman said she told a trusted person who worked in alumni relations for the college.
“She was like, ‘Nicole, everybody knows about his behavior and nothing will ever change.’ So it wasn’t about not being believed. It was about a system that allowed that behavior to continue,” Eastman said. “And if that’s your model — I mean, Nassar.”
Starting in 2016, hundreds of people, mostly women and girls, started coming forward to tell the world how former MSU and USA Olympic doctor Larry Nassar sexually assaulted them, often under the guise of medical treatment. His name stains MSU still, as the university continues to navigate the aftershocks of having employed him for many years.
Strampel was Nassar’s boss. He was responsible for overseeing Nassar and making sure Nassar was held to certain safety standards like wearing gloves and having another person in the room for intimate exams after a patient had filed a Title IX complaint in 2014 saying Nassar had sexually assaulted her during an appointment.
But Strampel did not hold Nassar to any of the safety measures and was convicted of criminal charges for that negligence in office in 2019. He was also convicted on a felony misconduct charge for manipulating the power he had over female medical students through sexual harrassment.
In the days after the public became aware of reports of Nassar’s sexual abuse of patients, the Wall Street Journal published reported comments from Strampel saying he thought victims were lying.
“As soon as I found out I had to fire his ass. I didn’t want to, but what am I supposed to do?” Strampel said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “This just goes to show that none of you learned the most basic lesson in medicine, Medicine 101, that you should have learned in your first week: don’t trust your patients. … Patients lie to get doctors in trouble. And we’re seeing that right now in the news with this Nassar stuff. I don’t think any of these women were actually assaulted by Larry, but Larry didn’t learn that lesson and didn’t have a chaperone in the room, so now they see an opening and they can take advantage of him.”
Attorney General Dana Nessel closed her investigation into MSU and Nassar for a second time in September after the university finally released to her department thousands of documents it has long withheld.
But while Nessel said the documents contained what the Attorney General’s Office said was “no new information” relevant to its probe, they do paint a startling picture of how Nassar’s abuse was allowed to continue, despite numerous complaints from his patients, who were typically girls and young women.
And that story begins with how his boss, William Strampel, was permitted by university officials for more than a decade to make sexual and racist comments at students.
“You have somebody like that in a leadership position, enabling other people who are just as disgusting and more disgusting,” Eastman said, adding that MSU bears a large portion of blame for what happened to patients at the hands of Nassar. “It’s a setup. … They didn’t care, because they’re still collecting tuition. … It comes down to money.”
‘He could do whatever he wanted’
After the 2014 incident, dozens more women and girls reported being molested by Nassar, even after the FBI was made aware of complaints of sexual abuse in 2015. Survivors of Nassar’s abuse have railed against every system of power that failed to prevent further abuse.
“Since 2016, the university has taken significant steps to improve campus safety and culture through robust prevention, support, and response efforts,” MSU spokeswoman Emily Guerrant said following the release of the thousands of documents in September. “We are working to become a more accountable organization each day, guided by an unwavering commitment to providing a safe campus and equitable environment for all.”
The more than 6,000 Nassar-related documents include years of concerns about Strampel’s comments and behavior in email threads and performance reviews from as early as 2004 until 2018, the same year Nassar received the last of his three life sentences for crimes, including possession of child pornography and sexually assaulting children.
Nessel closes MSU Nassar investigation, says long-withheld documents had no new information
In 2010, three years after telling an MSU employee about Strampel’s sexual comments, Eastman said she was at a medical school gala when Strampel grabbed her butt.
“Just to have that level of feeling like he could do whatever he wanted, like just no discretion… His wife was at a table adjacent to it and it was humiliating,” Eastman said. “He had so much narcissism … He touched me in front of a whole room of people.”
There were others with stories like Eastman’s. In fact, there was another woman who said in 2014 while she was at an event receiving a scholarship Strampel reached over and grabbed her butt during a photo.
Four women told investigators that Strampel either sexually harassed or assaulted them while they were students at MSU. Investigators also found pornographic images on his computer.
Strampel was eventually charged and was convicted in June 2019 of felony misconduct in office and two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty.
The jury determined that Strampel used his power as dean to proposition and control female medical students, although it did not find that Strampel had assaulted students.
Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Joyce Draganchuk remarked at the time that it appeared that Strampel showed no remorse throughout the court proceedings. His defense throughout the case made the argument that Strampel has to answer for his conduct, but the case does not change that as a physician and dean, he made an overall positive impact on society.
Strampel could not be reached for comment for this story despite attempts over the phone.
“Now maybe you don’t oppress all women, and that point’s well made,” Michigan Public reported Draganchuk said. “But in this case you oppressed these women.”
The verdict drove home the need for MSU to continue improving the culture on campus into one where the university more diligently examines those in positions of leadership, Guerrant said in a statement in 2019 after the conviction.
“We will continue addressing the culture that allowed such abhorrent behavior as we work on meaningful actions to be more aware and more accountable. We have improved our dean review process, improved patient-care policies and our College of Osteopathic Medicine is developing a forward-looking strategic plan to improve and assess the educational climate,” Guerrant said. “We know we have more work to do and are committed to the changes needed.”
The documents released from the Attorney General’s Office paint a passive picture of MSU’s oversight of Strampel in the decade leading up to the Nassar scandal.
Since no one who worked for Strampel had ever filed a formal complaint, there wasn’t an “immediate need to consider the ‘hostile environment’ aspect of this,” then-Assistant General Counsel Kristine Zayko wrote to the university in a January 2005 email. The message to then-General Counsel Bob Noto came after numerous groups of students complained about Strampel’s sexually charged comments.
“Although, with as much anecdotal evidence that we do have, I still think it’s fairly likely that if anyone were ever to complain, it might rise to that level once we did an investigation,” Zayko wrote. “On the plus side, most of the women I know that have been on the receiving end of Bill’s comments seem to like him personally and just think of him as clueless … that is good because it seems less likely to cause a complaint than if he were someone who was intentionally harassing women.”
Schools simply don’t care about sexual harrassment, creating a hierarchy of what “actual, serious” sexual violence looks like and when schools should respond, Minnesota sexual violence sociologist Nicole Bedera told the Michigan Advance in an interview following the documents’ release.
In her book, “On the Wrong Side,” Bedera outlines how university Title IX offices empower perpetrators to continue abuse, while punishing individuals who file reports.
“There is a real reluctance to take action when, in their words. …‘It’s just words; it’s just comments,’” Bedera said. “One of the big themes in the book is that sexual violence perpetrators, especially serial perpetrators, perpetrate a lot of different kinds of gendered harms, but school administrators only really cared if it was sexual violence involving penetration or if it was life-threatening.”
And unfortunately, once a someone is “given a pass” for what leaders at a school see as “a one-time thing” that the person can learn from, Bedera said it makes it next to impossible for subsequent reports to be believed and processed appropriately. And then those leaders have to continue to double down on defending that person, to prove that they hadn’t let a serial perpetrator off the hook.
“Ultimately, school administrators have a huge amount of discretion over which cases they choose and what the outcome investigations are,” Bedara said. “They do have these no-tolerance policies and in a lot of these cases, they’re just not using them.”
In Strampel’s 2015 performance review, surveys were sent to faculty and staff. About 30 responses included statements about Strampel’s inappropriate comments.
“[H]e needs to keep his sexual conquests out of conferences where the medical school is being represented. Also, when speaking with female medical students he needs to maintain eye contact instead of jumping between the chest and groin area with his eyes. It is very uncomfortable. Also, [the Dean] needs to stop making off colored [sic] homophobic jokes. Not cool and certainly not something I want someone who represents MSUCOM saying,” one comment read.
In October 2004, the released documents outline how more than 20 students expressed concern to their supervisors about inappropriate comments Strampel made during his presentation at a student-run telemarketing event.
Some of the comments Strampel made during the telemarketing event were:
- “I may be the only straight person you meet from Saugatuck.”
- Turned to a female student and commented to the effect of, “You probably take birth control.”
- “Yes Sir, Ma’am, Sir, I can’t tell, what’s your question?” to a female student.
Students at the event said they were surprised that Strampel could “get away with speaking to college students like that,” according to the documents.
But it’s because Strampel was considered important whereas the students were considered “replaceable,” said Danielle Moore, a survivor of Nassar’s abuse who serves on the board of The Army of Survivors, an advocacy group aimed to protect athletes from sexual violence.
Moore points out that students in medical school and other arenas of higher education have typically put as much effort toward their profession as high-level athletes have invested in their career goals. So when an authority figure abuses their position, students have a lot to lose in reporting inappropriate behavior.
“You’re so focused on achieving this goal that to have that goal be blocked from you is almost unimaginable,” Moore said. “Somebody has control over the situation and over your own goals. How do you get around that gate to meet your goals?”
Strampel’s comments were reported to leadership at MSU, including Lou Anna K. Simon, who was serving as interim president of the university, when an email of the comments was sent to her on Dec. 21, 2004. Simon became the official university president days later.
Strampel’s comments came up again with university leadership in 2005, during the former dean’s performance review where interviews with people who had interacted with Strampel at different levels and frequency revealed he was known to make inappropriate comments to women.
Multiple people reported that Strampel had a reputation for making comments that could be considered sexual harassment, former Associate Provost Barbara C. Steidle wrote in the report. One person reported Strampel’s reputation for “off-color, sexist remarks,” as well as a situation where he physically pushed against a student at a public event.
“Despite these reports, all of the people citing them continued to express support for the dean’s leadership,” Steidle wrote.
Six months after members of MSU’s legal team concurred that there was no need for urgency to address the possibility Strampel was creating a “hostile environment,” Zayko along with university leaders met with Strampel on June 7, 2005, to address his comments. In a memorandum summarizing what was discussed at the meeting, Zayko said she told Strampel he could not continue making “comments or jokes of a sexual nature” in the future in order to protect himself and the university from liability.
“I advised Dr. Strampel that there could be no more comments or jokes of a sexual nature in the future. The absence of such comments on a prospective basis would be useful in countering any future charge of harassment, allowing the University to conclude that the ‘pervasive’ or ‘persistent’ element had not been met,” Zayko wrote in an email to MSU officials.
Zayko said the consequences of having a successful complaint filed against him were “made clear” to Strampel. She said Strampel indicated to her that he would “make no further inappropriate comments.”
However, documents recently released by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office reflect students said Strampel continued to make similar comments and jokes as dean up until he retired in 2018 ahead of a possible firing from MSU.
In 2010, a plan was outlined to help Strampel eliminate his inappropriate comments.
He was to contact a group of people and charge them with providing him with feedback on his use of inappropriate comments in formal and informal communications and interactions. He was supposed to rely on their feedback to “eliminate such comments from your interactions.” According to the documents, he intended to call upon fellow university employees, professors and administrators, Gail Riegle, Sandra Kilbourn, Pat Grauer, Don Sefcik, Gary Willyerd and Kari Hortos.
“I think with the strategies laid out and a clear statement from you that there will be severe consequences if the behavior continues, he’ll change or be out (even if ‘he is one of the two best deans we’ve ever had’),” Curry said in an email regarding this plan.
In a 2020 MSU report that details the result of an investigation to identify current and former employees who might have known about concerns about Nassar and Strampel, Riegle denied receiving any reports concerning Strampel. The report said the evidence “does not indicate that Riegle received a complaint of sexual discrimination concerning Strampel.”
It has always been clear to Eastman where Michigan State University stood in terms of defending bad men’s behavior, but she didn’t immediately put the pieces together that Strampel had oversight over Nassar when she first heard about the abuse in 2016. She told Michigan Advance that Nassar’s abuse could have possibly been stopped sooner by the university had she been told as a student by the MSU employee she had spoken to that she had the right to file a Title IX complaint against Strampel, his boss. It might have led to someone else — not a predator — watching over Nassar.
“If I was told that that was a process that I could do, I would have done it,” Eastman said. “You have somebody like that in a leadership position, enabling other people who are just as disgusting, more disgusting, it’s a setup for students and they didn’t care, because they’re still collecting tuition.”
A lot of victims don’t report to “the right place” on the first try, Bedera said. They go somewhere else, telling an adult they trust and then the issue doesn’t make it to the Title IX office.
When writing her book and doing interviews, Bedera found that female faculty, in particular, would — meaning well — commonly tell students who raised concerns about a person that other people had raised similar concerns and no action had been taken.
“It’s not triggering their morality anymore, because it’s just starting to feel really mundane to them that this violent person is on campus and ‘they’ve done it again,’” Bedara said.
But for those who have summoned the courage to report, weighing the consequences of what coming forward will mean for their athletic or academic career, Moore said not being believed or being met with apathy can silence survivors for years. Then when a survivor comes forward with their story years later, they are met with a renewed sentiment of doubt over why they are reporting years after the incident.
“Once you have somebody so high up on a pedestal, people just don’t believe there’s a negative thing against them. … You can see that with all the accusers of [President-elect Donald] Trump… and [former movie mogul Harvey] Weinstein…once you have that type of power, it’s hard to get knocked down,” Moore said.
Child USA, a national nonprofit working to prevent sexual abuse of children, has examined how Nassar’s abuse was able to flourish within the sports world and the systems that allowed his abuse to continue for years without any type of authority hampering it.
Senior staff attorney for Child USA Carina Nixon said in looking for solutions at MSU, one thing is clear: “The response mechanism is only as effective as the integrity of the people in the positions of authority.”
“One of the things that was most problematic was this lack of accountability and lack of responsibility to the student reporters. I think one of the main issues when you’re talking about prevention, is having those people in positions of authority who will actually listen to reports of abuse and do something about it,” Nixon said. “With Nassar, there were many, many instances of people in positions of authority who did not seem to have any sense of responsibility over the well being of these students, and I think that is a primary problem with the culture at the school.”
Nixon said that’s where there’s trouble between the public’s understanding of MSU and the university itself: How individuals could be told about sexual violence at the school and those reports would go nowhere.
Nassar survivors and other members of the university community have been apprehensive of MSU’s assertions that the university is working towards improving campus culture into one where sexual violence is addressed and survivors are supported. The very act of withholding the 6,000-plus documents using attorney-client privilege as the Attorney General’s Office requested them for years, is deeply painful for many Nassar survivors and their families.
‘It’s not over’: Survivors of Nassar’s abuse say the fight for justice is far from finished
Child USA has constructed a resource of “Gold Standard” procedure to implement to give systems the greatest opportunity to prevent child sexual violence, much of which can be adjusted for a collegiate setting like MSU, Nixon said, as the Nassar case informed much of the findings.
The standards include measures like rigorous pre-screening of authority figures, clear communications of reporting responsibility and standards, as well as training on handling reports of sexual violence. Child USA’s standards focus on preventative measures, but include guidance on how to best support survivors after an incident and rectify issues that allowed an incident to occur in the first place.
The way university reporting systems and Title IX offices around the country are set up now prioritizes minimizing liability for universities, Bedara said, and that needs to change.
And whereas a perpetrator can keep note of everyone they’ve victimized, Bedara said that victims, typically by the intent of perpetrators, don’t know each other, putting them at a disadvantage of knowing there are other victims in a system where schools typically don’t act until there are multiple people willing to officially report.
Strength came in numbers in the Nassar case as over the course of the two Michigan-based court cases against Nassar, more than 200 victims were able to have their victim impact statements heard in 2018. By reaching out to Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, and her husband, Eastman found the strength to tell her story about Strampel one more time.
“I never in a million years would have thought that I would be testifying against him in court. … I was told in 2007 that everyone knew about his behavior and nothing would ever change,” Eastman said.
MSU officials talk often about moving forward, in such a way that many Nassar survivors say the school has not adequately addressed the past.
“My doctorate degree is in osteopathic medicine. We’re told to get to the root cause of issues. So if you know that there are some people that are going to abuse their position of power. … How do you safeguard students from somebody like that, if you put somebody like [Strampel] in power?” Eastman said. “What are they doing on a daily basis to create a different culture that is safe for students seeking out higher education?”
Eastman said she hopes that one day the school can move forward. But, she said, the cycle has to be broken.
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