Sigh

My alma mater, Michigan State, is dealing with some pretty clear-cut issues of abuse by...hiring more lawyers and PR firms.  While it's a good thing to lawyer up when you're about to be sued for many millions of dollars, MSU's case is pretty straightforward.  Michigan's mandatory reporting law was passed in 1975, and from 1995 to 2016, there were at least eight reports of criminal sexual conduct made to 14 MSU employees regarding Larry Nassar alone, with zero police reports made.  The legal facts are pretty straightforward and damning.  Most likely, the failure to make police reports got 200+ young ladies (and some gentlemen too) molested.  The same thing goes for the national gymnastics association and even the USOC. 


Really, in this case, they don't need more lawyers.  They need good quality engineers who can take a look at a policy and envision where the hidden factory will show up, and then they can work with the lawyers to figure out the legal implications of this.  Moreover, as I've noted before, at least some of them need to be from outside of MSU, from outside the gymnastics community, and so on.  You need somebody there who has never been tempted to play along with the system.


Nothing against lawyers; it was, after all, a lawyer who got things together to take Nassar down.  However, there are simply other skill sets necessary to fix the problems there.