EAST LANSING — The vice chair of Michigan State University’s Faculty Senate is keeping up the pressure on state officials to remove two trustees found to have violated university policies.
Jack Lipton sent a letter to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Dec. 30 asking her to investigate the behavior of Trustees Rema Vassar, D-Detroit, and Dennis Denno, D-East Lansing and recommend that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer remove them from their statewide offices.
The MSU Board of Trustees made a formal request to Whitmer in March that the trustees be removed, after censuring Vassar and Denno and restricting actions they can take as board members of one of the state’s largest universities.
Those sanctions expired Dec. 31, and Lipton told the State Journal he had not received a response from Nessel’s office as of Friday. Lipton added he did not intend for his letter to Nessel, which was first reported by The Detroit News, to become public but confirmed its existence to the State Journal.
“As the state official responsible for investigating Trustees Vassar and Denno and reporting back to Governor Whitmer on whether to proceed with removal, the consequences of their actions on both me and the larger Michigan State University (MSU) community should help you see that their actions rise to corrupt conduct and malfeasance,” Lipton wrote.
“Ultimately, these two powerful, statewide elected officials, who are supposed to serve the welfare of the people of Michigan, and the MSU community, have sacrificed the function and welfare of MSU in service of their own personal agendas, violating their fiduciary responsibilities to the institution.”
Following an investigation funded by MSU after Trustee Brianna Scott, D-Muskegon, went public with allegations of bullying against Vassar, trustees voted 6-2 in March to prohibit Vassar, D-Detroit, and Denno, D-East Lansing, from board-related activities until Dec. 31. The trustees also stripped both trustees’ board committee assignments and asked Whitmer to consider removing them.
Vassar also voluntarily stepped down as board chair during the March meeting.
It’s not clear if the trustees will seek or be granted committee assignments this year. Before their removal, Vassar was on the board committee on budget and finance and Denno was chair of the board committee on academic affairs and was on the committee for audit, risk and compliance.
Neither trustee responded to a request for comment Friday morning. New board chair, Kelly Tebay, D-Ann Arbor, did not respond to a request for comment.
Amber McCann, a spokesperson for MSU, said Denno and Vassar are now eligible to serve on committees, including being assigned chair of a committee. The board is scheduled to hold its first meeting of the year on Feb. 7.
The status of the request for removal sent to Whitmer wasn’t clear this week. Whitmer’s press secretary, Stacey LaRouche, did not respond to questions. In September, six months after the trustees asked the Democrat to consider their request, LaRouche said the governor was still considering it.
The investigation funded by the school found evidence Vassar and Denno acted outside the bounds of their authority to “embarrass and unsettle,” former interim President Teresa Woodruff and retaliated against Lipton by encouraging a “campaign of personal attacks … by student groups and the press.” Vassar also took free private jet flights and courtside tickets from donors and participated in at least one settlement negotiation of former Broad School of Business Dean Sanjay Gupta, the investigation found.
Lipton recently filed a federal lawsuit against the board for retaliation. In the complaint, he said the trustees allowed Vassar and Denno’s attacks on him to continue and he asked the judge to remove them – which is not a power a federal judge has.
MSU’s Academic Congress, comprised of faculty, the president and the provost, voted 1,512 to 55 in March to publicly call for Whitmer to remove Vassar and Denno. The resolution cited two earlier “no confidence in the Board of Trustees” resolutions from the Associated Students of MSU and the Faculty Senate.
Whitmer has refused to comment publicly on whether she would remove the trustees, or what a timeline for making a decision would be. Last year, after Trustee Brianna Scott, D-Muskegon, detailed accusations of Vassar’s misconduct in a letter to the trustees and local media, Whitmer said the allegations would be a “serious breach of conduct,” if accurate.
It’s extremely rare for an elected official to be removed by the governor, so much so that there isn’t a defined process, Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens Research Council, told the State Journal in March.
The last high-profile effort to remove an elected official by a Michigan governor was more than a decade ago, he said. And the official in question, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, resigned before Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced a decision.
Contact Sarah Atwood at satwood@lsj.com. Follow her on X @sarahmatwood.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Restrictions on 2 MSU trustees accused of misconduct lifted