The prevailing narrative since the resignation two weeks ago of Kevin Guskiewicz is that Michigan State University lost a world-class president — and a cutting-edge athletic director to boot — because of a meddlesome board of trustees.
It’s true that a minority of the eight-member board didn’t fully buy into Guskiewicz’s agenda, or more accurately, perhaps, weren’t willing to shut up and go along with everything he asked trustees to do.
But at no point did the board thwart the president on any request he brought before them. Guskiewicz could always count on at least five votes from the board.
That included the questionable scheme he cooked up with J Batt, the athletic director he brought to MSU, that privatized part of the athletic department to fund player recruitment. It was a complex deal that merited intense scrutiny from the board.
And since it involved the transfer of university assets to a private investor, the taxpayers should have expected their elected representatives on the MSU board to safeguard their interests and keep them informed as the process unfolded.
Instead, except for the three dissenters, the trustees acquiesced to the gag rules Guskiewicz demanded, binding themselves to secrecy at the risk of steep fines. It was an extraordinary expression of trust in the president.
Just days before Guskiewicz announced he was leaving, a majority of the board voted to nearly double his pay to more than $2 million a year, placing him among the top-paid university presidents in the country.
They did so in a shady Sunday night meeting, hastily called because trustees got word that Guskiewicz’s eye was wandering. A few days before he resigned, Mike Balow, one of the three board members who objected to some of the things Guskiewicz demanded, spoke privately with the president to offer his broader support.
What more could a president have asked for from a board?
Guszkiewicz was promised a high degree of autonomy when he took over at MSU a little over two years ago, and he got it. He brought in his own provost and athletic director. He structured his own capital campaign.
That and a million bucks still weren’t enough to keep Guskiewicz at MSU. I don’t believe this was about the board. He saw greener pastures in Clemson and wanted to graze in them.
Under Batt’s contract, the president’s departure freed him to munch on $18 million of bluegrass — he’s headed to the University of Kentucky. If he thought the griddle was hot in East Lansing, wait till he gets to Lexington.
Guskiewicz was given room to do his job, and melted like a snowflake under the warm light of transparency.
The board dissenters just wanted to do the job they were elected to do — provide oversight of a public university. For that, they’re being accused of costing MSU what, apparently, was the best president it ever had, and its only hope for returning to the ranks of elite universities.
I hope at Clemson Guskiewicz finds himself with a board that will agree with him 100% of the time without a whisper of doubt.
As for MSU, it must be on the hunt for a president with a tougher hide; one who can manage disparate views and treat honest disagreements as an opportunity to produce stronger solutions.
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Finley: Board meddling didn’t cost Michigan State its president
Reporting by Nolan Finley, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Nolan Finley, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
