On January 30, 2018, the Office of Institutional Equity was told that Hannah Smith said she was being sexually harassed by her professor. 459 days later, Michigan State University hasn’t told her whether they believe her or not.

On January 30, 2018, the Office of Institutional Equity was told that Hannah Smith said she was being sexually harassed by her professor. 459 days later, Michigan State University hasn’t told her whether they believe her or not. As a result, Smith (who has since graduated) filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging that the University discriminated against her by not performing a prompt investigation.

Unless there is good cause to extend the timeline, MSU is supposed to complete investigations within 60 days and render a decision within 90. In the 2017-2018 academic year, the average investigation took 119 days, and the longest lasted 358.

“You’ve got to get out of there”

As the second session of a Spring Semester 2018 class ended, a professor1 asked Social Relations & Policy junior Hannah Smith to stay afterward. “At first, he just seemed to take a liking to me,” says Smith. “He asked me about why I was wearing leggings. . . . I told him, you know, ‘It’s cold out.'” She thought this was weird, but “didn’t think it was inappropriate or crossed any lines.”

But Smith says weird stuff just kept happening. A week later—importantly, the day after Larry Nassar’s first sentencing and Lou Anna Simon’s resignation—Smith says the professor held her after class again. He asked what her take on the Nassar scandal was and then offered his own. According to Smith, the professor lamented Simon’s departure and “was basically defending Nassar,” noting that his son was a doctor and that there was a “legitimate medical procedure where a man sticks his hand up a woman’s vagina.”

Photo courtesy of University Communications.

After class, Smith told a James Madison College professor about what had happened. According to the OCR complaint, that professor reported the incident to OIE on January 30, 2018.

After this, Smith got in the habit of leaving class quickly to avoid the professor. “I had learned I’ve got to just pick my stuff up and run,” says Smith. “There’s no time for packing. You’ve got to get out of there.”

Smith says she gave that advice to a classmate who claimed that the professor had also held her after class. In that incident, the professor allegedly told the student, who was African-American, about sexually-charged names that black men had allegedly called his daughter. According to Smith, another classmate interjected, saying the professor had also held her after class to talk about Smith’s clothing. That classmate declined to be interviewed for this story.

After the next class, Smith says she overheard the professor telling another student his opinions on Nassar, as well as a story about someone’s life being ruined by a rape allegation. That was the final straw. Smith told her James Madison professor about what had been happening, and that professor encouraged her to personally report it Debra Martinez, who was then a Senior Investigator with OIE.

“Bits and pieces of information”

Smith met with Martinez on February 13, 2018 to discuss the professor’s behavior. At the end of the meeting, Smith decided to file a formal complaint alleging that the professor had violated the University’s Policy on Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct. “I didn’t want the guy fired,” Smith says. “I just wanted him to have a [teaching assistant] or some kind of accountability, so that way he couldn’t talk to women about what they’re wearing after class.”

West Circle Drive viewed from inside Beaumont Tower. Photo courtesy of University Communications.

OIE helped remove Smith from the class and enroll in an independent study, as Smith was struggling in the course and didn’t feel comfortable going to the professor’s office hours. “I thought things were going to be okay,” Smith reminisced. After all, an investigation was underway, and she was no longer in the class.

But that’s when Smith says that OIE’s communication failures started. According to the OCR complaint, “Ms. Martinez sent Ms. Smith emails on March 12, March 14, March 20, May 11, and May 25, 2018, giving her bits and pieces of information about the status of the investigation. Each communication was only sent after Ms. Smith contacted Ms. Martinez.”

After more than a month without contacting Smith, Martinez reached out to say that she had been promoted to OIE’s Assistant Director and would therefore no longer being handling her case or any others. Instead, the case would be investigated by Rachel King, an investigator with the outside firm INCompliance Consulting.

“I was stunned”

Smith says she was uncomfortable with an external investigator handling the case, but she decided to pursue the claim anyway. Because INCompliance is based in Ohio, King had to interview Smith by Skype. But King later told Smith that she would be in East Lansing on August 23 and wanted to meet. King said that she would interview the professor at 2:00 and Smith at 3:00. Smith says she warned King that the professor was “a talker” and would likely go over his allotted time.

When it came time for her interview, Smith knocked on King’s door. That’s when she says she saw the professor and his attorney sitting inside. “I was stunned,” says Smith. “I thought that you didn’t have to see your [respondent]. . . . That was inappropriate.”

She was told to go to the waiting room until King came to get her. On her way to the conference room where her interview was supposed to take place, Smith says she ran into the professor again.

The interview itself went equally badly for Smith, who says that she was told she should consider pursuing an informal resolution instead of a formal investigation. According to Smith, King said the claim probably wouldn’t be “persistent enough” to qualify as sexual harassment; note that per MSU policy, behavior must be “so severe, persistent, or pervasive” that it “alters the terms of a person’s . . . educational experience” or “[u]nreasonably interferes with an individual’s work or performance in a course . . . .” Smith says that King then showed her bias toward the professor by noting that he “had to retire because of this” and was “taking this very seriously.”

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“We’re gonna fix this for you”

Smith scheduled a meeting with Martinez and Title IX Coordinator Rob Kent to discuss King’s conduct. Smith says she had three requests at the October 30 meeting: (1) that King be taken off her case, (2) that her case not be re-assigned to an external investigator, and (3) that MSU stop using outside firms altogether.

Olds Hall, the home of the Office of Institutional Equity. Photo via MSU Infrastructure Planning and Facilities.

According to Smith, Kent and Martinez agreed that King’s conduct was inappropriate and said they would stop using her to investigate Title IX complaints. Smith says they also agreed to assign the case to Patrick Seidlein, an OIE employee. But when it came to her third request, Smith says the pair demurred. Ultimately, Smith left the meeting thinking that her case would be handled soon. “All I had heard [from Kent and Martinez] is, ‘We’re gonna fire [King]. We are so sorry that this happened to you. We’re gonna fix this for you,'” Smith says before letting out a heavy sigh.

A month passed without hearing from her new investigator, so Smith decided to take matters into her own hands. She called Seidlein, who she says had no idea who she was or what her case about. A few hours later, she received a call from Martinez, who Smith says apologized and indicated that she would take over the case. That was on November 30, 2018.

Smith hasn’t heard a word from Martinez or anyone else at OIE since.

“I don’t get what was so hard about it”

Fast-forward to April 26, 2019. I’m sitting in a conference room with Smith and her attorney, Liz Abdnour, who is herself a former OIE Senior Investigator. Smith is wearing an MSU sweatshirt and drinking from an MSU thermos, but she says that I shouldn’t be fooled by the branding.

“I accidentally bought all this and now I just have it, so [I’m] gonna use it,” she says with a laugh that falters quickly. “I used to love MSU. It was my dream school, and now I hate it.”

More than anything, she seems to be at a loss. She doesn’t understand why the University continues to use external investigators, and she doesn’t understand how Rob Kent, the Interim Associate Vice President for Civil Rights and Title IX Education and Compliance and one of two finalists to occupy the role permanently, could end up at the helm of MSU’s Title IX efforts. “I mean, come on! . . . I don’t think he deserves a promotion from what happened to me, because sitting there in your nice suit and smiling at me and telling me that you’re gonna fix it—and you don’t—is really deceiving and inappropriate.”

Robert Kent, Acting Associate Vice President for Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance and Education. Photo via MSU.

When contacted for comment, University spokesperson Emily Gerkin Guerrant said, “We understand that lengthy investigations can be difficult on those who come to the Title IX Office for help, and we are working hard to address the internal practices that can improve the overall process. While we can’t comment on this specific OIE investigation, we do acknowledge that there have been some timing concerns that we’re working to correct.”

But Smith doesn’t think it’s just an issue of having the wrong processes. “It’s hard to not think [the length of the investigation was] purposeful, just because it was such an easy case. I don’t get what was so hard about it,” she says, repeating a refrain she’s used over and over again.

Ultimately, that’s why Smith filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. For her, it’s a cultural issue. “I don’t think I would have reported this as a freshman,” shares Smith, explaining how her case fits into the bigger picture of Title IX at MSU. “But after I’d seen all the Nassar business and all these women standing up for themselves and for other women, I’m like, ‘Heck no! We need a cultural change around here.'”

But like many claimants and victims of sexual misconduct, she finds a way to blame herself. “I let it go on way too long. That’s for sure,” Smith sighs. When I ask why she thinks some of the blame for the investigation’s length lies with her, she seems exasperated. “I took months to e-mail Deb [Martinez] and follow up . . . After [the 60-day time period had elapsed], I could have been up in the office saying, ‘What’s going on here?’ But I was like, ‘Oh, no, they’re probably really busy.”‘

Smith will soon be really busy herself, as she is beginning law school in the fall. She remarked that the application process was hard enough without the added stress from OIE.

But at the end of the day, her thoughts are with other claimants. “I truly feel like this has not been a difficult case, and I cannot imagine what other people are going through if they can’t handle this.”

1 The professor declined to comment. After careful consideration, On the Banks has decided not to name the professor, and his name is redacted in the OCR complaint. We recognize that this may be a serious point of contention for many. In the interest of transparency, we want to explain that choice.



A key tenet of journalistic ethics is to minimize harm by balancing “the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort” for the parties involved. In our judgment, the professor’s name adds little to what this story is ultimately about —MSU has taken nearly a year-and-a-half to investigate the complaint. Because no finding has been reached and because the professor is not a public figure or a person of significance in MSU governance, we have decided that including his name would unduly affect the professor’s reputation while adding little valuable information to the story itself.



A critical fact in reaching this decision was that the professor has retired and is no longer teaching students. If that weren’t the case, our decision may well have been different. But as it stands, the professor is not in a position to repeat the sort of behavior in which he is alleged to have against current students. Of course, that doesn’t address the problem of whether other students could possibly have reported similar behavior after seeing his name. Even after factoring that in, we reached the conclusion that we did. We encourage anyone who experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence to report it if, in their judgment, that is the appropriate thing to do.



This was a tough call, and we recognize that reasonable minds might disagree with our decision. Feedback can be directed to the author/editor at Tyler@onthebanksmsu.com.



If you clicked the footnote directly, you can head right back to where you left off by clicking here.

Emma Grace contributed to the reporting of this story.

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Tyler Silvestri Tyler Silvestri is a third-year law student at MSU who received his bachelor’s degree in Political Theory & Constitutional Democracy from MSU’s James Madison College in 2017. He spent one year as the Assistant Director of ASMSU’s Student Rights Advocates and two years as a Resident Assistant. He is the Chairperson of the University Committee on Academic Governance. He can be reached at Tyler@onthebanksmsu.com. See author's posts