It is true, perhaps only in America can a university president who oversaw a child predating monster do what child predating monsters do, all with plenty of warning, then be “forced” into retirement with a $2.45 million dollar pay-out. From HuffPo:
Former Michigan State University president and current faculty member Lou Anna Simon, who is facing criminal charges in the Larry Nassar sex abuse case, plans to retire at the end of August with a $2.45 million payout.
The university announced on Tuesday that Simon will retire on Aug. 31, 2019, after working at the school for 45 years. She will receive three annual payments that amount to $2.45 million and will reportedly keep all the benefits of a tenured faculty member. Under the terms of her retirement, Simon will also hold the esteemed titles of president emeritus and professor emeritus.
So, a person who is facing criminal charges for conduct as president of the university, is “paid” – a lot – to retire?
Excuse me for a second, but ahem, are you fcking kidding me?
No, and that truly is the problem. Let’s hear what one of the gymnasts thinks?
Amanda Thomsahow, who was abused by Nassar on MSU’s campus in 2014, told HuffPost she’s “horrified” by Simon’s million-dollar payout.
Has any one gymnast abused by the monster been paid $2.45 million by the US Olympic Committee, Michigan State, or anyone?
Maybe, but I highly doubt it. And, it really doesn’t matter anyway since it only would make things “less worse,” if you know what I mean.
As the father of an 11-year old daughter, it is stuff like this that makes me cringe for her future. After all, this is a woman as president, which is supposed to be a stride forward. Yet … we’re supposed to be doing this better by now.
****
Peace, y’all
Um…okay. I get the anxiety, but let’s consider this from a legal and ethics perspective.
You have someone who worked at a job for 45 years, and had a legal contract in that position. Over that time, she built up various retirement benefits. Part of her earnings were these benefits – each year the work she contributed adding a little value to her eventual exit package.
Then she makes a mistake. The university has a responsibility to react to this mistake and levy the appropriate sanction. Her employment contract protects her to some degree because…unions. But aside from those protections, it’s a difficult argument to say that all of her benefits should be stripped because of this one mistake. The sanction the university decided on was to demote her, and then later have her resign.
She made a mistake and lost her job over it. That’s typically the appropriate punishment. What you seem to be suggesting would almost be the same as if the university said she needed to pay back her salary over the last decade. Yes there’s a difference because this money hasn’t been paid yet, but it has been technically earned. The law usually protects someone from being charged financially for a mistake at work. Usually the most an employer can do is get that person out of the position.
You mention criminal charges. But legally and ethically, these have little to do with her tenure or accrued benefits. She’s been charged with felonies. She will (or won’t) stand trial, and sanctions for these alleged crimes will be levied by the courts. That’s how our system works – due process determines punishment, we don’t use public opinion to coerce an employer to presume guilt and take someone’s retirement benefits away.
We should also be careful in conflating Simon with Nassar. Her mistakes are exponentially less egregious than his, and while she should pay for them in some way it’s not fair to judge her based on the emotions we feel over his much worse wrongdoing.
So again, I get why cases like this are frustrating. But I don’t think the arguments here are very ethical. The system needs to be fair in addition to punishing crimes.
In another life I am an attorney. Retirement pay and benefits have nothing to do with the buy out clause if asked to leave, she will be getting more than $2.45 million over on top of the retirement and benefits in the next 3 years due to retirement. Each contract almost always has a conduct clause in regard to behavior with the university and conduct that lowers the integrity of the institution. That is why so many of these are negotiated in the first place. They are paying her to leave bc they are getting her out of the contract.
The fact that a prosecutor has charged the matter means she knew of the danger, at least knew that some problems existed, and what will be litigated in criminal charges is the degree to which she knew, and there must be “some” evidence or they wouldn’t charge it. The university can fire her over the inability to oversee the problem, way less serious than criminal charges about knowing. So, it would seem to me that the university had met its burden to let her go without buying her out, but don’t want to litigate it in the open, thus the payments.
That seems to address some of the legal questions I have. The reporting on the nature of the $2.45 million has been pretty thin. The articles I read called it “retirement severance,” so I assumed it was a sped up schedule of her pension or other benefits.
Regardless of the nature of the payout, I’m uncertain about the ethics of the employer in this case trying to withhold that severance. The case would seem to be that the employee maybe did something wrong, so the employer can terminate and get out of their severance obligations. The employer is kinda making a guess here, and a guess I’d assume they’d have to prove if they were sued.
I’m sure there are times when an employer withholding severance is justified, but I feel there are as many cases where employers make excuses to save money. I would tend to err on the side of employees. I think there should be a really high bar for causing an individual extreme financial harm for a single mistake. This is a complicated case, and I don’t really have a strong opinion either way, but hitting someone for millions of dollars for an error in judgment feels pretty extreme.
Paying people to leave is a way of getting rid of them that MAY work when nothing else does. That’s assuming it doesn’t turn into a Danegeld situation … which it doesn’t appear that this would. It does, apparently, accomplish what it is supposed to accomplish. But there’s no need to blast people for having the perfectly normal and appropriate reaction of nausea.