Restoring Trust

In an earlier post, I listed three damaging incidents at MU that have occurred during the past two years: Wild's breach of contract with Jodi O'Brien, the sexual assault scandal, and the revelation of Wild's (and MU's) involvement with an accused Jesuit pedophile.  These events can be interpreted as a long and painful record of broken trust.  How can trust be restored?

The best case scenario would be that in which the perpetrators involved in all three events make a clean breast of what they did and why.  We would then know who approached Wild to break the contract with Dr. O'Brien and why, and what money was involved, if any.  We would know who felt they could circumvent procedure and be protected from the negative consequences of a stupid, wrong, and harmful decision.  Similarly, we could know why the basketball coaching staff as well as the Department of Public Safety felt they could dispense with legally required procedures with apparent impunity.  We would also know why Wild felt he could use MU facilities for personal and morally dubious purposes.

The answers are clear -- some people at MU feel they have absolute power to do as they please.  So far, they seem to be right -- the only person to have lost his job is Wild, and he was retiring anyway.  It boggles the mind to think that the basketball coaching staff has been let off the hook, as well as the Captain of DPS.

Since we are clearly not going to have the kind of public reckoning needed for the full restoration of trust at MU, what is our second best option?  I believe that resides with the new President.  He needs to do four key things.  First, he needs to fire the guilty parties at the very top who created the culture of secrecy and complacency that led MU into these fiascos.  Second, if lower level administrators are to be kept on, he needs to have a "come to Jesus" talk with each of them in which he makes clear that times have changed, and that cock-ups and cover-ups are no longer the order of the day.  Third, he needs to restructure the current divide between academics and the administrative side, and take the absolute power that the latter now enjoys away from it.  Finally, he needs to pledge to a new kind of decision-making at MU: collaborative, transparent, and committed to principled adherence to procedure.  Wild evidently thought he was some kind of absolute monarch -- a Hobbesian sovereign with no responsibility or accountability within Marquette.  That day needs to end, before MU is brought down by further stupidity and scandal.