Part One

I preface this continuing investigation with breaking news:

The Ohio State University’s Associate Chief of Campus Safety, former Columbus Police district zone director Dennis Jeffrey and Detective Cassanda Shaffer who is officially assigned to harass and intimidate me by the Office of Legal Affairs both refuse to acknowledge that “there are laws, and that my neighbors, household, and I have rights.”  All Buckeyes should take note.

In a series of essays published in early 2022, I showed that to a considerable and self-incriminating extent universities lead by slogans rather than programs, policies, relationships, and communications. And of course, slogans substitute for honesty. (See my essays on university slogans below)

In this essay, I explore what it means when a major public university’s Vice President and university-wide Office of Compliance and Integrity [sic] are no more than a swamp of empty and/or false slogans. Its actual function is to join with the Office of Legal Affairs to protect the university regardless of conflicts and contradictions, compliance or integrity. In contradiction to empty rhetoric, the Office of Compliance and Integrity at this university functions for the (il)legitimation of (non)Compliance and (non)Integrity.

At the end of October 2023, The Ohio State University Office’s website continues to lead with one of the former president’s most frequent slogans: the flagship public university (of Ohio) alternatively was or will become the “model land grant university for the 21st century.”. Among the shortest-serving president in university history, ordered to resign by the Board of Trustees in autumn 2022 after barely two years, none of Kristina Johnson’s many meaningless awkward phrases were based on reality or research. None had an actual plan, timetable, or measures of accountability. (For background and details, see my essays listed below)

Remaining on Compliance and Integrity’s website despite Johnson’s May 7, 2023 departure, she often uttered those words. Unfortunately, neither she nor any one in her office ever examined the documented history of either The Ohio State University or the land grants in general. Among many fundamentals, she would have learned that the university occupies land illegally appropriated from Indigenous Peoples. This is common for institutions founded in the period. Unlike many public and private universities, OSU has never made a public statement of this founding fact or an apology. Many groups on and off campus repeatedly ask for such a statement. OSU does not have the “integrity” to “comply.”

Whenever added to the rhetoric, OSU’s “model” in fact is narrowly vocational public institutions long segregated by race and gender. The three pillars of the colleges established by the Civil War era Morrill Act were the advancement of agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. There is no “model” to follow. The former president managed to identify one Black and two women students in the nineteenth century. One woman, she claims, graduated.

Even more contradictorily, the former president defined her “model 21st century land grant university” in terms of the 1990s and early 20th century “digital cloud.” Despite being a former professor of electrical engineering, she does not know the history of recent technologies.

This is only one of Johnson’s slogans with no compliance or integrity. Others related to the Scarlet and Gray Advantage Plan to create “debt free graduation” without reducing costs amid rising fees. That’s a logical and mathematical impossibility. The unfunded program with no timetable or budget touched few students. Almost none are even aware of it.

OSU ranks 186th in the U.S. in economic equity among students. The campus safety set of slogans has not materialized. The university has the lowest ratio of safety officers to students in the former Big Ten (now 18) and perhaps in the US. Campus crime is among the highest in former Big Ten and the U.S. The university promotes numbers of campus and campus-areas crimes by reference to the radically incomplete and tardy LexisNexis posting. The heads of Campus Safety all but laugh at that—off the record, of course. (See relevant essays)

As to the Office of Compliance and Integrity itself: Its website leads with “The Ohio State University is committed to ethical conduct and compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and policies, and OUCI serves to support our move from excellence to eminence.” This combines earlier slogans—going back at least to twice departed former President E. Gordon Gee with more recent ones. Of course, there is no effort to define “excellence” or “eminence” or place either comparatively in the context of a very large public university in the 21st century.

Astonishingly, on the bottom of that first page, there are two clickable boxes. They are labeled “The Strauss Investigation” and “Petition to the Supreme Court.” Not only are the two repetitive, both attest to the greatest failures of ethical, moral, and legal integrity in the university’s 150-year history. (Among other essays listed below, see my essay on this case)

For two decades, OSU athletic physician Dr. Richard Strauss sexually abused more than 600 male student athletes. Many of the abused attest in legal documents that despite institutional pressure and threats from Strauss, they made efforts to bring the crimes to the attention of OSU’s administration at multiple levels. Many report that then assistant wrestling coach and now Ohio  US. Representative Jim Jordan was both present and aware of Strauss’ assaults. The right-wing Republican who represents the most gerrymandered district in the U.S. alternatively denies this or does not remember.

Regardless, with no compliance or integrity, Ohio State refused to acknowledge the many complaints until it was forced by unending reports, suits, and publicity in 2018. The Compliance and Integrity website grossly misrepresents these facts. Both internal and external evidence document an organized institutional effort to allow what OSU claimed to be the statute of limitations expire.

The website falsely claims that this massive history only came to light when “In March 2018, Ohio State received a report from a former student-athlete about sexual abuse by Strauss decades earlier. Ohio State took the allegations seriously and acted immediately.” All evidence including local newspaper, television, and radio reporting; assaulted students’ testimony; and the evidence presented by the students’ attorneys contradicts this bald lie.

In contrast to student athlete sexual assault cases at Michigan State, Michigan, Penn State, and University of Southern California most prominently and many  others, OSU stalled for years. When it offered fewer than one half of the more than 600 declared Strauss victims cash settlements, they were paltry compared to the other institutions: a few hundred thousand dollars compared to millions. Those accepting payouts were forced to surrender far more of their rights than at other universities. Many of those offered payment declined them.

OSU has the temerity to self-promote: “The university took special action to revoke Strauss’ emeritus status in 2019.” That meaningless action, 14 years after his death by suicide in 2005, carried no significance.

While ignoring the actual history, Compliance and Integrity asserts, “Ohio State is a fundamentally different university today than it was when Strauss was an employee. The university has embraced and enhanced stringent compliance standards separate and apart from its response to Strauss. Over the past 25 years, Ohio State has made robust changes to its culture and policies to protect students, faculty and staff.”

While the last two presidents issued apologies, the Board of Trustees has not done so. That has not changed.

The university’s embarrassing Hail Mary appeal to the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court—after lower courts consistently rejected OSU’s unconstitutional attempts to argue that it had succeeded in its years-long campaign for a supposed expiration of the statute of limitations regarding Title IX on student sexual issues—contradicts every word of that dishonest utterance. OSU’s illogical and anti-well established law arguments had no appeal to the Court. Yet, that is the point at which Compliance and Integrity leaves matters. Multiple lawsuits against OSU continue. (See my “The Ohio Student University vs. The Students, The Law, and The Truth. The Victims of Dr. Richard Strauss and of OSU”)

All the issues remain on the table despite more than two decades of ignoring, stalling, denying, and lying. Where is university compliance and integrity? Nowhere to be found on the ground, across campus, and the adjacent University District where most students live, or in the lives and well-being of present and former students.

Relevant Essays by Harvey J. Graff

On university slogans

“The Banality of University Slogans: Whether its ad campaigns for football season, gauzy reports from the provost, or rhetoric from the school’s president, higher education abounds with empty rhetoric,” Washington Monthly, Jan. 10, 2022

“Slogans are no substitute for concrete university policies and programmes,” Times Higher Education, Jan. 17, 2022

“Sloganeering and the Limits of Leadership,” Academe Blog, Jan. 19, 2022

“The OSU Way: Slogans over Truth and Honesty in Graduation Rates and Student Well-Being,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 27, 2022)

Background and relevant information on Ohio State University

“OSU Falters Once Again, a continuing tragedy,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Feb. 28, 2022

“The United States’ most disorganized university? Ohio State’s ‘5½ D’s’: Disorganization, dysfunction, disengagement, depression, dishonest, and undisciplined, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 28, 2022

“The United States’ most disorganized university? Ohio State’s ‘5½ D’s’: Disorganization, dysfunction, disengagement, depression, dishonest, and undisciplined, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 31, 2022

“The OSU Way: Slogans over Truth and Honesty in Graduation Rates and Student Well-Being,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 27, 2022

“How universities fail their students: The president may be ‘born to be a Buckeye,’ but the students are not. A call to eliminate Offices of Student Life and invest directly in students’ lives,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 10, 2022

“University bragging rights: OSU whimpers but doesn’t bite or swallow,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 27, 2022

“The Ohio State University: Not ‘a failed presidency,’ by itself, but a failing university, Part

            One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan. 7, 2023

“The Ohio State University: Not ‘a failed presidency,’ by itself, but a failing university, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan.  11, 2023

“Kristina Johnson breaks her two-and-a-half months of silence and begins an anti-factual,

     myth-making campaign for rehabilitation,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Feb.

     22, 2023

“After more than 150 years, The Ohio State University administration abandons campus

and the landmark Oval, and secretly goes into hiding off-campus,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, June 21, 2023

“The 150-year-old, 90,000 student-staff-and faculty university that won’t grow up: The

Ohio State University Buckeyes led by Brutus Buckeye, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 23, 2023

“The Ohio State University Fumbles Again: The Board of Trustees who have no

            understanding of higher education selects the most unqualified campus president in

            modern American university history,” Columbus Free Press. Aug. 26, 2023

“The 150-year-old, 90,000 student-staff-and faculty university that won’t grow up: The

Ohio State University Buckeyes led by Brutus Buckeye, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 30, 2023

“Out of control fraternities and sororities control the 21st century university on and off

campus, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 10, 2023

“Universities must embrace, not hinder, student journalism: Nurturing investigative skills will

make for a better democracy—even if it embarrasses campus administrators in the

process,” Times Higher Education, October, 16,  2023

Crime and safety

“OSU isn’t having a crime crisis; it’s having a leadership crisis,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov 2, 2021

“‘Update’ to Ohio State isn’t having a crime crisis,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 13, 2021

“The Ohio State University promotes public health crises,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Dec. 6, 2021

“Ohio State versus ‘campus safety,’” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Mar. 13, 2022

Dr. Richard Strauss

“The Ohio Student University vs. The Students, The Law, and The Truth. The Victims of

     Dr. Richard Strass and of OSU,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Mar. 14, 2023

Scientific misconduct

The enterprise of scientific misconduct: Malpractice at Ohio State University,” Busting Myths,

Columbus Free Press, Oct. 26, 2022

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Harvey J. Graff is Professor Emeritus of English and History, inaugural Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies, and Academy Professor at The Ohio State University . Author of many books, he writes about a variety of contemporary and historical topics for Times Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Academe Blog, Washington Monthly, Publishers Weekly, Against the Current, Columbus Free Press, and newspapers. Searching for Literacy: The Social and Intellectual Origins of Literacy Studies was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. My Life with Literacy: The Continuing Education of a Historian. The Intersections of the Personal, the Political, the Academic, and Place is forthcoming. “Reconstructing the ‘uni-versity’ from the ashes of the ‘multi- and mega-versity’” is in progress.