Since “Masturgate” broke Sunday with news of another sex-related scandal at Michigan State University, shitstorm chasers have flooded every chat forum from social media to sports talk radio. By mid-morning, rushed judgments and jumped-to conclusions were rendering verdicts in the matter of Spartans head football coach Mel Tucker versus Brenda Tracy, a sexual assault survivor-turned-noteworthy prevention advocate, who, according to USA Today, filed a December 2022 harassment complaint against Tucker stemming from an instance of phone sex only he claims was a consensual part of a call between the two parties that previous April. By Sunday afternoon, angry mob majorities had Tucker circling the drain, but soon information regarding a delayed timeline and lost texts likely pertinent to both sides’ looming arguments came to light, along with an early evening MSU press conference in which officials assured the press and public that fair and thorough investigations were proceeding, in keeping with investigative and privacy protocols provided for in Title IX procedures for the protection of accusers and accused alike.
Sources outside the purview of this complaint have since confirmed MSU’s nondisclosure of further details as correct, pending previously set Oct. 5 and 6 official hearings on the complaint. As of Wednesday, while tides of takes on what happened between Tucker and Tracy still ebb and flow, the currents of quick, hard accusations seem to be carrying fewer away with final pronouncements.
In a three-compartment nutshell, here’s what been said, essentially, thus far:
Tucker’s take
At the risk of sounding curt and cynical, it’s “she wanted it.” On one hand, some will point to the textbook misogyny of such a stance. Tucker and Tracy had a professional relationship: Tucker invited Tracy to MSU’s campus multiple times to speak to his players and staff. Others could argue the man may only be guilty of matter-of-factly telling the truth. While the once self-avowed “horseshit football coach” has yet to admit being a horse’s ass of a husband during his seminal, extramarital phone act, he insists that all he had a hand in was consensual, then went on to further defend his behavior as failing to meet the criteria for “misconduct by any definition.” One wonders what Mrs. Tucker will ultimately answer to that contention. Then there’s the school likely looking to clear $80 million off its books come those October hearings. Invoking the moral turpitude clause of Tucker’s contract might be a foregone conclusion given the coach’s unapologetic claims of how he handled himself with Ms. Tracy.
Take on Tucker
You’d think he’d be approaching this more hat-in-hand than anything else, for reasons personally and professionally life-changing for a number of lives. Granted, the guy’s a jerk-off in more ways than one.
Tracy’s position
Tucker forced her into a situation that triggered latent, deep-seated trauma which resulted in duress-delayed and strained decision-making — that’s how her testimony’s shaping up, given what little we’ve learned. (Tracy founded the nonprofit advocacy organization Set The Expectation after she said she was gang-raped by four college football players in 1998 at age 24.) From the time it took to file her complaint (approximately eight months after the reported phone sex offense) to her part of the explanation for their mutually deleted texts, Tracy cites wounds left by past sexual predation on a psyche that short-circuited the processing she needed to do to get through what her relationship with Tucker ultimately presented.
Take on Tracy
While it feels wrong not to empathize and sympathize, should this case come to a civil forum, rest assured, a court won’t hesitate to grill her over decisions to delete potential evidence of Tucker’s unwelcomed advances toward her, and eight months of indecision on an issue she’s devoted herself to as a sexual assault survivor: advocating ceaselessly and consistently against sexual aggression in all its ugly forms. We get it. This second lightning strike rattled Ms. Tracy. But, with complaint filed and scheduled for hearing, her story’s been leaked. It’s time to collect herself to the extent she can and tell it now entirely. Gaps need filling in. At present, two people on opposite sides of a fence full of holes create some shared problem perceptions, including a groundswell of perspectives saying she could have just hung up the phone, and also calling into question — albeit crudely — how a personally scarred yet professionally steeled crusader against sex offense with laurels the likes of Tracy’s “froze” to the degree she did over what devolved between her and Tucker. The case she’s pleading may ultimately require revelations of truths she found hard enough to face to erase from her phone. Lives and livelihoods are on the line. Tracy may have to redraw her share of what’s otherwise untraceable as a consequence of both parties’ curiously like-minded decisions to do away with some conversational evidence of their relationship. While not giving in to questioning Tracy’s integrity, where the growing chorus of those wanting to hear her connect some dots currently creating concerns, I have to say: me, too.
Michigan State’s posture
It appears they’ve got good legal legs to stand on. Propped-up by protocols and provisions in place protecting everyone’s privacy in this Title IX investigation, they unequivocally state that until the cringe-worthy act since admitted to by a (presumably) soon-to-be ex-head football coach is formally considered part and parcel to the complaint, MSU’s governance feels no need to defend any perceived inaction to date or further elaborate on any relevant specifics and/or potential outcomes, in accordance with all rules set forth for proper jurisprudence pertaining to Title IX purview and oversight. Between being unaware themselves of the icky details of Coach Tucker’s actions until late last weekend, and by staying the course set forth already for final hearing on this matter (to be held during Spartan football bye week), MSU stands on solid employment law turf to kick prurience off its campus and, in the process, punt on the remainder of an exorbitant contract few could blame Sparty bean-counters for finding a fortuitous consequence of Tucker’s technically egregious personal and professional stupidity.
Take on the school’s stance
Who’s not rooting for MSU to give the boot to a man who let $80 million slip through his fingers by letting a “hard Johnson” inform his professionally representative decision making? You don’t do that at work, right? More seriously, while this latest sad, sex-related episode doesn’t rise to anything near what MSU’s Larry Nassar nightmare amounted for everyone concerned, who won’t cheer an utterly intolerant response from school administration redolent with the same level of repugnance all reasonable minds, hearts, and conscience’s feel toward sexual offense? This “new Michigan State” unfortunately finds itself back in a position to prove itself socially responsible toward a societal ill that’s plagued this university twice now to some particular notoriety. This time around, leadership is in a preemptive position to cut-off on-campus sexual predation at a root stage and support a woman who says she said no, meant no, and had no say in a school employee’s decision to demonstrate his capacity for being a big-time jerk-off as a husband, a professional colleague, a role model to hundreds of young men, someone entrusted to such mentorship by as many families, representative of a renowned academic institution, and — for what it’s worth — our state’s highest paid official by far. Having to talk and walk us all through another morass on this subject matter may feel forever too soon on the heels of Nassar’s massacre of innocence. Teresa Woodruff (MSU interim president) and Alan Haller (athletic director) have probably thought what we all have since Sunday: “No. Not here. Not again.” Even so, it’s their job to deal with it, so let them work and show us what’s new in handling something like this a second time around. God forbid it should be allowed to keep happening to any degree. Everyone entrusted to serve MSU needs to handle their business now, for all our sakes.
So many have already made a call on the Tucker story. At this point, he appears poised to take the blame entirely. If deserved, so be it. Meanwhile, some wish to hear more before signing off. Those among them may hear accusations of tone deafness toward the sensitivities of sexual abuse. Others lacking all the facts may choose to defend Tucker from what they’ll construe as overzealous feminist “wokeism.” By early October, the side-taking could divide along some predictable lines of sexual-social politics. Add to that theorists sure the school’s hiding truth purely to protect its interests and/or get away with turning a trumped-up workplace sexual harassment claim into any easy financial out, and we could have one hell of a Michiganders’ group chat on our hands before all’s said and done.
I say hold the phone. We haven’t heard everything yet. And while you’re holding, consider this Confucianism: “Those with no appetite for hasty judgment are rarely asked to eat their own words.”
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