CHICAGO — Eastern Michigan University has fired President John A. Fallon III and dismissed two other top officials, less than two weeks after a federal investigation found that administrators broke the law by covering up the rape and slaying of a student in her dorm room.
The head of police on the Ypsilanti campus, Cindy Hall, and the vice president of student affairs, James Vick, were forced to resign, school officials announced Monday afternoon.
A day earlier, the Board of Regents held an emergency telephone conference and unanimously voted to end Fallon's five-year employment contract. School officials said they spent weeks unsuccessfully trying to negotiate with Fallon a suitable punishment for his role in the scandal over the death of Laura Dickinson, 22.
In December, Dickinson's body was found inside her room at Hill Hall. For 10 weeks, university officials told the Dickinson family, students and the community that no foul play was suspected.
School officials did not acknowledge that Dickinson had been slain until student Orange Amir Taylor III was arrested Feb. 23 and charged with murder and sexual assault.
An Education Department report and a separate investigation commissioned by the regents concluded that the university staff had violated the federal Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities to disclose information about campus crimes and warn students of threats to their safety.
Some university officials did not know there was a criminal investigation and unknowingly passed along misinformation, according to both reports. But others, including Vick and Hall, consciously decided to not warn students or tell Dickinson's family that they believed she was the victim of a crime, according to the regents' independent investigation.
The federal report also said Dickinson's death exposed problems in the school's reporting of campus crimes. One example: School officials labeled eight cases of sexual assault as "nonforcible" encounters in campus crime statistics. Those figures are often used by parents and would-be students when weighing college choices.
"As a university, we've gone through enough pain," said regent James Stapleton on Monday. "There was a breakdown in the fundamental governance of this school, and these staffing changes had to happen."
Regents have appointed Provost Donald M. Loppnow as executive vice president. He will act as the school's chief executive as officials try to find an interim president before classes begin in September, Stapleton said.
