The news out of Connecticut reads like a case study in what happens when a system confuses loyalty with leadership. A report found that Connecticut State Colleges and Universities mishandled misconduct allegations against a former chancellor, and now state lawmakers are threatening action. For anyone who has ever sat in a meeting where a bad decision got a collective shrug, this lands close to home. It is not an Ivy League scandal or a football controversy. It is an administrative failure, which means it is the kind of thing that affects whether students feel safe showing up to class and whether staff feel like their voices matter.
Stories like this are why we pay attention to how institutions treat people when no one is watching. It is the same reason we looked at WSU Can Learn From Cornell: Rebuilding Trust Through Purpose and thought about how a university rebuilds after a stumble. Cornell's report got something right by focusing on purpose over PR, and that is a lesson Connecticut's system could borrow. When a complaint gets buried, it is rarely just one bad actor. It is a culture that rewards keeping the peace over keeping people safe. That is not a management problem. That is a moral problem, and it has real consequences for the people who trusted the institution to have their backs.
The practical takeaway for our readers is simple: accountability is not a scandal. It is a feature of a healthy campus. We have seen what happens when faculty and staff organize for shared governance, like in Nebraska’s Bid to Return to Research Group Faces Scrutiny, where the faculty union pushed back on a rushed decision. That is the same energy students need to bring to the table. We do not get a vote in every administrative hire, but we do get to demand transparency. We can ask who knew what, when, and why it took a report to make it public. If you are a student leader, that is your job. If you are just someone who cares about where you study, that is your job too.
What we would tell a reader who asked us about this is straightforward: watch what happens next. Lawmakers are threatening action, but threats are cheap. What matters is whether the system actually changes how it investigates complaints, whether it publishes the findings, and whether it holds anyone accountable beyond a resignation. We have seen this play out before, and the pattern is familiar. The real test is whether the next person who files a complaint believes the process works. That is the only metric that matters. If Connecticut wants to be a model, it has to show its work. If it does not, students should take note. We are not just here for the degree. We are here to make sure the place we are in is a place worth belonging to.
