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Jul 14, 2026
Let’s review the last seven weeks at Michigan State.
The Board of Trustees called a Sunday-night special meeting to double President Kevin Guskiewicz’s salary and extend his contract through 2031. Ten days later, he announced he was leaving for Clemson. A developer papered our town with “We ♥ KG” signs. Our athletic director left for Kentucky in the churn. And then, last Monday, Kevin announced he is staying after all, at $1.5 million a year, funded by “non-university resources”, after reports that trustees, donors, and Tom Izzo worked the phones to bring him back. This week, voting closed on a Faculty Senate referendum asking all 4,000-plus members of our Academic Congress whether they have confidence in Kevin, and whether they have confidence in the Board. Results land Wednesday.
Jun 10, 2026
I started to see these signs on campus and near my neighborhood this week. I was confused at first because our president is leaving, and is taking an $800k pay cut to do so. I thought maybe these signs were a joke, or maybe they were meant to be ironic. But, as I saw more and more of them, I realized that they might be sincere.
The signs were organized by the Gillespie Group, a massive developer in our region. This group received a nod from MSU Trustees to develop Spartan Gateway District before it was scaled back.
May 18, 2026
Photo by Ari Saperstein, The State News.
On Sunday, Michigan State’s Board of Trustees held a special meeting. It was announced the same morning. The Board did three things in a single Sunday night Zoom call. They voted 6-1 to double Kevin Guskiewicz’s salary, from just over a million dollars a year to two million, with a contract extension through 2031. They voted to overhaul the board’s code of ethics to prohibit individual trustees from publicly disagreeing with majority decisions. And they did all of it with less than twelve hours public notice, in a meeting the university acknowledged is not subject to Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.
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