USU administrator terminated after accusations of sexual assault
Trigger warning and editor’s note: The following article contains references to sexual assault. The Utah Statesman respects the privacy of victims and survivors of sexual assault by not disclosing identifying information, unless otherwise requested by him or her.
Following allegations of rape originally reported to the Logan City Police Department on Sept. 5, the assistant vice president of student engagement and diversity was terminated by university administration.
Marvin Roberts was placed on administrative leave Sept. 11, followed by dismissal from his position on Sept. 18.
“We became aware of the situation and took immediate action,” said Tim Vitale, executive director of public relations and marketing for USU. “Once we found out, once we did our own review, we immediately put Mr. Roberts on administrative leave, conducted further review and determined that it would be best to terminate him.”
Vitale said Roberts’ dismissal is a personnel matter, and university policy dictates that reasons for termination are not disclosed.
According to the LCPD report, officers received a call in early September for a possible rape involving Roberts. The report includes details that Roberts invited the victim to his home, where the events occurred.
The report cites that the Cache County Attorney’s Office reviewed the case and charges against Roberts have been declined due to insufficient evidence.
When asked Wednesday about his termination, Roberts declined to comment.
Roberts was hired for the position in July 2013, which did not exist before he held it. Vitale said Roberts was not required to go through a competitive hiring process due to Human Resources policy 385 entitled “Appointments of Opportunity.” This policy allows the foregoing of usual procedures in cases involving “Affirmative Action” and “Institutional Need” with the approval of the Office of the President for positions in non-academic areas.
Roberts was a student at Utah State University in the late ’60s and early ’70s. According to the National Retired Basketball Players Association website, he received national attention for his performance in the Elite Eight of the 1970 bracket. He was eventually drafted and played for multiple teams in the ABA as well as the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA after the two organizations merged.
He returned to USU as an employee more than four decades later in July of 2013, as previously stated.
Alec Player, a sophomore majoring in biology and anthropology, expressed disappointment with the loss of that level of administrative representation.
“From my perspective, just my experience as a student, the position was created, and it created a resource that we hadn’t had before. It was like suddenly there was an ally in diversity affairs for the university,” Player said. “Suddenly, to lose that the way we lost it is just kind of frustrating that someone we thought we could rely on ended up not being reliable.”
Vitale said the university is not actively searching for Roberts’ replacement at this time.
— Mariah Noble, Manda Perkins and Jeffrey Dahdah contributed to this report.
This is a terrible article. You took OLD news and published it in the most terrible way that makes this great alumni, legend, and administrator look like a terrible person and a criminal. No respect. The choice of title and efforts in giving it such negative attention is childish and inappropriate. I would expect better and greater things from a University newspaper. I am completely opposed to the views taken and the way that this article was composed.
This is a terrible comment.
Josh, before the Statesman reported it, were you aware of any of this? I for one feel that we as students have the right and the need to know that one the university administrators was accused of something of this nature. Nor did I feel that they misrepresented or disrespected Marvin. They reported the facts they were given by university and law enforcement officials. The university saw fit to dismiss him. My question is why did the university not issue a press release when they terminated him and instead try to keep it off the radar until the Statesman reported it today?
As someone who personally knows the people behind this article, I feel like I should clear something up. The reason it took so long to publish this article is it took a long time to get all of the information needed to write it. All anyone knew was pretty much hear say, and you can’t do that in journalism. As for making this man sound like a horrible person, there is no mention as to what he is like as a person. All it says is he was fired after accusations of sexual assault, which comes from police reports. Sexual assault sounds like a horrible thing because it IS a horrible thing and condoning it only reinforces the problem.
Dear Utah State Statesman Editors,
I write to you from the perspective of a person who is a survivor of sexual assault and after reading this article, I beg of you to do one thing about this story and all future stories you might report on surrounding sexual assault- please disable the comment box. On your website and all social media outlets if you can or simply don’t post it on places where you can’t.
I personally never reported my sexual assault case because of fear and I hope that if the victim ever reads this that they know how courageous and brave they are to me. I didn’t just fear the reaction of the person who assaulted me but also the fear of criticism from my own friends and family as well as those who didn’t know me.
When sexual assault cases become public there is a lot that comes to play and while I do believe it’s important to let people, especially students, know of someone who has been reported of such a bad crime, we often forget the effects that a public news story can have on the victim. It is already hard enough to deal with and recover when your case is private or unheard of so you can only imagine how even more difficult it becomes when you add tons of people trying to find out your name and get information about an embarrassing and traumatic event that has happened to you.
We unfortunately live in American society where people always feel that they have a right to have an opinion on anything and everything, but in cases of sexual assault, unless someone was witness to the event, no one’s comments are relevant and often can cause more damage than good.
I hope that you, the editors, will see that the psychological damage that can happen to a victim isn’t worth reporting a story and having an open discussion about the very sensitive and serious issue.
Right now I am worried about the victim’s mental health. It is inevitable for the student to know that their story broke publicly and it’s expected that they will spend time reading what is on the internet about it. Reading comments unfortunately is also bound to happen. Words are hurtful and there are too many ignorant people in the world that don’t understand the consequences of their words. Not only will this person potentially have to deal with the scars of what happened to them but now also deal with the scars from people’s opinions on the matter. Especially since this story is being reported so late, a person’s entire recovery process can be jolted backwards now. My heart is with the victim praying that you find peace with this all one day.
Utah Statsman Editors, I have faith that you will discuss this post with whomever you need to and make the right decision to stand by victims of sexual assault by creating a safer online environment. While I must remain anonymous, I hope you will reply to me on here about your decision or just simply speak by deleting and then disabling all comments.
Thank you and I look forward to your decision.
-Anonymous
My question is this: what does Affirmative Action have to do with a case of sexual assault? Mentioning this in conjunction with a case of sexual assault carries racist overtones.
In addition, this article could have been written more professionally. If charges against Roberts were declined due to insufficient evidence, should his picture cover half of the front page of the school paper? Should the Statesman’s logo be significantly smaller in order to bring more attention to this article?
Finally, I agree that the fact that this article was released two months after the fact is fishy indeed. Why the delay?
Everyone is missing the f—— point. It shouldn’t concern anyone how long it took to break the story. The details of the case really shouldn’t concern anyone either. The school should have been the only one to release a statement about the firing and their rationale behind it but the case should be private. Think about the f—— victim for once. If it were you, would you want your personal business and everything that happened to you out there? NO. If it were you, would you want random people commenting on every detail? NO. All that matters is that this man was fired and for whatever reason the administration has said. Nothing else matters.
I beg of everyone to leave this story alone. It’s over. He got fired. There are no charges filed anymore. Let the victim move on from this without everyone’s thoughts on it. What else does everyone really want, especially from commenting on this article? If you want more answers, ask Tim Vitale, ask the school admin privately. The editors of this piece really shouldn’t be the ones answering anything about the investigation.
Utah Statesman Editors, I’m really upset by your decision to continue to allow comments and not even respond to my request. I contacted other news outlets that did a story on this and they all contacted me right back as well are actually re-evaluating how their policies on reporting sexual assault cases and keeping me updated.
I was hoping that the Utah Statesman would be the first to set an amazing example for others to follow. You would probably get more national news for taking a huge step and creating a new moral code of ethics for journalists to follow. But I guess you all care more about breaking a story and breaking a victim down worse instead of caring about making a breakthrough in journalism.
I’m sorry to come across harsh but I have become over the years very passionate about helping victims of sexual assault and especially now making sure what happened as a result of this story does not happen to anyone else. In time I hope to speak face to face with the editors because maybe then you’ll understand better but unfortunately, under someone else’s wishes, I must remain anonymous.
Dear Anonymous,
Please come see me at the Statesman office.
— Mariah