Bryan Crainer resigned from his position as the associate dean for Student Life as SVSU led an inquiry into whether he had an inappropriate intimate relationship with a student, officials say.

Officials confirmed the inquiry after emails obtained by The Valley Vanguard through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) showed Crainer admitted to having an intimate relationship with a woman after she graduated from SVSU.

The Vanguard led the FOIA request after Crainer’s resignation on July 2. University officials did not comment on the nature of Crainer’s resignation until after the Vanguard received the FOIA documents.

According to an email that Dean of Stu- dents Sidney Childs wrote to Crainer on March 26, 2018, Childs and Crainer had met earlier that day to discuss “allegations of [an] inappropriate relationship with a former student who was [a] member of a Registered Student Organization-Forever Red,” of which Crainer was the advisor. Childs wrote in the email to Crainer, “You admitted to having an intimate relationship with this student after she graduated from the University in May 2016.”

In an email to the Vanguard responding to a request for an interview, Crainer also acknowledged the relationship.

“The aforementioned relationship was a situation that I sincerely regret, but it was a personal matter, not a professional one,” he said. “My family and I have confronted the situation and worked through it.”

From inquiry to resignation

The email from Childs to Crainer quotes from the SVSU Operations Manual section 2.6-2, titled Personal Involvements, which discourages such relationships. Such a relationship, according Childs’ email to Crainer, also potentially violates the SVSU Sexual Misconduct Policy section 3.6-1, which “prohibits relationships by persons in authority.”

Childs’ email also states, “Finally, it is the responsibility of the University to investi- gate any allegations of inappropriate relationships and/or any violations of the sexual misconduct policy.”

The meeting referenced in Childs’ email was the first time an SVSU official told Crainer that SVSU would look into the allegations of an inappropriate intimate relationship with a former student, said J.J. Boehm, the director of Media and Community Relations.

“(The alleged relationship) was brought to our attention by a member of the campus community,” Boehm said.

An official inquiry into the allegation was then promptly conducted, Boehm said.

Ellen Crane Freigang, the director of Human Relations, led the inquiry.

“(To see if the relationship occurred before graduation) was part of the inquiry,” she said. “When I had the follow-up conversation with (Crainer), he resigned.”

Crainer’s resignation ended SVSU’s inquiry into the matter, Crane said.

“(The inquiry) didn’t come to a full conclusion,” she said. “We went through a series of interviews. I had a follow-up interview with (Crainer) and brought some information to his attention that triggered the resignation.”

In his email to the Vanguard, Crainer said his decision to resign from SVSU helped him to reevaluate his priorities.

“My resignation from SVSU was just that – a resignation,” he said. “The leave allowed me to separate myself from an unhealthy environment, devote more time to my family and reprioritize things in my life. That being said, I remain a huge fan and supporter of SVSU. I treasure the opportunities the institution afforded me and the great people I had the pleasure of working with.”

Since Crainer resigned, there was “no need to conduct additional inquiry,” Boehm said.

“As things were proceeding, (Crainer) made the decision to resign, and the university accepted his resignation,” he said.

Handling a ‘delicate’ matter

The university followed its standard exit procedures for a resignation, according to an email Crane sent on June 29, 2018, to several witnesses who appeared in prior meetings between Crainer and university officials. An email from Crane to Childs and Jeanette O’Boyle, one of the SVSU administrators who acted as a witness, indicates that the “termination” was “delicate.”

Boehm said the termination was not only delicate because of the nature of the inquiry during which Crainer resigned, but also because of the other parties involved, including the woman in question.

“There are sensitivities involving other parties that we wanted to do our best to be sensitive to,” Boehm said.

During the time period from the inquiry until Crainer’s resignation on July 2, Boehm confirmed that Crainer was not on leave, but he would not address other questions, due to employee privacy.

“Now we’re getting into some things that are personnel matters, and, as a general rule, we are not going to speak often about personnel matters,” Boehm said.

One major factor that Crane cited for the three-month gap between the inquiry and Crainer’s resignation was Crane’s involvement with the SVSU union negotiations that occurred during the time frame.

“A combination of wanting to do a good job talking to the right people, and thinking about next steps very carefully and weaving that into the union negotiations, was a dominant factor during that time period,” Crane said.

Had the university had evidence that student safety was at risk, Crane said, the situation would have been handled differently.

“If you look at the inappropriate relationships policy, it talks about being in a position of authority that could exert influence over someone else,” she said. “So, after graduation, if they’re no longer a student, then there’s no longer an inappropriate relationship. … If you dig into that policy, I think there is a broad continuum of relationships that exist, and you really have to look at who are the two people, their positions, what is the context of their relationship, what’s happening within the relationship.”

While a relationship between a former student and an administrator does not inherently break any SVSU codes, although it is discouraged, Boehm said that, under certain circum- stances, such a relationship could still be inap- propriate.