ANN, ARBOR, Mich – We now know how bothered school officials are by all of this.
Sources inside the settlement negotiation tell me that once the final number was reached, $490 million, the first thing university lawyers demanded was that Jon Vaughn move his campsite off-campus.
The sports saying, “next man up,” feels appropriate as Tad Deluca, a former University of Michigan wrestler, and Bill Evashevski hold down the fort for Jon Vaughn for a couple of days while he’s out sick.
They say being here is no longer just their protest.
“Little by little, it just kind of evolved into, you know, we’re not here for ourselves anymore,” Deluca said. “We’re here to change the culture on campus. Too many students, too many students, my kids, my daughter’s age and younger, are here talking about their rapes, both male and female. And it just became, it just kind of took us over. We’ve got to change this.”
The $490 million settlement would not have happened if it weren’t for Deluca.
After his letter to Athletic Director, Don Canham was ignored, and his scholarship was taken away from him in 1975; the former wrestler wrote again in 2018. This time to Athletic Director Ward Manual, who launched an investigation.
Deluca says he feels a sense of vindication.
“You know, I’m gonna say yes, but Chuck is dying,” Deluca said. “And there are other guys that have probably died before Chuck too soon, and there’s gonna be people after chuck that died too soon.”
The Chuck he refers to is Chuck Christian, the former football player now battling prostate cancer because he shied away from doctors for years after seeing Anderson.
Deluca and other survivors still question if this settlement will create real change.
“The University of Michigan basically has dismissed Schlissel, and they’ve given us a settlement, and you’re going to try to look weak,” Deluca said. “We paid off all these brave survivors. We got rid of this bad seat we had here and are gonna expect it to go all back to being perfect again. That’s like painting the house that we’re all the timbers are rotten.”