She looked up. "Who signed the closure documents?"
Tusk tapped the bottom of the third page. Associate Provost for Student Athletics.
A name she recognized from the university website. The person who managed the relationship between the academic institution and its athletic programs. The person whose office sat between the university's reputation and its funding.
"The Stole family made a substantial donation to the new athletics facility," Tusk said. "Two years ago. The building was named after them last spring."
Ren set the folder down. "What was the donation amount?" she asked.
"Publicly reported as 1.4 million."
She was quiet for a moment.
"That is not a reason to protect someone from consequences," she said.
"No," Tusk said. "It is not. But it is a reason that institutions sometimes try to."
She nodded slowly. She was not surprised. She had understood from the newspaper archives that there was a structure here. A set of relationships and dependencies that had been allowed to calcify over time into something that looked, from the inside, like the natural order of things.
The problem with structures like that was not that the people inside them were all bad. Most of them were not. The problem was that the structure itself rewarded certain behaviors and punished others. And over time, people learned, without ever quite deciding to, to behave accordingly.
That was worth understanding. Not because it excused anything, but because understanding the structure was the first step to knowing where it could be challenged.
"I have a meeting with Nadine Fuller this afternoon," Ren said.
Tusk nodded. "She is a good person in a difficult position."
"I know. I am not going to make her position more difficult than it needs to be." She paused. "But I am going to ask her some specific questions."
"What do you need from me?"
She looked at him directly. "I need to know if you still have contact with any of the three previous complainants."
He was quiet for a moment.
"One of them," he said. "She graduated 2 years ago. She is in Columbus now. We stayed in touch."
"Would she be willing to talk?"
He considered it. "I don't know. I can ask."
"That is all I am asking."
She stood up.
"One more thing," Tusk said.
She stopped.
"Derek Stole is going to find out you filed a report. It may already be happening. When he does, he is not going to leave it alone." He looked at her steadily. "I want to make sure you understand what that means practically."
"I understand it practically," she said.
He held her gaze for a moment longer. Then he nodded.