University of Michigan

Citing a rising number of COVID-19 cases in its program, Michigan canceled its annual showdown with Ohio State on Tuesday as college football lurches toward the end of the season without one of its cornerstone rivalry games.

The season-ending grudge match known as “The Game” won’t be played for the first time in 102 years.

“Our players, they want to play,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said. “They wanted to play this week and they want to play next week.”

The University of Michigan said it hired a consultant to guide changes after the school’s chief academic officer was ousted because of sexual misconduct.

Guidepost Solutions will assist the university in following recommendations by a law firm that said it had uncovered sexual misconduct by Martin Philbert during his long career. He was accused of harassing graduate students and staff and regularly having trysts in campus offices.

A California man’s threats to harm college football players because they beat his favored team epitomized “fandom spiraled out of control,” something that can’t be ignored in the age of mass shootings, a federal judge said Tuesday as he handed down a sentence of one year and a day over the 2018 threats.

Two seats on three Michigan university boards are on the Nov. 3 ballot. Michigan voters will choose who steers the state’s three flagship universities: Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Wayne State University.

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Democrats

Brian Mosallam, a former MSU football player, has served on the board since 2013. He is the only incumbent running.

Trustee Joel Ferguson, who has served on the board since the 1980s, did not seek reelection.

Images from an underwater vehicle seem to reveal stone patterns on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan, possible evidence of Native American artifacts from thousands of years ago, a newspaper reported.

A group of amateur explorers raised money to look at Enbridge Inc.’s oil pipeline on the lake bottom. The four women hired a boat equipped with an underwater vehicle and side-scan sonar. It can map the sea floor based on sound.

The sonar showed what appears to be stones in a half-circle, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Graduate students who teach at the University of Michigan have returned to classes after voting to end a strike. The Graduate Employees' Organization represents about 2,000 students who teach or assist classes. The union says it achieved "critical progress" on child care options during the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19 testing protocols and concerns about campus police operations. The deal ends legal action by the university, which sued this week to try to end the strike. The university says the strike disrupted many online undergraduate classes taught by graduate students.

The University of Michigan is suing to stop a strike by graduate-student instructors after they voted to extend their walkout.

“Going to the court was our only choice after learning the strike would continue. We’d much rather our classes be in session while we work out our differences,” President Mark Schlissel said.

Dwight Hicks left New Jersey as a teenager, seeking to take a step toward his NFL dreams by playing football at the University of Michigan.

Hicks was willing to do whatever it took to compete in the 1970s and says the price paid included being sexually assaulted by the late Dr. Robert Anderson during examinations.

Dozens of more victims who claim they were molested by a University of Michigan doctor filed a lawsuit against the school Thursday, including a former football player who said he told legendary coach Bo Schembechler about the abuse in the early 1980s.

It’s the first time that a victim has publicly said Schembechler was aware of allegations against the late Dr. Robert Anderson, who worked at Michigan, especially with athletes, from the mid-1960s through 2003.

A tuition increase at the University of Michigan failed Thursday in a tie vote by the school’s governing board.

The 4-4 vote was a rare public sign of tension among regents and President Mark Schlissel’s administration.

Schlissel had proposed a 1.9% tuition increase at the Ann Arbor and Dearborn campuses and a 3.9% increase in Flint, where enrollment has been sliding.

Denise Ilitch said it’s “plain wrong” to raise tuition when families are facing uncertainty in the midst of a struggling economy and the coronavirus outbreak.