Ohio State University President Walter "Ted" Carter Jr. stepped down after disclosing what he called an "inappropriate relationship" with an unnamed individual who was seeking public resources to support a personal business. Carter submitted his resignation on Saturday, the university's board of trustees accepted it Sunday, and the announcement landed Monday morning.
The departure marks a swift and inglorious end to a presidency that began in 2023 and was already shadowed by institutional scandal before Carter ever took office.
According to the board of trustees, Carter himself brought the relationship to light. The board's statement said he "recently disclosed to trustees that he had an inappropriate relationship with someone seeking public resources to support her personal business, and offered to resign."
Carter's own characterization was carefully worded but nonetheless damning:
I made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership.
That phrasing raises more questions than it answers, NBC News reported. "Inappropriate access" to university leadership suggests this wasn't merely a personal lapse but one with institutional dimensions. Someone outside the university apparently leveraged a relationship with its president to pursue resources connected to her business. The nature of those resources, the specific business, and the identity of the individual involved remain undisclosed.
Carter added a note of regret in his departure:
I believe we have made much progress during my time at Ohio State, and I'm sorry I'm not able to remain your president longer.
Board chair John Zeiger said he was "surprised and disappointed" by the revelations but respected Carter's decision and appreciated his cooperation in "supporting an orderly leadership transition."
Carter's resignation doesn't exist in a vacuum. He inherited a university already mired in serious credibility problems. When he took over, Ohio State was in the midst of a legal battle with hundreds of former students who accused the institution of failing to protect them from former campus doctor Richard Strauss, an accused sexual predator.
During Carter's tenure, that crisis continued to simmer. Strauss survivors staged angry protests on campus demanding the removal of Ohio billionaire Les Wexner's name from campus buildings he had helped fund, citing Wexner's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Three law firms representing over 100 Strauss abuse survivors are still battling the university.
Those firms released a pointed statement after Carter's departure was announced:
OSU's president is doing the right thing by stepping down. Now, the rest of OSU's leadership needs to do right by those who were abused on their watch.
The message is clear: one resignation doesn't resolve a pattern of institutional failure.
Ohio State is one of the largest public universities in the country, and its leadership carousel should concern anyone who cares about higher education governance. Carter was the school's 17th president. He lasted roughly two years. The reasons for his departure involve exactly the kind of judgment failure that erodes public trust in institutions already hemorrhaging it.
Consider what happened here in sequence:
That timeline suggests the board saw enough to act immediately. It also suggests they had no interest in a prolonged investigation that might uncover additional details embarrassing to the institution.
This is the quiet bargain that elite institutions make over and over again: accept the resignation, issue the statement, manage the transition, move on. Accountability gets processed through PR, not principle.
When a public university president admits to granting "inappropriate access" to someone chasing public resources, taxpayers have a right to know exactly what resources were at stake and whether any were actually allocated. "Inappropriate relationship" can mean many things. "Inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership" on behalf of a private business means something specific: the potential misuse of a public institution for private gain.
The unnamed individual, the unspecified resources, the carefully lawyered language from all parties involved: none of this inspires confidence that the full story has been told. Ohio State has spent years fending off accusations that it failed to protect its students. Now its outgoing president admits he failed to protect the institution's integrity from his own personal entanglements.
The students, as Carter said, "are among the very best in the world." They deserve leadership that meets that standard. So far, Ohio State keeps falling short.