Ohio State Trustee Resigns, Saying Urban Meyer Punishment Was Too Soft

An Ohio State trustee has resigned, saying the punishment of the football coach Urban Meyer, a three-game suspension, should have been “more profound” after a report concluded he had mishandled domestic violence accusations against an assistant coach and had tolerated the assistant’s misbehavior for years.

The trustee, Jeffrey Wadsworth, said in an interview on Thursday that he had stepped down from the board shortly after the university announced Mr. Meyer’s punishment last week.

“I didn’t feel that I’d seen high-integrity behavior,” Mr. Wadsworth said of Mr. Meyer.

He said he was the “lone voice” of dissent in advocating a harsher punishment but declined to specify what he had proposed or to speak in great detail about the closed-door negotiations, saying he wanted to respect the confidential words of board members.

“Most people were concerned about whether it was a several-game suspension or not,” he said.

“To me,” he added, “there was something altogether wrong about reducing it to a couple of games.”