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This month, Appalachian State University announced that a longtime music professor had resigned amid a sexual misconduct investigation that would have resulted in his firing. The probe was conducted in response to an allegation of misconduct made against him earlier this year.
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The school’s investigation, however, found that this allegation was part of a “sustained pattern” of accusations against former professor and band director John Stanley Ross. Ross worked at Appalachian State for 20 years, and before that, at Interlochen Center for the Arts, a boarding school and summer camp in Michigan — and former haunt of infamous sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In its announcement, Appalachian State acknowledged it received previous reports of sexual misconduct by Ross in 2015 and again in 2018. But neither resulted in any action against him by the school — until this February, 11 years after the initial allegation, when a third report came in.
The News & Observer contacted Ross by phone Friday. He answered, but promptly hung up when the reporter identified herself.
In 2015, Appalachian State got its first hint that something was wrong. A group of students reported allegations of sexual harassment by Ross to the school. Seven people were interviewed during the subsequent investigation, but it’s not clear how many incidents were alleged or how many of the interviewees were students.
Nothing came of it.
“The 2015 report was not ignored,” the school said in a statement to The News & Observer. “According to the university’s records, staff investigated and determined that the allegations could not be substantiated.”
It’s not unusual for Title IX investigations like this one to find that claims are unsubstantiated, according to Jackie Gharapour Wernz, a legal consultant who works with universities on civil rights issues like sexual misconduct.
“Title IX administrators are not omniscient. We’re not able to even wield the full power that law enforcement has when doing an investigation,” Wernz said. “There’s no subpoena power. There’s no forcing people to participate in the process. There’s no ability to demand documentation from different resources.
“Even if a university does their very best on an internal investigation with the administrative tools that are available to them, sometimes they won’t turn up all of the evidence. That is not abnormal at all.”
Three years passed in Boone after that initial 2015 report.
Then, in 2018, Appalachian State got a report from a former Interlochen student — informing the school that Ross had sexually harassed them while he was a teacher there. In its initial announcement, Appalachian State said that it didn’t investigate this allegation because it didn’t include any activity that took place at the university.
Appalachian State has provided more information to The N&O about how that decision was made. Because of administrative changes, it isn’t known whether the 2015 report was considered in 2018, the school said.
“There’s no blanket policy of disregarding conduct that occurred outside Appalachian State,” the school wrote in an emailed statement. “What matters is whether a report, wherever it originated, bears on someone’s fitness to work with our students.
“In this case, the 2018 report involved conduct almost twenty years prior, at a previous employer and didn’t include any Appalachian State students, so at the time, university staff connected that individual with support resources rather than opening a personnel investigation, since there was no conduct directly related to App State reported.
“That changed the moment a new, independent allegation came this February. The university opened an investigation immediately, and as part of building a complete picture, went back and reviewed both the 2015 and 2018 reports alongside the new one.”
Wernz says that Appalachian State “was almost certainly not required” by Title IX laws to investigate that 2018 report from the Interlochen student.
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“Because the person who is reporting is not part of the Appalachian State community, and they’re reporting conduct against someone who wasn’t an employee at the time the conduct occurred, most universities — by their own policies — are going to be pretty limited [in how they respond],” Wernz said.
For Appalachian State to launch an investigation, Wernz “would expect to see some nexus to the university,” she said.
That doesn’t mean Appalachian State couldn’t have investigated the report if administrators had wanted to, she said. But it might have been difficult.
“Think about what that investigation would look like for a university that has no records of the behavior [in question], no ability to access the records of the other institution, no ability to access the contact information for potential witnesses,” Wernz said. “I would typically expect Interlochen would do that work, and inform Appalachian State if they found something.”
Last month, an investigative report commissioned by Interlochen revealed decades of sexual abuse against Interlochen students from 47 different adults affiliated with the center.
Ross worked there from 1992 to 2000. Epstein, an alum of the camp, was a major donor and fixture on its campus between 1990 and 2003.
Apart from Epstein, names of individuals accused of misconduct were not included in the report.
Appalachian State’s decision to make all this personnel information about Ross public, Wernz said, means the school went above and beyond for the sake of transparency.
“App State does deserve some credit here because universities almost always err on the side of saying: ‘This is a personnel matter, and we cannot comment,’” Wernz said. “Here, they have voluntarily disclosed a lot of information, and a lot more transparency than other universities would provide.
“That allows the public to try to determine if they should have done something differently. It also shows why universities don’t often release this information, because it allows people to pick at their response,” she said. “This institution appears to be doing more than what industry standards require.”
Anne Runyan, a retired professor of public and international affairs at the University of Cincinnati and a former leader on women’s issues in academia, speculates that Appalachian State’s decision to act on the 2026 allegation was the result of a combination of public image concerns and real safety concerns.
Runyan said it also may speak to the new leadership of Chancellor Heather Norris, who took office as interim chancellor in 2024 and full chancellor in 2025.
“It may be that App State and its new administration were compelled to act to further investigate and non-renew the contract of the alleged perpetrator in the midst of the Epstein scandal and related Interlochen report,” Runyan told The N&O in an email. “… [B]oth exposed the case to greater public scrutiny and revealed that he likely posed a danger to students.”
Appalachian State University’s police force has been involved throughout the 2026 investigation into Ross, the school says. Ross does not face any charges.
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