USC Provost and Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Michael Quick and Senior Vice President for Legal Affairs and Professionalism Carol Mauch Amir will retire from their positions June 30, it was just announced.

The news here is Quick’s departure. He was the right-hand man for Max Nikias and tied to the scandals that Nikias botched during the past few years like medical school dean Carmen Puliafito and Dr. George Tyndall.

Quick is hardly at retirement age so this definitely looks like a forced departure.

Quick denied the administration knew and covered up for Tyndall.

“It is unthinkable,” Quick wrote in the statement regarding Tyndall. “It is true that our system failed, but it is important that you know that this claim of a cover-up is patently false. We would never knowingly put students in harm’s way.”

But several hundred USC faculty disagreed in a letter to the Board of Trustees.

“The university administration’s actions have been wrong at every turn, and not only in hindsight,” the letter said. “In this case, as in prior cases, faced with an ongoing pattern of serious wrongdoing by a powerful university official, the university has kept the wrongdoing quiet, settled financially with the wrongdoer in secret, and denied any responsibility on the part of the university.”

UPDATED: Quick will remain on the faculty as a biological sciences professor. Remember when I said no one actually ever leaves USC.