Penn State Sandusky scandal

Parent Cafe
5401

<p>[David</a> Jones: Joe Paterno fans must accept that he was flawed | PennLive.com](<a href=“http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/06/david_jones_joe_paterno_fans_m.html]David”>David Jones: Joe Paterno fans must accept that he was flawed - pennlive.com)</p>

<p>I thought David Jones wrote a good column.“Joe Paterno fans must accept that he was flawed.”
Do you applaud his commitment to not get ahead of the story?</p>

<p>Without regard to any NCAA intrusion or decision, should Penn State discipline itself?</p>

5402

<p>Nice article.</p>

<p>A while ago, I had come across these two Paterno stories. I found their contrast interesting, as the first one shows the star status Paterno had on that campus, and the second one his darker side. In the first story, you can see how the author absolutely idolized Paterno while he was a student at PSU.</p>

<p>[My</a> Joe Paterno Story - BroBible.com](<a href=“http://www.brobible.com/life/article/my-joe-paterno-story]My”>http://www.brobible.com/life/article/my-joe-paterno-story)</p>

<p>[The</a> day Joe Paterno cursed me out, or why I am glad he is gone – Outsports](<a href=“http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2011/11/09/the-day-joe-paterno-cursed-me-out-or-why-i-am-glad-he-is-gone/]The”>http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2011/11/09/the-day-joe-paterno-cursed-me-out-or-why-i-am-glad-he-is-gone/)</p>

5403

<p>[Paterno</a> E-Mail Shows Coach’s Influence on Disciplinary Matters - Administration - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Paterno E-Mail Shows Coach’s Influence on Disciplinary Matters”>Paterno E-Mail Shows Coach’s Influence on Disciplinary Matters)</p>

<p>Comments are also interesting.</p>

5404

<p>".“Joe Paterno fans must accept that he was flawed.”</p>

<p>Flawed people do not usually enable pedophiles, providing them with cover, facilities, opportunity, and money (as well as reputation).</p>

5405

<p>Agree. “Flawed” does not begin to cover JoePa’s sins. But at least the idea is beginning to circulate that the man wasn’t an unalloyed saint.</p>

5406

<p>^^^ Interesting that Paterno did use email in 2007 in an unrelated matter. Proves family and attorney do not know as much as they think they do regarding Paterno’s dealings. Not surprised Paterno made it clear he was to handle the discipline.</p>

5407

<p>Revealing article about Paterno…most striking was Triponey’s attempt to reel him in, and exposing his control of discipline, apparent refusal to report crime to law enforcement. Wonder what Freeh’s report includes about her firing…</p>

<p>Sent from my MB865 using CC</p>

5408

<p>[State</a> College, PA - Freeh Report Findings Could Be ‘Very Tough’ on Paterno, ESPN’s Outside the Lines Says](<a href=“http://www.statecollege.com/news/local-news/freeh-report-findings-could-be-very-tough-on-paterno-espns-outside-the-lines-says-1085342/]State”>http://www.statecollege.com/news/local-news/freeh-report-findings-could-be-very-tough-on-paterno-espns-outside-the-lines-says-1085342/)</p>

5409

<p>Two questions:</p>

<p>1) Why aren’t all the trustees and higher admin forced to resign?</p>

<p>2) This is a state college so what is the role of the state’s elected officals in addressing this?</p>

<p>This is a lot like the Catholic Church where the higher ups were not held accountable, except one recent bishop conviction. Everyone who knew or should have known should be spending a few nights in jail/prision.</p>

5410

<p>^^Penn State is state-supported, but not a state school, so it may not be governed as ther states’ state schools.</p>

5411

<p>what about Corbett’s role?</p>

<p>I personally hope Matt Sandusky’s biological mother pursues something with the judge who kept Matt with the Sandusky’s despite her own urging along with the social worker who noted problems there.</p>

5412

<p>

I couldn’t agree with this more. How horrifying it must have been for Matt S. to be sent to his abuser’s house to live. This is a boy who was already showing fear of Sandusky. To be taken from his mother and sent to Sandusky’s to live was absolute mental torture for that boy. Not even attempting suicide was enough to get him out of there. Lord only knows what he went through, and how deeply it affected his sense of well-being.</p>

<p>And all the people who knew about Sandusky, who heard about the 2001 shower incident, and the 1998 incident, most likely knew he was adopting young boys. <em>shiver</em></p>

5413

<p>The whole insidious cover up is almost beyond belief when you think about all the victims and the fact that many could have been spared had Paterno, Spanier, Schultz and Curley simply reported to CPS instead of scheming to conceal the pedophile among them. How they can show their faces after the email came out I do not know.</p>

5414

<p>No one (besides the investigators) has “seen” the leaked emails yet. CNN is parsing out portions of the email as they see fit. They had them read to them over the phone. Apparently some are out of context. Who knows.</p>

<p>We will see soon enough.</p>

5415

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, I’m not sure I buy that characterization, at least not without further elaboration. It’s certainly not a private school (in contrast to, say, Cornell, which is definitely a private school but is partially funded by the State of New york to support its ag school and several other colleges and programs within the university). Penn State was created by an act of the Pennsylvania legislature and has been state-funded ever since. It became Pennsylvania’s one and only land-grant university with the enactment of the federal Morrill Act in the 1860s. Up through the 1960s it was repeatedly referred to as “state-owned” in acts of the legislature, and its employees were even paid by state-issued checks.</p>

<p>In the 1970s it gained greater independence when the legislature created the Commonwealth System of Higher Education, which now consists of Penn State, Temple, Pitt, and Lincoln University. These schools are all state-funded (in part), but have independent governing bodies. In Penn State’s case, that’s the Board of Trustees which consists of the university president; the state’s governor; the state Secretaries of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Education; 6 additional members appointed by the governor; 9 members elected by alumni; 6 elected by state agricultural societies; and 6 elected by a board representing business and industry.</p>

<p>It’s not unusual for public universities to have independent governing bodies. The University of Michigan, for example, predates the state of Michigan but ever since Michigan has been a state, the university has been recognized in the state constitution as an independent public entity. Since 1850 it has been governed by a Board of Regents directly elected by the state’s citizens; the Regents are constitutional officers.</p>

<p>In this type of arrangement, the public university is not directly answerable to the the governor or the state department of education, and attempts by the legislature to set its policies would be seen as outside political interference in the internal workings of an independent body. The legislature, of course, has discretion with respect to what it chooses to fund and at what level, so there’s some accountability through the purse-strings. And of course the courts and the legal system provide the ultimate arena of accountability. But basically, the Trustees (in Penn State’s case) or the Regents (in Michigan’s case) are the highest authority. It’s a little more complicated in Penn State’s case because the governor and three of his cabinet members are themselves Trustees, and 6 additional members are the governor’s political appointees, so there’s much more direct involvement by the state’s political branches in the operations of the university than there would be in Michigan’s case, where the Regents are themselves elected officials answerable only to the voters.</p>

<p>I think what MD Mom means when she says Penn State is “state-supported, but not a state school” is that it’s not part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PSSHE), which includes 14 schools all governed by a single Board of Governors consisting of the governor, the state Secretary of Education, 4 legislators, 11 political appointees of the governor, and 3 students. That governance structure places the schools under much more direct political control by the state government. The Pennsylvania legislature now refers to the schools in the PSSHE as “state-owned” and those in the Commonwealth System of Higher Education (including Penn State) as “state-related” reflecting greater independence in their governance structures. But make no mistake, they’re all public universities. Penn State was granted greater independence when CSHE was created, but that happened by a simple act of the legislature, one that could be revoked at any time.</p>

<p>The answer to LakeCloud’s question (post #5409) is that under current arrangements the Trustees are the highest authority with regard to how Penn State operates; it’s their job to clean house. But the Trustees include the governor, 3 state secretaries, and the 6 gubernatorial appointees, along with all the others. If that governance structure isn’t working, the legislature can apparently change it by statute (unlike in Michigan where it would take a state constitutional amendment to wrest control from the Board of Regents). But I haven’t heard of any move to do that.</p>

5416

<p>

</p>

<p>At a minimum this should be revoked. Why isn’t there a move afoot to do this?</p>

5417

<p>From a recent article, the difference between state-related schools and PASSHE schools:</p>

<p>“State-related universities differ from the PASSHE schools, because they receive less than 10 percent of their overall budget from the state. The PASSHE schools are owned by the state and almost entirely state-funded.”</p>

<p>I believe PSU receives 7% of its budget from the state. </p>

<p>The state-related schools have more independence because they receive far less money from the state. Which is why they are signficantly more expensive.</p>

5418

<p>Today’s leak-of-the-day on CNN concerns Dr. Triponey, with a notable lack of background on the more troublesome aspects of her own motivations and track record. Which is not at all to say that because she’s a problematic “witness”, she is necessarily lying. But a paragon of good behavior, she ain’t. </p>

<p>[Safeguard</a> Old State ? Preserving the Rights & Traditions of Penn Staters. The Vicky Triponey Timeline of Terror](<a href=“http://safeguardoldstate.org/the-vicky-triponey-timeline-of-terror/]Safeguard”>http://safeguardoldstate.org/the-vicky-triponey-timeline-of-terror/)</p>

<p>If the Freeh report does come out on the 11th, it coincides with the most notorious riot prior to the Paterno incidents. My hope is that cooler heads will prevail. The Collegian has started pushing the tag “Roar Not Riot” but we shall see. The vast majority of people streaming in to town for Arts Fest are alum, not current students (who are mostly gone for the summer). So there’s really no excuse if something goes bad by the end of the week. Yeesh.</p>

5419

<p>Re: post #5416^^</p>

<p>LakeClouds,</p>

<p>I don’t think the state wants to take back responsibility for running Penn State because that might imply a responsibility to fund it. Many states have gotten pretty comfortable with quasi-privatization of their public flagships, gradually weaning them of legislative appropriations and letting them fend for themselves financially, making up the loss of state revenue with tuition hikes, charitable contributions, and external research funding. But generally that goes hand-in-glove with institutional autonomy in governance matters.</p>

<p>There’s definitely something seriously amiss at Penn State. There’s no question the Administration failed, and because the Trustees are the ones ultimately responsible for the institution, I think you pretty much have to conclude that the Trustees failed, too. But the Trustees are the ones responsible for fixing what’s broken. The legislature can’t run the place, and they don’t want to. The Governor has a lot of responsibility here; he’s already a Trustee, and he appoints a sizable fraction of the other Trustees. It’s broken, and as a Trustee and as Governor responsible to the citizens of Pennsylvania, he should make sure it gets fixed. If he doesn’t, then the people should elect a new governor. I think that’s where the accountability comes in.</p>

<p>The structure of the Penn State Board of Trustees is very peculiar, but I don’t think that’s the core problem here. I think the Trustees failed to exercise appropriate oversight. In retrospect, perhaps they made a bad judgment in hiring Spanier as president, or in keeping him on beyond a certain point, but those things are difficult to anticipate. I think it was pretty clear to a lot of people, though, that Joe Paterno and his football program had become just too powerful and too unaccountable, and the Trustees just let that happen, or in some cases perhaps even cheered it on; it was the Penn State way, a big part of what was so distinctive about the place. But that’s not due to the structure of the Board of Trustees (unless there are issues there I don’t know about). It was just a huge lapse in judgment on the part of the Trustees as individuals, and as a collective body. Maybe some of them should resign. Maybe they should all resign, and apologize to the public for having let things get out of hand. But I don’t know that the legislature stepping in and stripping the Board of Trustees of its authority or creating some other governance structure that gives the governor or some state bureaucrat more direct control than the governor already exerts would be a constructive response. You’d have to say that a long series of Pennsylvania governors were derelict, too, since they’ve been Trustees, and responsible for appointing a large fraction of the other Trustees, all along. So I’m not sure making it entirely the governor’s responsibility is a recipe for improvement.</p>

<p>I think what you need is Trustees who have learned from this horrible situation–either continuing Trustees who have learned from their own mistakes, or new Trustees who have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. It worries me a little, though, that you don’t hear a lot of mea culpas coming from the Trustees. They fired Paterno and Spanier and suspended Schultz and Curley, fingering the individuals they want to hold accountable; and those judgments are appearing to be sound. But I don’t think they’ve come to grips with their own responsibility for this mess, and if they don’t . . . well, there’s not much hope of things getting better, except perhaps for the fact that the Great Man, Paterno, is now departed, and with him hopefully the cult of personality that had grown up around him and made him all-powerful, and apparently Sandusky’s protector. Maybe the Freeh report will lay it on the line for the Trustees, too. The institution failed, and that means they failed. And they’d better own up to it.</p>

5420

<p>Frankly, sadly, you find pedophiles everywhere. And you find administrators and bureaucrats without close knowledge of situations passing the buck up and down the chain everywhere. Nothing special in this case. Tragic, but not special.</p>

<p>There was one, and only one, thing wrong at PSU that was special: Paterno. Sandusky was his closest associate for 30 years. Paterno provided opportunity, location, money, access to children, and reputation for Sandusky, both before and well after 2001. And because JoePa couldn’t be questioned or challenged - that’s what was special at PSU - Sandusky couldn’t be stopped. </p>

<p>They’ve got to melt down the statue.</p>