<p>"The child sex abuse scandal at Penn State is a public relations disaster that the university is likely to be dealing with for years to come.</p>
<p>The challenge for one of the nation’s top public universities: Winning back a reputation for honesty, integrity and transparency without waiting that long …</p>
<p>… Here are edited excerpts of what branding experts said when asked what else the university can do to improve its tarnished reputation:"</p>
<p>My favorite is: “If they start winning next season, a lot of this is going to be forgotten and forgiven.”</p>
<p>The Today Show had a bit this morning that stated PSU branded mechandise sales are down 40% since when the scandal was publically announced.</p>
<p>People are still going to flock to PSU and there are a lot of parellels in terms of PR with the Virginia Tech shooting a few years back. VT bounced back and so will PSU…</p>
<p>Clean house to the root. Including the janitor who saw something and the supervisors who looked away. Including every coach that heard and ignored rumors. Including every administrator who was intimidated by the cult of football. Inluding the central PA prosecutors and police who couldn’t believe this could happen in Happy Valley. Penn State sacrificed KIDS to save their name, and now the only way to fix this is is a scorched earth policy. To those that say this is too harsh, Penn State lost the right to complain over a decade ago when they could have and should have done the right thing.</p>
<p>Penn State’s president was also in bed with the fracking industry, playing up one professor’s discovery while ignoring its environmental costs and even firing academic whistleblowers for reporting environmental toxin levels to the EPA. I am unsympathetic.</p>
<p>Whistleblowing was not only suppressed in its athletics department, but its science departments as well. Any self-respecting honorable or ethical person should not consider going to Penn State.</p>
<p>@greyhaired: If you want to produce a climate where reporting is valued, regardless of who is doing the reporting, you aren’t going to get it by firing the night janitor when he reports the abuse to his shift supervisor. All that does is reinforce the notion that reporting abuse can only backfire on the reporter, and we already know that does not produce a culture of safety for anyone. It’s easy to say “well, he should have gone to the police himself” but when you are the hourly guy in a failing economy with a family on the edge, what do you do? This sort of bad process is exactly what will be fixed in the coming years, everywhere, as schools take a hard look at what happens, as opposed to some fantasy world version of what people do. </p>
<p>@evita: if you are going to ■■■■■ every PSU thread on CC to post about fracking and then insult thousands of PSU students (and potential students) by calling them dishonorable and unethical, I envy your free time. My sons, my neighbors, my family, my PASTOR, my volunteers, my teachers…they are all self-respecting and ethical people who are proud of their school and simultaneously ashamed of the horrifying priorities exhibited by a select, secreted, group of admins. It isn’t an either/or proposition. You dishonor yourself by lumping it all together.</p>
<p>Penn State students didn’t do anything to speak up about their president’s coziness with gas interests, or the president’s cover-up of a pedophile. Instead, ten thousand of them rioted for an immoral cause.</p>
<p>A select, secreted group of admins? Sounds more like a diseased student body willing to put their sense of football loyalty over their sense of right and wrong.</p>
<p>I am from the University of Virginia. I had no previous beef with PSU. I have a friend from high school who goes there (an athlete!), and who is now horrified at her fellow classmates.</p>
<p>The ten-thousand-student riot changed everything. It set the perception firmly in my mind, that PSU did not have an honorable student body.</p>
<p>And there were warning signs before the scandal too. Just look at this founded-in-2006 facebook group:</p>
<p>There were not ten thousand rioting students. You are misinformed. My child is a student there, and she and her friends, professors and acquaintances are horrified at the group of idiots (not ten thousand) who “rioted.” </p>
<p>She is an honorable young woman, who says she loves her school more than ever and is going to make sure she continues to be honorable and an example of what a Penn State student is and should be.</p>
<p>evita, I think your insults, poor fact checking and silly facebook reference have caused you to lose the respect of anyone who might have had an interest in your posts. Now we are just wishing you would go away.</p>
<p>yes, only a few thousand rioted, but the other thousands upon thousands those who stood outside Paterno’s home cheering for him were complicit in the violence too.</p>
<p>Ok, give the janitor a pass since he reported it to his supervisor, but how about everyone in the campus police and administration? You say you want an atmosphere that compels reporting, well make the consequenses for not reporting so severe that no one would think of sweeping this level of tragedy under the rug. The environment was one that encouraged deceit and the reward for not reporting was having your name on a building.</p>