Report: Treatment of [Penn State]players questioned

ESPN.com ^ | 22 November 2011 | Staff

[bjorn14]

Former Penn State student disciplinarian Vicky Triponey tells The Wall Street Journal that football players were treated "more favorably than other students accused of violating the community standards as defined by the student code of conduct."

Triponey, who resigned her post as the university's standards and conduct officer in 2007, spoke to the newspaper after it obtained a 2005 email from her to then-president Graham Spanier and others in which Triponey expressed her concerns about the disciplinary process as it pertained to football players.

Coach Joe Paterno "is insistent he knows best how to discipline his players ... and their status as a student when they commit violations of our standards should NOT be our concern ... and I think he was saying we should treat football players different from other students in this regard," Triponey wrote in a Aug. 12, 2005, email obtained by the newspaper.

"Coach Paterno would rather we NOT inform the public when a football player is found responsible for committing a serious violation of the law and/or our student code," she wrote in the email, "despite any moral or legal obligation to do so."

Triponey's email was written the day after a meeting in which Paterno criticized Triponey for "meddling," the Journal reported citing two anonymous sources.

In a response to her note, Athletic Director Tim Curley wrote Paterno felt "it should be his call if someone should practice and play in athletics."

In a statement Monday to the Journal Triponey said: "There were numerous meetings and discussions about specific and pending student discipline cases that involved football players," which included "demands" to adjust the process for players resulting in them being treated "more favorably than other students accused of violating the community standards as defined by the student code of conduct."

[bjorn14]

I'm shocked I tell you! Just shocked!

[San Jacinto]

Sounds like a dimRat crawling up through a crack in the Penn State football rubble to advance their agenda. More of them will follow, I’m sure.

[ardara]

They are coming out of the woodwork.

[hosepipe]

There whitewash really is whitewash no problem.... whitewash

[Melchior]

There is an unsubstantiated report that they have finally found an LSU football player who knows how to read.

[SeaHawkFan]

Reminds me of a George Raveling joke many, many years ago: “The film crew from the TV show ‘That’s Incredible’ were on the campus of USC and showed 6 football players going to class.”

[pogo101]

Not sure how much this relates to the Sandusky scandal, which is why it’s getting published. Maybe it’s a tad related, but the “football players at a big football U get special favors” thing isn’t exactly a phenomenon limited to PSU.

[MrEdd]

Recently sacked Penn State President Spanier was a member of the friends of Cuba and actually visited Castro from time to time. He made sure his administration fit his agenda.

If anything different crawles up through the cracks it won’t be a dimrat, those are the norm.

[bjorn14]

It’s just more evidence that JoePa was the biggest hypocrite in college athletics. The whole “Success with Honor” meme was just a slogan. He only cared about one thing his reputation nothing else mattered it was all about him and his fairytale kingdom he built on sand.

[SaraJohnson]

Feminazi, I would bet. Remember how the dykes and homos acted to the falsely accused Lax players at Duke. They despise athletic men.

[Scoutmaster]

For Pete's sake. This was a 2005 email that the newspapers got a copy of. And she resigned in 2007. Paterno's special treatment rule for football players was documented in the Sports Illustrated Special Issue last week. He was a hypocrite when it came to his morality stance. This has nothing to do with feminazis or people crawling out of the woodwork to make false claims because the the Sandusky affair.

We're just finally seeing who Joe Paterno really was, without the public relations cover-up to which Penn State treated us for decades.

[Scoutmaster]

And read what she says about working with the coach at Connecticut and how his program was transparent and not a cover-up of players’ improper activities. She’s not out to get all athletic men. She says Paterno was a special problem.

[San Jacinto]

I am no defender of Paterno in keeping the lid on a child molester scandal. I think the NCAA should condsider the death penalty for the football program. What Penn State apparently did was a helluva lot worse than what SMU did.

But putting the football coach in charge of player disclipline is pretty traditional. That’s the way it was at my high school, and the punishment one would get tended to be a lot harsher and more physical than if it came from the principal’s office.

[Scoutmaster]

These emails seem to go further. For example:

"Coach Paterno would rather we NOT inform the public when a football player is found responsible for committing a serious violation of the law and/or our student code," she wrote in the email, "despite any moral or legal obligation to do so."

Not reporting despite legal obligations to do so?

And letting Paterno decide if a football player should stay in school based on his violations of the law or student code, when all other students are subject to the school's rules and some disciplinary board or administrator?

That goes beyond letting the coach discipline his players, in my opinion.