No matter how intentional or unintentional things were in both 1998 and 2002, the fact is it at the very least eventually evolved into a conspiracy...a conspiracy of silence...a "conspiracy of cowards."
["Jay Bilas, the ESPN college basketball commentator, called it 'a conspiracy of cowards.'" Source: Penn State's Joe Paterno gets what he deserves]
If you haven't looked at FREEPER NewinTexsas' list of who had prior knowledge of what Sandusky was up to...please review...I'm sure he might repost it on this thread.
Here’s a couple of good pieces by experts on the Duke Lacrosse Frame.
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2011/11/the_penn_state_trustees_react_.html
November 10, 2011
The Penn State Trustees React to the Stench
Posted by KC Johnson
The Board of Trustees acted properly in cleaning house at Penn State, by firing president Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. The inaction of the duo, along with similar conduct from now-suspended Athletic Director Tim Curley and now-retired VP Gary Schultz has exposed the university to potentially massive legal liability, as well as prompting an extraordinary public relations backlash.
From all available evidence, the quartet undertook what turned out to be a disastrous gamble: that they could handle the allegations about former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky in such a way that would neither risk the university’s financial well-being nor hurt Penn State’s public relations. So when they received word that Sandusky had been witnessed sexually assaulting a young boy, the four interpreted the allegations in the most benign way possible, and then swept things under the rug. By behaving as they did, they sought to protect the Penn State “brand” from the type of fallout we’ve witnessed over the past several days. Their actions were immoral, but not necessarily irrational.
Spanier, ironically, crossed the line from immoral to irrational in his only statement on the charges before his dismissal. He remarked,
“The allegations about a former coach are troubling, and it is appropriate that they be investigated thoroughly. Protecting children requires the utmost vigilance.”
“With regard to the other presentments, I wish to say that Tim Curley and Gary Schultz have my unconditional support. I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years. I have complete confidence in how they have handled the allegations about a former University employee.”
“Tim Curley and Gary Schultz operate at the highest levels of honesty, integrity and compassion. I am confident the record will show that these charges are groundless and that they conducted themselves professionally and appropriately.”
It’s hard to discern what Spanier hoped to accomplish from this statement. Not only did he decline to suspend Curley, as pointed out most passionately by Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel, Spanier’s use of “unconditional support” implied that he would back the two administrators even if they were found guilty. Moreover, the former president was speaking definitively about issues of which he couldn’t possibly have the requisite knowledge at this time (what did a then-graduate assistant actually say to the two administrators when he reported Sandusky’s behavior; what precisely did the two administrators say to the grand jury). It’s entirely possible that the administrators ultimately will be found not guilty of perjury, a tough charge to prove; it’s even possible, on technical grounds, that they’ll be found not guilty of a failure to report. But for Spanier to have asserted that he knew the truth at this stage was anti-intellectual, and his statement alone would have raised grave doubts about his fitness to lead a major research university.
It’s worth wondering how this story might have played out differently had the de facto (Paterno) and de jure (Spanier) leaders of Penn State responded to the announcement of the charges in the way Penn State’s trustees did on Tuesday night—with a forceful condemnation of Sandusky’s alleged acts and a promise of a comprehensive investigation to find out what went wrong—and then again on Wednesday evening, with a remarkably composed and impressive press conference from BOT vice chairman John Surma.
Instead, Paterno less-than-credibly remarked that he was shocked about the charges, and Spanier offered his amateur legal analysis while downplaying the alleged crimes as merely “troubling.” Both statements created the impression that even after the charges were revealed, the leadership of Penn State lacked any understanding of the gravity of the situation.
Over the past few days, quite a few reporters and commentators have referenced the Duke lacrosse case in commenting on events at Penn State, if only as a reminder of the presumption of innocence and the dangers of a rush to judgment. To quote ESPN’s Dana O’Neill, “If the Duke lacrosse case has taught us anything, we don’t know what we don’t know.” And, as any longtime reader of Dorothy Rabinowitz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work knows, it’s particularly important to demand evidence—rather than wild allegations—when dealing with allegations of sexual abuse against children.
But apart from the fact that the Penn State scandal doesn’t involve some of the other key lessons of the lacrosse case (flawed legal procedures beget flawed results; race/class/gender advocates who dominate most humanities departments care little about due process or impartially evaluating evidence if upholding these ideals might frustrate their on-campus aims), what we know of events at Penn State suggests a very different kind of case than at Duke.
The two most important differences:
First, unlike the Durham Police and disgraced ex-prosecutor Mike Nifong, the authorities in Pennsylvania actually investigated the charges, producing a detailed grand jury report. (Nifong and the DPD, on the other hand, simply accepted whatever story false accuser Crystal Mangum wanted to float to keep the story alive.) Moreover, in at least two instances, there were witnesses to Sandusky’s alleged acts. Again, no such witnesses ever existed in the lacrosse case. And so while it’s obviously premature to speak of guilt or innocence, the prosecution certainly can’t be faulted for a failure to conduct a thorough investigation, or for engaging in the type of horrific abuses of the legal system that Rabinowitz detailed in No Crueler Tyrannies.
Second, the charges against Curley and Schultz—and the possible charges against Spanier—don’t depend on whether Sandusky is guilty or innocent. Perhaps this is all a grand conspiracy against Sandusky, or a massive misunderstanding, and he’s actually innocent. Regardless of the coach’s guilt or innocence, however, the university officials had an obligation to report the charges to police; and, in the case of Curley and Schultz, to tell the truth to the grand jury.
The academy is notoriously accountability-challenged: Richard Brodhead, after all, is still running Duke. But, even in a profession that tends to circle the wagons rather than acknowledge outside criticism, Spanier had to go. That the trustees acted boldly and quickly represents about the first good decision made by the Penn State administration in this affair.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/higher_educations_transparency_problem.html
November 12, 2011
Higher Education’s Transparency Problem
By R.B. Parrish
Nobody knows at present exactly what happened at Penn State — but it would come as no surprise if a major university, when informed that it had the makings of a scandal affecting its campus, decided to cover the matter up rather than report everything directly and openly, and thereby subject itself to negative publicity.
Openness and transparency are not the ways great corporations — which is what a modern university is — do business.
In the Duke lacrosse case, the very first advice a dean gave to the lacrosse players — threatened with possible indictment on first-degree rape charges — was not to tell their parents. The next advice was not to get attorneys. (And the dean giving this advice was herself a member of the Bar.)
The primary goal was to keep the story out of the news. That would be best for Duke. (It was clearly not in the best interest of the players.) When the university learned the players had in fact gotten attorneys, its displeasure was palpable.
Thereafter, Duke did its utmost to wash its hands of its falsely accused students — the better to demonstrate that it had nothing to do with any possible racism, sexism, hubris, or privileged class status supposedly revealed by the case. The university president, Richard Brodhead, kept an antiseptic distance from the lacrosse players: he never communicated with them; he refused to look at evidence of their innocence; he turned down requests to meet with their parents. They became anathema to him — and it was important that they be publicly seen to be an anathema to Duke. Duke’s reputation before the community required it.
The chairman of Duke’s board of trustees, Robert K. Steel, told one of the boys’ defenders that it would be “best for Duke” if they were tried. “Best for Duke.” It wouldn’t matter if there were convictions, because “it could all be sorted out on appeal.” Blatantly innocent students (proven so by DNA tests two weeks before the first arrests in the case were made) should have to bear the burden of public opprobrium, a vindictive and (in Durham) biased trial, and possible conviction — all because it would be “best for Duke.” As Steel also allegedly said to fellow trustees, Duke was not defending its students because “sometimes people have to suffer for the good of the organization.”
That organization reserved all its animus for its own; it never had a bad word for Nifong, nor for the false accuser. In fact, it cooperated with the prosecutor, handing over private student information in violation of FERPA and then lying about it to the court, not to mention joining with Nifong to initiate a sham motion for the same information in order to make it appear as if Duke was actually following the law.
Contrast this with the response of Donna Shalala of the University of Miami when members of Miami’s football team were involved in a fracas:
[W]e will not throw any student under the bus for instant restoration of our image or our reputation. I will not hang them in a public square. I will not eliminate their participation at the University. I will not take away their scholarships.
It’s time for the feeding frenzy to stop. These students made a stupid, terrible, horrible mistake and they are being punished. They are students and we are an educational institution and we will act like an educational institution, not like a P.R. organization that’s trying to spin and to restore an image that we worked so hard to put in place. (Oct. 17, 2006)
A university can be in the kid business. Or it can be a corporation. The latter seeks to preserve at all costs its name, reputation, and business accounts; the vast sums it accrues from its sports programs; its millions in revenues. Its goal can be its own aggrandizement.
A university can even come to regard students as a necessary but transitory evil — basic to its continued existence, but not the essence of what the school itself is. That essence is made up of the faculty, who prime their own egos; the administration, which does the same; and the balance sheets, donation totals, and new buildings, all of which the university scrutinizes in the same way a CEO spies his profit sheets. Like a corporation, a university can come to believe it has to think only in terms of “the big picture.”
It can be willing — some would argue that it has to be willing — to discard a few insignificant individuals along the way as “collateral damage.” What corporation ever grew great except on the detritus of those it crushed while building its success?
How much was Penn State concerned that it might lose if there was a scandal? Was anyone afraid of being fired if they spoke up? Was anyone afraid of retaliation if they reported something? (Who wants to be the whistle-blower against a great corporate entity?) What was uppermost in the thoughts of those who may have known about the scandal and yet said nothing — or even worse, helped for years to cover it up? Were they concerned with what was “best for Penn State”?
It remains yet to be seen how Penn State reacted, and what decisions it made, and what course it took. And what sort of business Penn State was in.
R. B. Parrish is author of The Duke Lacrosse Case: A Documentary History and Analysis of the Modern Scottsboro.
“If you haven’t looked at FREEPER NewinTexsas’ list of who had prior knowledge of what Sandusky was up to...please review...I’m sure he might repost it on this thread.”
Thanks for the ping:
People we know that knew Sandusky raped little boys.
President Spanier
AD Curley
VP Schultz
PSU Attorney Wendell Courtney
Second Mile Attorney Wendell Courtney
University Police (Detective Ronald Schreffler)
State College Police (Detective Ralph Ralston)
Department of Welfare (Investigator Jerry Lauro)
Child Services
County DA Gricar
County Prosecutors
Coach McQueary
Dr. McQueary (Chief Operating Officer/Administrative Director Centre Medical)
Coach Paterno
Various elementary and high school officials
John DiNunzio (Keystone Central School District Interim Superintendent)
Second Mile officials
Second Mile President Jack Raykovitz
Joe Paterno’s staff including down to the janitors
Still to be determined:
Media
NCAA Coaches (Nobody wanted him when he retired)
Board of Trustees
School Teachers
I guess Joe Paterno’s choice of a high-profile, high-pressure attorney was a good one.
Wick Sollers is on the job now, doing damage control, as we can see by this thread with many “new” FReepers rushing to defend Paterno.
PUHLEEZE! It’s so transparent.
NY Daily News:
Joe Paterno hired a high-powered Washington lawyer to represent him Friday because, his son said, he wants to find the truth in the sex-abuse scandal enveloping Penn State University.
“My father’s desire is for the truth to be uncovered and he will work with his lawyers to that end,” said Scott Paterno, who confirmed that his father had hired J. Sedgwick “Wick” Sollers, who has represented former president George H.W. Bush in the past.
But legal experts wondered if he had begun to fear federal action in the case as well as Pennsylvania’s ongoing criminal investigation.
Paterno