Posted on 11/22/2011 5:42:06 AM PST by Pharmboy
. STATE COLLEGE, Pa.—Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno clashed repeatedly with the university's former chief disciplinarian over how harshly to punish players who got into trouble, internal emails suggest, shedding new light on the school's effort to balance its reputation as a magnet for scholar-athletes with the demands of running a nationally dominant football program.
In an Aug. 12, 2005, email to Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier and others, Vicky Triponey, the university's standards and conduct officer, complained that Mr. Paterno believed she should have "no interest, (or business) holding our football players accountable to our community standards. The Coach 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."
The confrontations came to a head in 2007, according to one former school official, when six football players were charged by police for forcing their way into a campus apartment that April and beating up several students, one of them severely. That September, following a tense meeting with Mr. Paterno over the case, she resigned her post, saying at the time she left because of "philosophical differences."
In a statement Monday, Dr. Triponey said: "There were numerous meetings and discussions about specific and pending student discipline cases that involved football players," which she said included "demands" to adjust the judicial process for football players. The end result, she said, was that football players were treated "more favorably than other students accused of violating the community standards as defined by the student code of conduct."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
and everyday the myth of “JoePa” unravels a little more.
I'm sure the computer science faculty and IT department have been hard at work for the last few weeks on a 'special project.'
well isn’t THAT an interesting tidbit?
And completely contradicts the narrative that JoePa was “just a coach” who couldn’t do much about Sandusky.
Many people still think that after they hit “Delete” the file is gone.
At Penn State, Joe had more power than the president of the university. His money-raising prowess was the origin of his power.
isn’t that exactly the point?
When JoePa wanted to “watch out” for his players, look how far he was willing to go!
He went to Spanier and threatened to pull the plug on his fundraising if he didn’t fire this woman.
Who was running this university?
And now, when the poop hits the fan, JoePa goes for the “I’m just the football coach..” approach?
he sure let himself get into a tizzy over this woman didn’t he?
But when a boy gets raped in HIS building?
big yawn.
When JoePa wanted to “watch out” for his players, look how far he was willing to go! He went to Spanier and threatened to pull the plug on his fundraising if he didn’t fire this woman.
Any casual PSU fan knew that Joe Paterno 'handled' player discipline "in-house". Usually the punishment that he handed out was harsher in terms of what you'd expect for similar infractions committed by players at other universities. Over time I would think that the University just deferred to Paterno in all matters involving the players. That doesn't excuse Spanier, the university president, from his obligation to oversee the athletic department.
Like I said in an earlier post -- Paterno is a side-show now. We need to see what the university knew. I suspect that there is a lot more being covered up given Spanier's Gay-friendly initiatives at the university. I may be proven wrong, but I don't want it to go un-investigated. Same goes for Sandusky's "Second-Mile Foundation".
Paterno is not a side show - he “is”, or “was” the university.
Hence - his ability to boss around Spanier with threats of cutting off the money machine.
This “side-issue” is an example of what standards and conduct officers, compliance officials, and internal auditors deal with on a regular basis. They are the people designated to keep the university in line with laws and regulations and when they find a problem, they are frequently bullied or fired by upper-level administrators to keep it quiet. Eventually the situation continues and grows to the point it can’t be covered up anymore and it becomes a scandal.
And then everyone runs around asking “How could this have happened? Why didn’t anyone do anything?”
Be careful with this people. This is a side-issue that merely shifts the focus from the university onto the deposed football coach.
______________________________
Good point. They will villanize him and then Paterno will “die for their sins” (lung cancer at 84).
With all due respect, Paterno isn’t the university any longer. My big fear is that PSU’s board is going to bury as much of this as they can. They will even protect former administrators if need be. Spanier didn’t want to go up against Paterno. That was Spanier not fulfilling his legal duty in the Sandusky matter as much as it was Paterno’s moral failure.
Don’t forget, under PA’s child-abuse statute it was Spanier’s obligation to report. Paterno should have been fired. But Spanier’s failure goes direct to the University in a “legal” way that Paterno’s didn’t. And the University is now concerned with the civil liability aspect of this so they’re going to shift as much blame onto Paterno as they can.
With all due respect...Paterno is well deserving of “blame”.
The same guy who pushed around Spanier regarding the firing of this woman, enabled a child rapist to continue his activities on campus for years.
I am completely amazed people find this to be insignificant.
This is not “either” the administrators, “or” Paterno.
We can multi-task here, and correctly blame all of them all at the same time.
My point exactly. The institutional failure is central at this point.
We can agree on that. I'm just asking that people don't take their eye off the institutional failure. Spanier was a light-weight and a coward. If he couldn't reign in Paterno she should have publically tendered his resignation. But Spanier was protecting his 'pet-projects' too. PSU would rather we not go there since it they might also intersect with the Sandusky-scandal.
Perfect!
Pattern isn’t perfect but the fact is that he was the only person to hold Jerry Sandusky to any account during the entire abuse saga.
Sandusky was busted in 1998, and after that investigation Paterno removed him from the program.
While the state of Pennsylvania failed to prosecute and the PSU board of trustees and president sat by and let Sandusky maintain an on campus office with Emiritus status.
The really sad part of the story... While Paterno and McQueery’s careers have been destroyed, while fully cooperatong with the investigation.
All the men charged with a crime are having their legal bills paid for by the university, and while while they are on leave... Still have their tenure status fully intact.
The past president of the University... Still tenured faculty.
The Governor of the state should resign, he held Joe Paterno to a much higher standard than he has held himself in this case.
So basically JoePa didn't care if Sandusky continued to diddle little boys, just as long as he didn't do it on campus.
“The really sad part of the story... While Paterno and McQueery’s careers have been destroyed, while fully cooperatong with the investigation.”
The sad thing is that you are not alone in that frightening thought. The truly sad thing is that children were molested and raped. No career problem comes close to that.
Ping.
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