Business & Industry candidates are not qualified for the Board
To: Penn State Trustees
cc: alumni networking
I encourage the alumni-elected Trustees to vote automatically against the Business & Industry appointees to show that nobody outside the B&I and Agriculture factions has any confidence in these people.
First, their presence on the Board is illegitimate, as pointed out by State Senator Andy Dinniman. They are supposed to be appointed by the state’s professional societies and business organizations, as opposed to by themselves.
Second, the B&I faction has proven repeatedly that it selects its members for purposes of favoritism rather than the well-being of Penn State. This faction not only appointed, but re-appointed, incompetent and dishonest (as shown by Keith Masser’s unwilling deposition in the Corman-NCAA lawsuit) Trustees like Karen Peetz and Kenneth Frazier, both of whom played a major role in ruining Penn State’s reputation. These individuals, along with Keith Masser and Rodney Erickson, have gotten Penn State sued for (more likely than not) defaming Graham Spanier. Most people have better sense than to make public derogatory remarks about subordinates and former subordinates, just as most people are smart enough to not badmouth former employers. The lack of judgment shown by Peetz, Frazier, Masser, and Erickson in this regard has led to obviously foreseeable consequences.
Peetz’s affirmation of the Freeh Report in violation of the Board’s Standing Orders was responsible for tens of millions of dollars in harm to Penn State, and the destruction of the University’s reputation. I would personally not trust BNY Mellon with assets beyond those insured by the FDIC based on this individual’s performance as a Trustee.
Frazier, of course, treated us to a public temper tantrum in which he lectured an alumnus in Shartponese (the kind of language used by Al Sharpton to describe people whose skin color differs from his own), thus casting substantial doubt on his fitness to be in charge of a purportedly equal opportunity employer like the Merck Corporation. I have, in fact, just voted my shares against his continued employment in that capacity for that reason, because somebody who scapegoats any subordinate is not fit for any position of supervisory responsibility, and also because somebody who lies to an organization to which he owes a fiduciary duty is ethically capable of lying to stockholders, customers, employees, and suppliers. The latter issue, of course, applies to every single member of the Board in March 2012 except for Al Clemens, who disassociated himself from the Board’s posthumous defamation of Joe Paterno.
To recap the latter item, Mr. Masser admitted in his deposition that the Board fired Paterno not for anything he had done or hadn’t done, i.e. that the Board scapegoated him for public relations purposes. Mr. Frazier said essentially the same thing, although not as explicitly. Then, however, the Board issued a statement in March 2012 to the effect that it had fired Paterno for “failure of leadership,” a phrase it repeated twice. If, as Masser and Frazier said under oath, Paterno was not fired for anything he had done or had not done, he was not fired for “failure of leadership,” which means the entire Board lied to and on behalf of Penn State about the circumstances of his dismissal.
The U.S. Military Academy will rightly not put up with a liar because a liar cannot command, and does not deserve, the trust, respect, or confidence of superiors, peers, or subordinates. In addition, lying, which includes scapegoating a purportedly gay sailor for the U.S.S. Iowa turret explosion, can result in loss of personnel and/or equipment. If you blame a deceased sailor for an explosion, and thus divert attention from the actual root cause, the same thing can happen again, and it can sink the entire ship. The lies told by John Surma, Karen Peetz, and Kenneth Frazier similarly “sank” Penn State’s reputation in 2012, and their colleagues (including Keith Masser and Keith Eckel) would fall into the category “tolerate those who do” of the USMA’s Honor Code.
Newer B&I members like Verizon’s Mead have proven repeatedly State Senator Yudichak’s observation that personal agendas rather than a Penn State agenda are driving Board decisions. Mead voted to support Keith Masser’s willful dereliction of the Board’s fiduciary duty (the Commonwealth Court’s opinion of April 9 2014) with regard to the NCAA sanctions, as did the other B&I members.
All this suggests that none of the potential B&I appointees are qualified to be anything but members of a self-appointing and self-perpetuating country club that puts its own interests first, and those of Penn State a distant second.
William A. Levinson, B.S. ‘78
To: Penn State Trustees
cc: alumni networking
I encourage the alumni-elected Trustees to vote automatically against the Business & Industry appointees to show that nobody outside the B&I and Agriculture factions has any confidence in these people.
First, their presence on the Board is illegitimate, as pointed out by State Senator Andy Dinniman. They are supposed to be appointed by the state’s professional societies and business organizations, as opposed to by themselves.
Second, the B&I faction has proven repeatedly that it selects its members for purposes of favoritism rather than the well-being of Penn State. This faction not only appointed, but re-appointed, incompetent and dishonest (as shown by Keith Masser’s unwilling deposition in the Corman-NCAA lawsuit) Trustees like Karen Peetz and Kenneth Frazier, both of whom played a major role in ruining Penn State’s reputation. These individuals, along with Keith Masser and Rodney Erickson, have gotten Penn State sued for (more likely than not) defaming Graham Spanier. Most people have better sense than to make public derogatory remarks about subordinates and former subordinates, just as most people are smart enough to not badmouth former employers. The lack of judgment shown by Peetz, Frazier, Masser, and Erickson in this regard has led to obviously foreseeable consequences.
Peetz’s affirmation of the Freeh Report in violation of the Board’s Standing Orders was responsible for tens of millions of dollars in harm to Penn State, and the destruction of the University’s reputation. I would personally not trust BNY Mellon with assets beyond those insured by the FDIC based on this individual’s performance as a Trustee.
Frazier, of course, treated us to a public temper tantrum in which he lectured an alumnus in Shartponese (the kind of language used by Al Sharpton to describe people whose skin color differs from his own), thus casting substantial doubt on his fitness to be in charge of a purportedly equal opportunity employer like the Merck Corporation. I have, in fact, just voted my shares against his continued employment in that capacity for that reason, because somebody who scapegoats any subordinate is not fit for any position of supervisory responsibility, and also because somebody who lies to an organization to which he owes a fiduciary duty is ethically capable of lying to stockholders, customers, employees, and suppliers. The latter issue, of course, applies to every single member of the Board in March 2012 except for Al Clemens, who disassociated himself from the Board’s posthumous defamation of Joe Paterno.
To recap the latter item, Mr. Masser admitted in his deposition that the Board fired Paterno not for anything he had done or hadn’t done, i.e. that the Board scapegoated him for public relations purposes. Mr. Frazier said essentially the same thing, although not as explicitly. Then, however, the Board issued a statement in March 2012 to the effect that it had fired Paterno for “failure of leadership,” a phrase it repeated twice. If, as Masser and Frazier said under oath, Paterno was not fired for anything he had done or had not done, he was not fired for “failure of leadership,” which means the entire Board lied to and on behalf of Penn State about the circumstances of his dismissal.
The U.S. Military Academy will rightly not put up with a liar because a liar cannot command, and does not deserve, the trust, respect, or confidence of superiors, peers, or subordinates. In addition, lying, which includes scapegoating a purportedly gay sailor for the U.S.S. Iowa turret explosion, can result in loss of personnel and/or equipment. If you blame a deceased sailor for an explosion, and thus divert attention from the actual root cause, the same thing can happen again, and it can sink the entire ship. The lies told by John Surma, Karen Peetz, and Kenneth Frazier similarly “sank” Penn State’s reputation in 2012, and their colleagues (including Keith Masser and Keith Eckel) would fall into the category “tolerate those who do” of the USMA’s Honor Code.
Newer B&I members like Verizon’s Mead have proven repeatedly State Senator Yudichak’s observation that personal agendas rather than a Penn State agenda are driving Board decisions. Mead voted to support Keith Masser’s willful dereliction of the Board’s fiduciary duty (the Commonwealth Court’s opinion of April 9 2014) with regard to the NCAA sanctions, as did the other B&I members.
All this suggests that none of the potential B&I appointees are qualified to be anything but members of a self-appointing and self-perpetuating country club that puts its own interests first, and those of Penn State a distant second.
William A. Levinson, B.S. ‘78
