To: Penn State Trustees, President Barron, Senator Yudichak, Senator Corman
cc: alumni networking
Is it a conflict of interest for a Trustee to use a Board meeting to promote a book in which he is acknowledged?
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SMSS-FREEHdom Fighters
6 hrs ·
We have learned that during yesterday's meetings of the #PSU Board of Trustees, "Trustee" Paul Silvis was distributing copies of "Wounded Lions", the latest hit piece written about the Penn State athletics department. Silvis is mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book. We view this as a clear violation of fiduciary duty to the university, primarily with regard to the following standing order:
"Act in good faith at all times and in the best interests of the
University in a non-partisan manner, without regard to the
manner in which such Trustee was appointed or elected to the board of Trustees"
As a gubernatorial appointee, sponsored by Senator @JakeCorman, we ask that you please express your outrage to Governor Wolf, Senator Corman and Chairman Masser.
This, by the way, seems to be what Paul Silvis is promoting: ongoing denouncement of Penn State and its football program. It is to be remembered that Mr. Silvis, along with his colleagues as of March 2012, was proven by Keith Masser’s and Kenneth Frazier’s court depositions to have not only scapegoated Coach Paterno but also to have lied about the circumstances of his dismissal.
The Sandusky case was far from the first example of illegal behavior related to the football program--or the university's attempts to suppress news of it. As Smith shows, decades of infighting among administrators, alumni, trustees, faculty, and coaches established policies intended to protect the university, and the football team considered synonymous with its name, at all costs. If the habits predated Paterno, they also became sanctified during his tenure. Smith names names to show how abuses of power warped the "Penn State Way" even with hires like women's basketball coach Rene Portland, who allegedly practiced sexual bias against players for decades. Smith also details a system that concealed Sandusky's horrific acts just as deftly as it whitewashed years of rules violations, coaching malfeasance, and player crime while Paterno set records and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the university.
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If I had to review this book based on its description, I would write it a “worst possible” rating but, unlike Karen Peetz aka the Sixty Million Dollar Mouth (the cost of her affirmation of the Freeh Report in violation of the Board’s Standing Orders), I am not going to sign off on something without reading it, or at least enough details to know I am being fair.
William A. Levinson, B.S. ‘78
