President Barron, (cc: Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship, Raise Penn State)
Thank you for including Coach Paterno in the video shown at the Homecoming game. This is a first step toward making good the damage caused by the Board of Trustees’ rush to judgment in 2011, and its subsequent failures, but it is only a first step, and not sufficient to alleviate my concerns about donating or leaving money to Penn State. I am trying to ascertain from the Office of Gift Planning (copied on this E-mail) whether a directed donation or bequest to a specific program, such as the Department of Chemistry, Paterno Fellowship, or Paterno Library, will be used expressly for that purpose or whether the money is fungible with Penn State’s general budget, or the Development Fund takes a portion of directed donations or bequests. If the money is fungible in any way then I will, as matters stand presently, have to disinherit Penn State in favor of something else such as THON assuming THON is totally independent of the University. There are no circumstances under which I will trust the Board of Trustees, as currently “led” by its appointed rather than elected (alumni) Trustees, to use the money responsibly for the University’s educational mission.
The University still has my recommendation, based on my own experience as a student, over far more expensive Ivy League schools. I can’t speak for radio host Dave Ramsey but I think he would recommend Penn State over Ivy League schools so students can avoid incurring debt while still getting a first-class education. I will not, however, donate or bequeath money so the Board of Trustees, as currently “led” by the appointed majority, can squander my gift or bequest on, for example, the NCAA sanctions,* the Freeh Report (which the Board failed to review diligently when it was released and has continued to decline to review), and (my opinion) tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts to alleged Sandusky victims for whose injuries Penn State bears no responsibility whatsoever.
Penn State’s Board of Trustees does not have my trust, respect, or support
A lady or gentleman who makes a mistake apologizes for the mistake, and shows what he or she will do to ensure that the mistake will never happen again. When this happens, the person to whom the apology is directed will, if he is a gentleman, then conduct himself as if the offense had never happened. I like to think of myself as a gentleman but this Board has, far from apologizing, compounded its original mistakes. The Board needs to correct its past failures by formally apologizing to Penn State and the Paterno family, and by restoring the Paterno Statue to its former place, before it deserves to regain the trust, respect, and support of the Penn State community.
November 9 2011
The Board that fired Joe Paterno in 2011 did not exercise even rudimentary diligence and due process by asking Coach Paterno for his side of the story and in fact, as I recall, did not take Paterno’s phone calls. The same Board did not ask Mike McQueary for his side of the story. Had it done so, it would have learned that, contrary to the Grand Jury presentment, McQueary did not see Jerry Sandusky sexually assault a child and did not tell Paterno he had seen a sexual assault. This would have largely dispelled public outrage over the false belief that McQueary reported an actual crime to Paterno and University administrators who then ignored it.
The Board would also have known that McQueary did not tell Spanier, Curley, or Schultz that he actually saw a crime. I read a transcript of his deposition and he said he did not deem what he thought he might have possibly maybe have seen reportable to police. His father, a mandated sexual abuse reporter, and a family friend (Dr. Dranov, another mandated reporter), did not advise him to report the incident to anybody but Paterno who, in turn, followed University procedures for which the Trustees were ultimately responsible by reporting it to his own superior. Paterno also followed the NCAA’s procedures, at least as currently written. They say you report a suspected incident to the designated person (which Paterno did) and then you keep your hands off. You do not conduct your own investigation, share unfounded with suspicions with others (as Freeh suggested Paterno should have done), or “do more.”
March 2012
In March 2012, this Board released the following statement. : https://news.psu.edu/story/150954/2012/03/12/report-board-trustees-concerning-nov-9-decisions This story was repeated in newspapers around the country.
“While Coach Paterno did his legal duty by reporting that information the next day, Sunday, March 3, to his immediate superior, the then Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, the Board reasonably inferred that he did not call police. We determined that his decision to do his minimum legal duty and not to do more to follow up constituted a failure of leadership by Coach Paterno. … At about 9 pm, we unanimously made the difficult decision that Coach Paterno’s failure of leadership required his removal as football coach.”
“Unanimous” means that every single member of the Board, as constituted at the time, was a party to this statement (minus one who distanced himself from it by resigning). Here, however, is what Trustee Keith Masser said under oath in his deposition in Corman and McCord vs. NCAA.
From pages 54 and 55 of this deposition (answers are Masser's):
11 Q. Do you know if anyone had interviewed Coach
12 Paterno prior to that decision being made?
13 A. The decision to remove Coach Paterno had
14 nothing to do with what he had known, what he hadn't
15 done. It was based upon the distraction of having
16 him on the sidelines would have caused the
17 University and the harm to the current football
18 team. It had nothing to do with what Coach Paterno
19 had done or hadn't done.
The Board as constituted in March 2012 used the phrase “failure of leadership” twice, while not under oath. If the decision to remove Paterno had “nothing to do with what he had known, what he hadn’t done” then he was not removed for failure of leadership which means (my opinion, based on my understanding of the USMA’s Honor Code) the entire March 2012 Board, minus the honorable exception, lied or acquiesced to a lie told on their behalf, i.e. “tolerated those who do.” http://www.truthmagazine.com/archives/volume17/TM017411a.html adds, “Silence is often the refuge of the coward and the compromiser. It is quite often an effective means in perpetuating a vicious lie. Many an individual, who would not think of voicing a vicious falsehood about his neighbor, will give consent to and assist in perpetuating such a lie by silence when a word from him could have corrected and stopped the matter.”
I did a Google search on “false accusation” and “honor code” with the expectation of finding something on the USMA’s web site. The first entry that came up was that of Penn State’s law school. https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/honor-code/chapter-2 “Interfering with the investigation and disposition of any violation or alleged violation of the Honor Code, including but not limited to a knowingly false accusation…” and the entire Board (minus the one exception) as constituted in March 2012 falsely accused Coach Paterno of “failure of leadership.”
July 2012
In July 2012, Karen Peetz stated "The Board of Trustees, as the group that has paramount accountability for overseeing and ensuring the proper functioning and governance of the University, accepts full responsibility for the failures cited in the Freeh Report.” The minutes of the July 2012 meeting do not indicate that the Board reviewed, much less ratified, the report. My recollection is that the Board’s rules do not permit any Trustee to speak on behalf of the Board without the Board’s consent. This Board failed to step up and correct Peetz’s statement by saying that she could speak only as an individual Trustee and not on behalf of the Board. The NCAA later used the Board’s “acceptance” of the Freeh Report as an excuse to impose its highly questionable sanctions.
Even worse, when an alumni Trustee (Joel Myers, as I recall) pointed this out, the same Board pressured him to sit down and shut up. University-paid communication resources were also used later (2014) to publicly attack other alumni Trustees which I perceived as a misuse of University resources for personal purposes not approved by the University.
Masser’s deposition also shows that members of the Board’s Executive Committee, along with Rodney Erickson, concealed the NCAA consent decree from the rest of the Board in accordance with demands from the NCAA. That is, the NCAA was permitted to do an end run around the people who have fiduciary responsibility for the University.
September 2012
The Board, as then constituted, declined to review the Freeh Report despite numerous defects (such as conflicting stories told by Freeh as to what Paterno knew about Sandusky’s activities) that are immediately obvious to anybody who exercises even basic diligence by reading it. https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/2012/09/penn_state_trustees_arent_plan.html
Conclusion
As matters stand, Penn State’s governance does not command my trust, respect, or support. Other alumni have expressed similar beliefs. An unequivocal apology from the Board to the Paterno family and to Penn State for its past actions and failures would clear the air and allow the University to “move forward” and “put it behind us” as the Board has wished for more than seven years while making itself the principal barrier to achievement of this goal.
* Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pellegrini issued a very scathing opinion to this effect, upon which he said the majority of the court agreed. The Trustees disbursed money for something unrelated to Penn State’s educational mission, and for which Penn State had no legal obligation to spend the money.
“The majority [of the court’s judges] appears to arrive at this outcome because it is bewildered, as I am, by how the Board of Trustees of PSU could have approved or allowed to be executed a “Consent Decree” involving the expenditure of $60 million of PSU funds when the Consent Decree specifically states that the matter “ordinarily would not be actionable by the NCAA.” If, as the majority suggests, the NCAA did not have jurisdiction over conduct because it did not involve the regulation of athletics, then the expenditure of those funds is problematic, given that PSU is a non-profit corporation as well as being tax-exempt as a charitable organization, and that Boards of Directors of non-profit charitable corporations have a fiduciary duty to ensure that funds are only used for matters related to its charitable purpose – in this case, the students of PSU. See 15 Pa. C.S. §5712. Moreover, the majority position is understandable given the lax supervision by those responsible for insuring that non-profit and charitable organizations operate as non-profit and charitable organizations as well as their failure to take action against Boards of Directors and Officers who use funds of a non-profit and/or charitable entity to pay funds that they are not legally obligated to pay and/or expend funds not related to their charitable purpose or who no longer act as a charity. See Zampogna v. Law Enforcement Health Benefits, Inc., 81 A.3d 1043, 1047 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2013).
Bill Levinson, B.S. ‘78
Thank you for including Coach Paterno in the video shown at the Homecoming game. This is a first step toward making good the damage caused by the Board of Trustees’ rush to judgment in 2011, and its subsequent failures, but it is only a first step, and not sufficient to alleviate my concerns about donating or leaving money to Penn State. I am trying to ascertain from the Office of Gift Planning (copied on this E-mail) whether a directed donation or bequest to a specific program, such as the Department of Chemistry, Paterno Fellowship, or Paterno Library, will be used expressly for that purpose or whether the money is fungible with Penn State’s general budget, or the Development Fund takes a portion of directed donations or bequests. If the money is fungible in any way then I will, as matters stand presently, have to disinherit Penn State in favor of something else such as THON assuming THON is totally independent of the University. There are no circumstances under which I will trust the Board of Trustees, as currently “led” by its appointed rather than elected (alumni) Trustees, to use the money responsibly for the University’s educational mission.
The University still has my recommendation, based on my own experience as a student, over far more expensive Ivy League schools. I can’t speak for radio host Dave Ramsey but I think he would recommend Penn State over Ivy League schools so students can avoid incurring debt while still getting a first-class education. I will not, however, donate or bequeath money so the Board of Trustees, as currently “led” by the appointed majority, can squander my gift or bequest on, for example, the NCAA sanctions,* the Freeh Report (which the Board failed to review diligently when it was released and has continued to decline to review), and (my opinion) tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts to alleged Sandusky victims for whose injuries Penn State bears no responsibility whatsoever.
Penn State’s Board of Trustees does not have my trust, respect, or support
A lady or gentleman who makes a mistake apologizes for the mistake, and shows what he or she will do to ensure that the mistake will never happen again. When this happens, the person to whom the apology is directed will, if he is a gentleman, then conduct himself as if the offense had never happened. I like to think of myself as a gentleman but this Board has, far from apologizing, compounded its original mistakes. The Board needs to correct its past failures by formally apologizing to Penn State and the Paterno family, and by restoring the Paterno Statue to its former place, before it deserves to regain the trust, respect, and support of the Penn State community.
November 9 2011
The Board that fired Joe Paterno in 2011 did not exercise even rudimentary diligence and due process by asking Coach Paterno for his side of the story and in fact, as I recall, did not take Paterno’s phone calls. The same Board did not ask Mike McQueary for his side of the story. Had it done so, it would have learned that, contrary to the Grand Jury presentment, McQueary did not see Jerry Sandusky sexually assault a child and did not tell Paterno he had seen a sexual assault. This would have largely dispelled public outrage over the false belief that McQueary reported an actual crime to Paterno and University administrators who then ignored it.
The Board would also have known that McQueary did not tell Spanier, Curley, or Schultz that he actually saw a crime. I read a transcript of his deposition and he said he did not deem what he thought he might have possibly maybe have seen reportable to police. His father, a mandated sexual abuse reporter, and a family friend (Dr. Dranov, another mandated reporter), did not advise him to report the incident to anybody but Paterno who, in turn, followed University procedures for which the Trustees were ultimately responsible by reporting it to his own superior. Paterno also followed the NCAA’s procedures, at least as currently written. They say you report a suspected incident to the designated person (which Paterno did) and then you keep your hands off. You do not conduct your own investigation, share unfounded with suspicions with others (as Freeh suggested Paterno should have done), or “do more.”
March 2012
In March 2012, this Board released the following statement. : https://news.psu.edu/story/150954/2012/03/12/report-board-trustees-concerning-nov-9-decisions This story was repeated in newspapers around the country.
“While Coach Paterno did his legal duty by reporting that information the next day, Sunday, March 3, to his immediate superior, the then Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, the Board reasonably inferred that he did not call police. We determined that his decision to do his minimum legal duty and not to do more to follow up constituted a failure of leadership by Coach Paterno. … At about 9 pm, we unanimously made the difficult decision that Coach Paterno’s failure of leadership required his removal as football coach.”
“Unanimous” means that every single member of the Board, as constituted at the time, was a party to this statement (minus one who distanced himself from it by resigning). Here, however, is what Trustee Keith Masser said under oath in his deposition in Corman and McCord vs. NCAA.
From pages 54 and 55 of this deposition (answers are Masser's):
11 Q. Do you know if anyone had interviewed Coach
12 Paterno prior to that decision being made?
13 A. The decision to remove Coach Paterno had
14 nothing to do with what he had known, what he hadn't
15 done. It was based upon the distraction of having
16 him on the sidelines would have caused the
17 University and the harm to the current football
18 team. It had nothing to do with what Coach Paterno
19 had done or hadn't done.
The Board as constituted in March 2012 used the phrase “failure of leadership” twice, while not under oath. If the decision to remove Paterno had “nothing to do with what he had known, what he hadn’t done” then he was not removed for failure of leadership which means (my opinion, based on my understanding of the USMA’s Honor Code) the entire March 2012 Board, minus the honorable exception, lied or acquiesced to a lie told on their behalf, i.e. “tolerated those who do.” http://www.truthmagazine.com/archives/volume17/TM017411a.html adds, “Silence is often the refuge of the coward and the compromiser. It is quite often an effective means in perpetuating a vicious lie. Many an individual, who would not think of voicing a vicious falsehood about his neighbor, will give consent to and assist in perpetuating such a lie by silence when a word from him could have corrected and stopped the matter.”
I did a Google search on “false accusation” and “honor code” with the expectation of finding something on the USMA’s web site. The first entry that came up was that of Penn State’s law school. https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/honor-code/chapter-2 “Interfering with the investigation and disposition of any violation or alleged violation of the Honor Code, including but not limited to a knowingly false accusation…” and the entire Board (minus the one exception) as constituted in March 2012 falsely accused Coach Paterno of “failure of leadership.”
July 2012
In July 2012, Karen Peetz stated "The Board of Trustees, as the group that has paramount accountability for overseeing and ensuring the proper functioning and governance of the University, accepts full responsibility for the failures cited in the Freeh Report.” The minutes of the July 2012 meeting do not indicate that the Board reviewed, much less ratified, the report. My recollection is that the Board’s rules do not permit any Trustee to speak on behalf of the Board without the Board’s consent. This Board failed to step up and correct Peetz’s statement by saying that she could speak only as an individual Trustee and not on behalf of the Board. The NCAA later used the Board’s “acceptance” of the Freeh Report as an excuse to impose its highly questionable sanctions.
Even worse, when an alumni Trustee (Joel Myers, as I recall) pointed this out, the same Board pressured him to sit down and shut up. University-paid communication resources were also used later (2014) to publicly attack other alumni Trustees which I perceived as a misuse of University resources for personal purposes not approved by the University.
Masser’s deposition also shows that members of the Board’s Executive Committee, along with Rodney Erickson, concealed the NCAA consent decree from the rest of the Board in accordance with demands from the NCAA. That is, the NCAA was permitted to do an end run around the people who have fiduciary responsibility for the University.
September 2012
The Board, as then constituted, declined to review the Freeh Report despite numerous defects (such as conflicting stories told by Freeh as to what Paterno knew about Sandusky’s activities) that are immediately obvious to anybody who exercises even basic diligence by reading it. https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/2012/09/penn_state_trustees_arent_plan.html
Conclusion
As matters stand, Penn State’s governance does not command my trust, respect, or support. Other alumni have expressed similar beliefs. An unequivocal apology from the Board to the Paterno family and to Penn State for its past actions and failures would clear the air and allow the University to “move forward” and “put it behind us” as the Board has wished for more than seven years while making itself the principal barrier to achievement of this goal.
* Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pellegrini issued a very scathing opinion to this effect, upon which he said the majority of the court agreed. The Trustees disbursed money for something unrelated to Penn State’s educational mission, and for which Penn State had no legal obligation to spend the money.
“The majority [of the court’s judges] appears to arrive at this outcome because it is bewildered, as I am, by how the Board of Trustees of PSU could have approved or allowed to be executed a “Consent Decree” involving the expenditure of $60 million of PSU funds when the Consent Decree specifically states that the matter “ordinarily would not be actionable by the NCAA.” If, as the majority suggests, the NCAA did not have jurisdiction over conduct because it did not involve the regulation of athletics, then the expenditure of those funds is problematic, given that PSU is a non-profit corporation as well as being tax-exempt as a charitable organization, and that Boards of Directors of non-profit charitable corporations have a fiduciary duty to ensure that funds are only used for matters related to its charitable purpose – in this case, the students of PSU. See 15 Pa. C.S. §5712. Moreover, the majority position is understandable given the lax supervision by those responsible for insuring that non-profit and charitable organizations operate as non-profit and charitable organizations as well as their failure to take action against Boards of Directors and Officers who use funds of a non-profit and/or charitable entity to pay funds that they are not legally obligated to pay and/or expend funds not related to their charitable purpose or who no longer act as a charity. See Zampogna v. Law Enforcement Health Benefits, Inc., 81 A.3d 1043, 1047 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2013).
Bill Levinson, B.S. ‘78
