Tell the College of Agriculture what you think of Keith Eckel as a commencement speaker. https://www.facebook.com/agsciences
http://agsci.psu.edu/dean/contact
I did:
Dear Professor Roush, Professor Christ,
cc: Penn State Trustees, alumni networking
I was extremely disappointed to learn that Agriculture Trustee Keith Eckel is going to be your Commencement speaker this year. Mr. Eckel’s role in the debacle of November 9 2011 is well known, as is his role in the Board’s subsequent failures with dishonor.
Mr. Eckel was part of the Board’s disastrous rush to judgment on November 9, 2011, when it panicked and scapegoated Coach Joe Paterno and quite possibly President Graham Spanier. This admitted falsely on Penn State’s behalf that the University somehow condoned, facilitated, or otherwise enabled the sexual abuse of children. Mr. Eckel’s panic and poor judgment (failures shared by every single other Board member that night) caused enormous damage to Penn State’s reputation, and cost the University Coach Paterno’s Medal of Freedom and place on the Stagg Trophy. These recognitions would have obviously belonged to Penn State as well as Coach Paterno, just like Penn State would enjoy credit for a Nobel Prize for one of its professors.
I recently completed mandatory online training (required of another University’s adjunct instructors no matter where they are in the country) on sexual abuse and harassment. The training made it quite clear that, if somebody comes to you with a complaint about sexual harassment or assault, you are to direct them to a specific person in the University, or report there yourself, after which you are emphatically not to conduct your own investigation or “do more” as the Board of which Mr. Eckel was a member said Paterno should have done. http://giveto.psu.edu/s/1218/2014/i...id=15638&calpgid=61&pgid=252&ecid=3519&crid=0
Note that the Board of which Mr. Eckel was a member used the phrase “failure of leadership” twice even though it was well aware that Paterno followed the law (acknowledged above) and also the prevailing Penn State policies and procedures, which are consistent with what I was taught in the aforementioned course and also the NCAA’s current policies as I understand them. If these policies and procedures were not adequate, the responsibility was Mr. Eckel’s and that of his fellow Trustees, and not Coach Paterno’s. It also came out, by the way, that the actual witness to whatever he thought he might have possibly seen Jerry Sandusky doing testified in court that he would not have called police over it, so the Board’s criticism of Paterno for not doing so is simply not credible. Even worse was to come, though, because Keith Masser and Kenneth Frazier later admitted under oath (deposition) that the Board fired Paterno solely for public relations reasons.
http://onwardstate.com/2015/01/19/board-chairman-still-thinks-paterno-wasnt-fired/
and Frazier admitted the same thing, although he took more words to do it. If Paterno was not removed for anything he had or had not done, he was not removed for failure of leadership, and this makes Keith Eckel as well as every other Board member involved a party to a false statement—that is, behavior for which the U.S. Military Academy would wash out any cadet for being unqualified to command the trust, respect, and confidence of superiors, peers, and subordinates.
Even if Mr. Eckel did not author or publish the statement shown above, his failure to distance himself from “we unanimously made the difficult decision that Coach Paterno’s failure of leadership required his removal as football coach” makes him a party to it and puts him into the “tolerate those who do” category of the USMA’s Honor Code. The entire March 2012 Board could therefore not handle a basic that is expected of eighteen year old men and women at the USMA.
The same performance assessment applies equally to Mr. Eckel’s colleagues such as Keith Masser, John Surma, Kenneth Frazier (who later used a racial slur during a public board meeting), and Karen Peetz, who was sufficiently brazen to call Coach Paterno’s service “marred” after misrepresenting the circumstances of his dismissal and also giving the NCAA the excuse it needed to impose its sanctions. I cannot see how anybody who scapegoats a subordinate (itself a form of lying by falsely assigning blame),* regardless of whether he pushes a broom or coaches the Nittany Lions, and then fabricates a false and defamatory reason (“failure of leadership”) for doing it, is qualified to supervise even one employee let alone a corporation. Although two wrongs emphatically do not make a right, Penn State cannot credibly demand ethical conduct, including academic honesty, from its faculty and students when its Trustees cannot handle the basics themselves.
The failures of Mr. Eckel and his fellow Board members did not end in March 2012. http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Commonwealth/out/1MD13_4-9-14.pdf?cb=1 (April 9 2014) Page 37. Note that the dissenting judge is bewildered, like the majority, how the Board could have approved the consent decree. The judge describes the Trustees’ fiduciary duty very clearly, and then describes how the Board as “led” by Karen Peetz and then Keith Masser failed to perform it.
The majority 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).
Here, meanwhile, is what State Senator John Yudichak had to say about Keith Masser’s “leadership” of the Board, and your Commencement speaker was and is a member of the Board majority in question.
“Regrettably, as a result of Chairman Keith Masser’s unprecedented move to prevent a quorum from being present, you are not able to vote on the resolution. Separate from the merits of the resolution, which I fully support, the egregious actions of Chairman Masser point to a disturbing trend by the board majority to contravene the spirit of University bylaws and to stubbornly ignore long-standing state laws that prescribe membership on the Penn State Board of Trustees.”
I really think you should have found a far less controversial commencement speaker, and I would have in fact recommended former Agriculture Trustee Alvin Clemens—the sole member of the 11/9/2011 Board to demonstrate character and integrity by publicly apologizing for and repudiating his role in the shameful and disgraceful events I have described above.
Regards,
Bill Levinson
William A. Levinson, B.S. ‘78
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion for a good case study in why the USMA, and presumably our other service academies, will dismiss a cadet for lying—a seemingly harmless behavior. Certain Navy officials tried to blame a purportedly gay sailor who died in a turret explosion on USS Iowa for sabotaging a 16-inch gun but:
During its review, Sandia determined that a significant overram of the powder bags into the gun had occurred as it was being loaded and that the overram could have caused the explosion. A subsequent test by the Navy of the overram scenario confirmed that an overram could have caused an explosion in the gun breech. Sandia's technicians also found that the physical evidence did not support the U.S. Navy's theory that an electronic or chemical detonator had been used to initiate the explosion.
In response to the new findings, the U.S. Navy, with Sandia's assistance, reopened the investigation. In August 1991, Sandia and the GAO completed their reports, concluding that the explosion was likely caused by an accidental overram of powder bags into the breech of the 16-inch gun.
In this case, scapegoating the dead sailor could have easily resulted in failure to correct the actual problem—namely, the chance that the mechanical rammer can set off the propellant charges while the gun’s breech is open—which could have allowed a subsequent explosion of the same kind, and possibly loss of the entire ship and its crew. The United Kingdom, in fact, lost three battle cruisers with almost all hands, and almost lost another, at Jutland when a deflagration in a turret spread to the ammunition magazine below it.
The consequences of similar behavior at Penn State were limited to hundreds of millions of dollars and the University’s reputation, but the principle is essentially the same.
http://agsci.psu.edu/dean/contact
I did:
Dear Professor Roush, Professor Christ,
cc: Penn State Trustees, alumni networking
I was extremely disappointed to learn that Agriculture Trustee Keith Eckel is going to be your Commencement speaker this year. Mr. Eckel’s role in the debacle of November 9 2011 is well known, as is his role in the Board’s subsequent failures with dishonor.
Mr. Eckel was part of the Board’s disastrous rush to judgment on November 9, 2011, when it panicked and scapegoated Coach Joe Paterno and quite possibly President Graham Spanier. This admitted falsely on Penn State’s behalf that the University somehow condoned, facilitated, or otherwise enabled the sexual abuse of children. Mr. Eckel’s panic and poor judgment (failures shared by every single other Board member that night) caused enormous damage to Penn State’s reputation, and cost the University Coach Paterno’s Medal of Freedom and place on the Stagg Trophy. These recognitions would have obviously belonged to Penn State as well as Coach Paterno, just like Penn State would enjoy credit for a Nobel Prize for one of its professors.
I recently completed mandatory online training (required of another University’s adjunct instructors no matter where they are in the country) on sexual abuse and harassment. The training made it quite clear that, if somebody comes to you with a complaint about sexual harassment or assault, you are to direct them to a specific person in the University, or report there yourself, after which you are emphatically not to conduct your own investigation or “do more” as the Board of which Mr. Eckel was a member said Paterno should have done. http://giveto.psu.edu/s/1218/2014/i...id=15638&calpgid=61&pgid=252&ecid=3519&crid=0
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.
The Board spent hours on conference calls between Saturday, Nov. 5, and Tuesday, Nov. 8, discussing appropriate action and our fiduciary responsibility as the Trustees. On Wednesday evening, Nov. 9, we met in person in State College. At about 9 pm, we unanimously made the difficult decision that Coach Paterno’s failure of leadership required his removal as football coach.
The Board spent hours on conference calls between Saturday, Nov. 5, and Tuesday, Nov. 8, discussing appropriate action and our fiduciary responsibility as the Trustees. On Wednesday evening, Nov. 9, we met in person in State College. At about 9 pm, we unanimously made the difficult decision that Coach Paterno’s failure of leadership required his removal as football coach.
Note that the Board of which Mr. Eckel was a member used the phrase “failure of leadership” twice even though it was well aware that Paterno followed the law (acknowledged above) and also the prevailing Penn State policies and procedures, which are consistent with what I was taught in the aforementioned course and also the NCAA’s current policies as I understand them. If these policies and procedures were not adequate, the responsibility was Mr. Eckel’s and that of his fellow Trustees, and not Coach Paterno’s. It also came out, by the way, that the actual witness to whatever he thought he might have possibly seen Jerry Sandusky doing testified in court that he would not have called police over it, so the Board’s criticism of Paterno for not doing so is simply not credible. Even worse was to come, though, because Keith Masser and Kenneth Frazier later admitted under oath (deposition) that the Board fired Paterno solely for public relations reasons.
http://onwardstate.com/2015/01/19/board-chairman-still-thinks-paterno-wasnt-fired/
When pressed for a reason why Paterno was let go, Masser said: “The decision to remove Coach Paterno had nothing to do with what he had known, what he hadn’t done. It was based upon the distraction of having him on the sidelines would have caused the university and the current football team harm. It had nothing to do with what Coach Paterno had done, or hadn’t done.”
and Frazier admitted the same thing, although he took more words to do it. If Paterno was not removed for anything he had or had not done, he was not removed for failure of leadership, and this makes Keith Eckel as well as every other Board member involved a party to a false statement—that is, behavior for which the U.S. Military Academy would wash out any cadet for being unqualified to command the trust, respect, and confidence of superiors, peers, and subordinates.
Even if Mr. Eckel did not author or publish the statement shown above, his failure to distance himself from “we unanimously made the difficult decision that Coach Paterno’s failure of leadership required his removal as football coach” makes him a party to it and puts him into the “tolerate those who do” category of the USMA’s Honor Code. The entire March 2012 Board could therefore not handle a basic that is expected of eighteen year old men and women at the USMA.
The same performance assessment applies equally to Mr. Eckel’s colleagues such as Keith Masser, John Surma, Kenneth Frazier (who later used a racial slur during a public board meeting), and Karen Peetz, who was sufficiently brazen to call Coach Paterno’s service “marred” after misrepresenting the circumstances of his dismissal and also giving the NCAA the excuse it needed to impose its sanctions. I cannot see how anybody who scapegoats a subordinate (itself a form of lying by falsely assigning blame),* regardless of whether he pushes a broom or coaches the Nittany Lions, and then fabricates a false and defamatory reason (“failure of leadership”) for doing it, is qualified to supervise even one employee let alone a corporation. Although two wrongs emphatically do not make a right, Penn State cannot credibly demand ethical conduct, including academic honesty, from its faculty and students when its Trustees cannot handle the basics themselves.
The failures of Mr. Eckel and his fellow Board members did not end in March 2012. http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Commonwealth/out/1MD13_4-9-14.pdf?cb=1 (April 9 2014) Page 37. Note that the dissenting judge is bewildered, like the majority, how the Board could have approved the consent decree. The judge describes the Trustees’ fiduciary duty very clearly, and then describes how the Board as “led” by Karen Peetz and then Keith Masser failed to perform it.
The majority 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).
Here, meanwhile, is what State Senator John Yudichak had to say about Keith Masser’s “leadership” of the Board, and your Commencement speaker was and is a member of the Board majority in question.
“Regrettably, as a result of Chairman Keith Masser’s unprecedented move to prevent a quorum from being present, you are not able to vote on the resolution. Separate from the merits of the resolution, which I fully support, the egregious actions of Chairman Masser point to a disturbing trend by the board majority to contravene the spirit of University bylaws and to stubbornly ignore long-standing state laws that prescribe membership on the Penn State Board of Trustees.”
I really think you should have found a far less controversial commencement speaker, and I would have in fact recommended former Agriculture Trustee Alvin Clemens—the sole member of the 11/9/2011 Board to demonstrate character and integrity by publicly apologizing for and repudiating his role in the shameful and disgraceful events I have described above.
Regards,
Bill Levinson
William A. Levinson, B.S. ‘78
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion for a good case study in why the USMA, and presumably our other service academies, will dismiss a cadet for lying—a seemingly harmless behavior. Certain Navy officials tried to blame a purportedly gay sailor who died in a turret explosion on USS Iowa for sabotaging a 16-inch gun but:
During its review, Sandia determined that a significant overram of the powder bags into the gun had occurred as it was being loaded and that the overram could have caused the explosion. A subsequent test by the Navy of the overram scenario confirmed that an overram could have caused an explosion in the gun breech. Sandia's technicians also found that the physical evidence did not support the U.S. Navy's theory that an electronic or chemical detonator had been used to initiate the explosion.
In response to the new findings, the U.S. Navy, with Sandia's assistance, reopened the investigation. In August 1991, Sandia and the GAO completed their reports, concluding that the explosion was likely caused by an accidental overram of powder bags into the breech of the 16-inch gun.
In this case, scapegoating the dead sailor could have easily resulted in failure to correct the actual problem—namely, the chance that the mechanical rammer can set off the propellant charges while the gun’s breech is open—which could have allowed a subsequent explosion of the same kind, and possibly loss of the entire ship and its crew. The United Kingdom, in fact, lost three battle cruisers with almost all hands, and almost lost another, at Jutland when a deflagration in a turret spread to the ammunition magazine below it.
The consequences of similar behavior at Penn State were limited to hundreds of millions of dollars and the University’s reputation, but the principle is essentially the same.
