The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Did Erickson Need Approval of the BOT?

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Onward State’s Kevin Horne has written an excellent piece about the possibility that Penn State President Rod Erickson might have broken a standing order of the BOT by signing the consent decree agreeing to the NCAA’s sanctions that were handed down Monday.

The debate on whether or not the sanctions handed down to Penn State by the NCAA are warranted has been ongoing with Penn Staters and college football fans alike over the last several days. But one area that hasn’t been broadly discussed is whether President Rodney Erickson — without approval and vote from the Board of Trustees — had the authority to sign the agreement with the NCAA essentially accepting the sanctions without even a whimper of a fight.

This Turkey had expected at least deliberation and possibly an appeal before Penn State fell on its sword. However, Erickson had already agreed to the sanctions before they were presented to the media on Monday morning. Why? Whom did he consult? Penn State just rolled over for Mark Emmert and the NCAA. Erickson gets the Neville Chamberlain Appeasement Award* for performing this slick sacrificial move on his own, appeasing the haters (including the NCAA) while totally pissing the rest of us off.

According to provision 2-e of Standing Order IV, the following actions must be approved by the Board: Authorization to borrow money; authorization of persons to sign checks, contracts, legal documents, and other obligations, and to endorse, sell or assign securities.

Penn State President Rodney Erickson’s signature appears on the document that accepts the NCAA sanctions. Certainly, that agreement would be considered a legal document — and one that directly costs Penn State $72 million, with some experts saying it could amount to up to a half billion dollars in losses.

No hearings. No approval from the governing body of Penn State. No alumni input. All President Erickson did was accept the NCAA quasi-dictatorship’s ruling without a fight, and move on.

Some have reported that Erickson was given the choice of a four-year “death penalty” or the sanctions as written. Obviously, he felt pressure to accept the sanctions, but without consultation with his governing body? Isn’t this the kind of rogue action the University is supposed to be curtailing? But wait! There’s more!

However, NCAA Executive Committee Chirman Ed Ray denied Erickson’s claims, saying “I can tell you categorically, there was never a threat made to anyone about suspension of play if the consent decree was not agreed to… That was never even a point of discussion within either the Executive Committee or the Division I board.”

Interesting conflict isn’t it? Either Erickson or Ray is lying, or Emmert and Erickson met in secret to “negotiate” without divulging details either before or after the fact.

I hope this all comes to a head, and divides the BOT so we can all see which trustees are on Penn State’s side and which are siding with our enemies. I further hope that when it hits the fan it results in the conclusion that not only Erickson, but also Emmert, exceeded their prescribed authority limits.

We’re dealing with powerful people here, there are lots more of us than there are of them. Emmert has become too powerful, and Erickson is a wimp. They both should be in deep shit over this. Such chutzpah!

Read the entire article “Erickson May Have Broken Standing Order.”

UPDATE: The BOT  are meeting this afternoon to discuss President Rodney Erickson’s handling of NCAA sanctions, per the Lehigh Valley Express-Times.

 

*Neville Chamberlain was the British Prime Minister who felt that the best way to prevent a major conflict with Germany in the 1930s was to appease Adolf Hitler by signing the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding part of Czechoslovakia to Germany. He was a doormat who with the Munich Agreement tacitly gave Hitler the go-ahead to invade Poland, prompting Britain to declare war on Germany and starting World War II.

Statue will/will not be torn down this weekend

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Jeez. I thought it would be a peaceful Friday. Went out this morning  to try out a couple of kayaks. Wound up buying two. Had a nice lunch with AS. Came back home. Read the news. What? The statue is coming down? The statue isn’t coming down? People thinking they know what they’re talking about not knowing what they’re talking about? WTF?

Some are saying that the issue has already been voted on. Others say that only Erickson is involved, not the BOT. Erickson said that he knows nothing about no steenking statue comeen down.

Well, if I were Erickson, I would do two things. First, I would decide to take the statue down. The reason is simple: appease the NCAA. For if Penn State doesn’t jump through enough hoops before the beginning of the football season, the NCAA is liable to ensure that there will be no football season. Second, I would swear everyone to secrecy. It seems that secrecy is an ambiguously implemented concept on the Penn State campus. A child rapist can be kept secret for 16 years, but at other times the ivory tower seems to leak like a sieve. This is one instance in which a leak to the ever hungry media could be  dangerous.

If the statue does come down this weekend as the leaks suggest, you can be sure there will be an organized protest. That’s a good enough reason for secrecy. Hell, we students used to guard the Nittany Lion shrine all night to protect against marauding Orangemen from Syracuse. I think we should expect that if the approximate timing — or even the date — of the statue removal is known, there will be a contingent of students to conduct an “over my dead body” vigil on the statue site. It could get ugly.

The argument in favor of removing the statue is that it will be a show of earnest intent by the sitting administration to absolve itself of the sins of the past. Coupled with the resignation of former trustee Steve Garban, the gesture might be enough to avoid the so-called death penalty. Or not. But Penn State has to make some visible progress beyond the sordid past of the Sandusky scandal.

Garban was chairman when the Sandusky scandal broke, so his resignation is a logical step. He still holds the title of Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations/Treasurer Emeritus at Penn State. His term would have ended in 2013. Garban was captain of the Nittany Lions football team in 1959 and worked for the university for 33 years. He was senior vice president for 12 of those and he was elected trustee in 1998. Many thought that he and Paterno were good friends.

Back to the statue, to leave it stand is to send a message of defiance to the NCAA. That’s perhaps the last thing Penn State needs to do right now. While this Turkey had recently advocated keeping the statue and moving it to a proposed Paterno exhibit in the All Sports Museum, it occurred to me that the NCAA might be specifically looking for this kind of symbolic “sacrifice” to appease the gods on high.

Will a Garban sacrifice and a posthumous Paterno defilement, along with implementation of the recommendations of the Freeh report, be sufficient as a show of good faith for the NCAA? This Turkey thinks that with a little more housecleaning on the board of trustees, it just might be.

Somebody needs to caulk up Old Main to plug those damn pesky leaks. The statue take down needs to happen under a cloak of secrecy to avoid a riot similar to that which occurred after Paterno’s dismissal last November. Students really don’t need much of an excuse to riot, but the statue removal would be a definite trigger.

Still, Penn State can’t allow itself to be held hostage by the threat of a student revolt, so it must act as Rod Erickson decides, and not change course in mid-stream.

Decisive leadership is essential at this juncture.

The Penn State Way?

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Sorry, ESPN haters,  but I’ve got to react to Don Van Natta’s OTL piece about the Penn State Board of Trustees’ oversight of University President Graham Spanier and Head Football Coach Joe Paterno.

“The Penn State Way is an approach to decision-making, a resistance to seeking outside perspectives, and an excessive focus on athletics that can, if not recognized, negatively impact the university’s reputation as a progressive institution.” —Freeh Report

In November 2004, the same month as Spanier and Tim Curley sat at Paterno’s kitchen table asking him to retire, seven members of the BOT proposed to strengthen the board’s oversight power over Spanier and other campus leaders, including Paterno.

Paterno had defiantly demurred when he was asked to retire, telling his ostensible bosses that things were fine the way they were. His so-called bosses slunk back to Old Main with their respective tails between their legs. Joe let them know who was boss, all right.

Spanier and then board chair Cynthia Baldwin applied the same approach to the proposal by seven trustees. They read it, considered it briefly, and demurred without a vote of the full board. Quashed. Moving right along…

Van Natta reported the following:

Joel Myers, a longtime trustee, said the Freeh investigators told him that if the good-governance proposal had been adopted by the board back in 2004, “This (crisis) could have been avoided.”

The 2004 proposals are eerily prescient considering how the trustees, according to the Freeh report, were left in the dark by Spanier, Baldwin and trustee Steve Garban as the Sandusky criminal investigation escalated in 2011. If the proposals had passed, the trustees say the measures might have made a difference in the way the board had responded to the Sandusky matter.

Two trustees said Freeh’s investigators had asked them and other trustees about the 2004 good-governance proposal and appeared determined to find out why it had not been adopted. One trustee also said Freeh’s investigators told them they had obtained emails between Spanier and Baldwin and others discussing the merits of the trustees’ proposal. The trustee also said Freeh’s investigators said that the emails showed “Spanier and Baldwin put a stop” to the good-governance proposal. “They didn’t want the added scrutiny,” the trustee said.

“It was a big, missed opportunity,” said Al Clemens, another longtime trustee. “Back in 2004, we just knew there wasn’t enough accountability, and it seemed like a reasonable step to try to protect the university. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

After this proposal was rejected, at least four boys were abused by Sandusky. The failure to act could hurt the university as civil law suits are tried. ????? ???? ????? ?????? The university’s leadership, including the chair of the board of trustees, essentially said that they were running the show and would do it their way.

The Penn State Way.

Alums and current students have long revered The Penn State Way. The Penn State Way means tradition, loyalty, and success with honor. However these revelations present a seamier view of The Penn State Way as approached by its internal leadership. For them, The Penn State Way equals Our Way. Moreover, Our Way means that we keep it to ourselves as much as possible.

The culture of secrecy rears its ugly head once again. Even the board of trustees doesn’t know what the hell is going on there, and no one cares, except for a few disgruntled trustees.

Van Natta’s story brings that to light through interviews with current and former trustees. Al Clemens provided significant insights into the operation of the Board and its interaction with Baldwin and Spanier.

The Penn State Way is mentioned in the Freeh Report, to wit:

The Freeh report found that Spanier and Baldwin dealt with the escalating Sandusky crisis throughout 2011 with no outside advice from lawyers with experience dealing with grand jury investigations. Spanier and Baldwin also failed to seek the full advice of the board on how to handle the crisis. ???? ????? ??? ????

This failure was noted by the Freeh Group, which referred to the administrators’ “over-emphasis on ‘The Penn State Way.’ ” As defined by Freeh, “The Penn State Way” is “an approach to decision-making, a resistance to seeking outside perspectives, and an excessive focus on athletics that can, if not recognized, negatively impact the university’s reputation as a progressive institution.”

The last time the Board had amended its general policies was January 19, 1996. Van Natta writes that much has changed since then, including the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation of 2002, that affects the way the Board and top administrators must operate. Yet The Penn State Way is to ignore the law while doing it Our Way, so those in whom the power was invested, namely Spanier and Baldwin, never saw the need to change anything.

Proposals for changes in operating policies and practices never made it to the full, 32-member board for a vote. That’s The Penn State Way.

Once again, it is obvious that the story is one of power and corruption. The oligarchy that ran Penn State had no need for outside counsel. No need to share the pie. The Troika of Spanier, Baldwin, and Paterno did it Our Way. (Cue Laverne & Shirley theme.)

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Good men are almost always bad men. ???365

Lord Acton wrote that before the great era of political correctness, which this Turkey hopes is on the wane. Now, we have the great pleasure of rewriting the second sentence to include women. Hey, they wanted it; they got it. Now, they can be just as criminally culpable as men.

Cynthia Baldwin says nothing anymore that isn’t filtered through counsel.

The same corrupt culture thumbed its nose at the Clery Act, which as of today still hasn’t been implemented as required at Penn State.

Defiance, arrogance, and secrecy. A festering, corrupt corporate culture. Bad men and women. The Penn State Way?

Read Van Natta’s full story.