Local Commentary

COMMENTARY

November 26

Penn State Board of Trustees flunked stewardship test COMMENTARY William A. Levinson

THE INDO-EUROPEAN root dher means “to hold,” in the sense of trust, stewardship and responsibility. Dharma (the “right way”) and jemadar (lieutenant, responsible for an army platoon) are examples. Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and the university’s Board of Trustees both had stewardship responsibilities with regard to the accusations against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

Had assistant coach Mike McQueary called police to report Sandusky’s alleged sexual assault on a minor while it was in progress, the responding officers presumably could have had the boy as a complainant along with physical evidence for DNA matching. (McQueary’s recent claim to have actually called the police cannot be verified from police records.) He instead waited until the next day to tell Paterno, which compelled Paterno to reconcile two responsibilities:

1) There was a duty to protect children against sexual assault, if McQueary’s story was true.

2) There also was a duty to not defame an innocent man while exposing the university to a libel or slander suit, if McQueary’s story turned out to be false. In simpler language, there was a duty to not become a loose cannon.

Paterno therefore exercised good stewardship by taking the matter to his superiors as both the law and university policy required him to do. A reasonable person would then expect the administrators to work with the university’s attorneys to do as much as could be done with hearsay evidence (given to them and Paterno) without exposing Penn State to a defamation suit. They apparently didn’t; but they, and not Paterno, are now under indictment.

Now let’s see how the trustees did on their stewardship and leadership test. To put their test in perspective, a black soldier was accused of raping a white woman in 1914. It was then socially acceptable to belong to the Ku Klux Klan. Then-Lieutenant George S. Patton Jr. told the locals that they would have to kill him (Patton) before they lynched the man. That is what a leader does in contrast to a mob-pleasing sycophant who supplies the rope and the tree. It did not mean Patton would have protected the soldier from the legal consequences if he was found guilty, but he was acquitted.

The trustees, by their own explicit admission, had yet to even investigate the facts when they fired Paterno (and Penn State President Graham Spanier). Their emergency meeting exemplifies not “careful consideration” but organizational groupthink followed by a rush to judgment whose sole identifiable purpose was to gratify a media lynch mob.

There always are people eager to say with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight what somebody else should have done, especially when they can smear a 61-year record of unimpeachable honor, character and integrity. Kenny Rogers’ lyrics, “Did you ever kick a good man when he was down, just to make yourself feel strong?” apply perfectly.

Honor and common decency therefore require an alumni vote of “no confidence” in the existing Board of Trustees. The Facebook group “We intend to vote out the Penn State Board of Trustees” is pursuing this agenda by seeking petition candidates to run against the incumbents.

Penn State alum and former running back Franco Harris, who condemned the board’s actions, should be encouraged to accept a nomination.

I also support the enactment of a “duty-to-rescue law” similar to those in Ohio, Vermont, Wisconsin and other states. These laws require anybody who sees a violent felony in progress to call the police.

William A. Levinson, a Wilkes-Barre resident, is the author of “Henry Ford’s Lean Vision: Enduring Principles from the First Ford Motor Plant” and other books on quality, management and industrial productivity. He is a 1978 graduate of Penn State University.

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