As the Penn State sex abuse scandal continues to spiral out of control I can’t help but think of the clichéd old line about the cover up being worse than the crime; although if the allegations are proven true, that will be a difficult case to make in this instance. All too often the actual victims of the alleged crimes have been forgotten about in the media swirl around the cover up.
While I don’t want to forget about those victims, I do want to focus on how the cover up was truly a failure of leadership that created the current maelstrom that we are confronted with.
If the allegations against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had come to light at the time the original events are said to have taken place, I have no doubt that there would have been a backlash against the football program and there would have been short term damage that would have impacted the recruitment, booster support and national standing.
If the University had stepped up and done the right thing, any damage would have been short term in nature. I can’t begin to guess what the thought processes of the leadership at the school might have been when it was determined that they would as quietly as possible sweep the eye witness allegations aside and cover up it all up. I would give good odds that trying to avoid that damage and form a protective shell around the University’s cash cow had to be part of the motivation for it.
This needless to say was drastically, dramatically short-sighted on their part. What was called for was certainly more than just following the ridiculous law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which mandates a bare minimum reporting standard of merely alerting the next person up the food chain and nothing more.
Quite frankly I can’t imagine what the command structure or thought process was that prevented the Penn State graduate assistant who allegedly witnessed that sexual assault from stepping in and kicking the living daylights out of the attacker or reaching for the phone to dial up the local police; I’ll leave that for another debate.
What was called for was a clear, measured response: that means involving the appropriate authorities, like the Pennsylvania State Police who have the experienced investigators to take on this type of probe and are free and clear of the questionable encumbrances of the University police force. A critical communications plan should have been activated; again bringing in reliable outside expertise would help to establish a clear timeline and set forth the steps that the University had undertaken to address the allegations.
While it certainly would not have been a priority the University could have limited any negative for Sandusky by pointing out that these were allegations and that the responsible step was to have a complete investigation.
This measured response would not however include taking the overstep that Duke University blundered into, when members of their lacrosse team faced allegations of rape, which included pulling the plug on the lacrosse program. When the allegations fell apart, Duke was left holding the bag; where the mere implication of a crime was enough to illicit an over-reach.
This measured and timely approach would have limited the negative impact on the entire University and the football program. Instead the leadership of the University decided on a path that lit the fuse on a much larger and more impactful time bomb that finally exploded this past week. I say finally, because it was absolutely, without a slightest doubt going to happen. Anyone who knows anything about sexual predators knows that these are not one and done offenders, they repeat their vile crimes again and again.
Now the devastation to not only the football program but the entire University will be almost immeasurable, not to mention the alleged damage that Sandusky has been allowed reek on new victims in the interim. By taking immediate action, the leadership of the University could have actually been lauded for doing the right thing.
It’s unfortunate that colleges and universities envision themselves to be bastions of high standards and that acting out and outright crimes are outliers rather than occurrences that happen at the same frequency as they do out here in the “real world.” Despite any number of examples that prove that the need to be direct in their response, these cover ups will continue to happen and morph into full blown crisis’s.
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