Penn State owes its accreditors a bit of explaining about the child rape that was going on in its showers (via):
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredits universities in the Mid-Atlantic region, cited information in the school’s internal investigation led by former FBI director Louis Freeh and the severe penalties imposed by the NCAA over the school’s handling of molestation allegations against the former assistant football coach, who was convicted in June of 45 child sexual abuse counts.
In an Aug. 8 notice, the commission said that Penn State remains accredited while “on warning” but it wants a monitoring report submitted by the end of next month detailing steps taken to ensure full compliance with governmental requirements, that the university’s mission is being carried out, that the commission will be fully informed and that Penn State is complying with standards on leadership and governance as well as integrity.
I have to confess that I’m so used to considering Division I athletics as a farm league operation rather than part of a university that I didn’t even consider that PSU might get in some hot water from its accreditation body for covering up the actions of a child rapist.
MattF
“… leadership and governance as well as integrity.” Whoa.
hueyplong
We sports fans aren’t used to the concept of “consequences” except in the context of a bad draft pick.
geg6
This is complete and utter bullshit, but to be expected. Everyone is panting to pile on and make some national news mentions, and Middle States is no exception to the attention whores on both sides of the issue.
That said, I don’t think this will actually be any sort of problem. Academics were most emphatically not any part of this mess.
And that’s all I have to say about this. I’m sure I’ll be called a child molester myself in this thread, so I’m done with it.
Brandon
Since I have not seen any evidence of significant symbolic (mass resignations) or systemic (restructuring athletics administration) reforms, I will continue to believe that PSU doesn’t really give a rats *ss about child rape.
Where’s the press release saying, “we absolutely deserve every bad thing that will befall us and more because of this”? For f*cks sake, even Hugh Grant went on an apology tour.
Roger Moore
I assume a huge part of it is that nobody wants to yank a school’s accreditation, since it would screw over every student there through no fault of their own. They accreditation body is going to bend over backward to give the school a chance to fix its problems. That’s going to be especially true in a case like this, where the offenses aren’t directly related to the quality of instruction.
jrg
This is getting absurd. A lot of people who had nothing to do with the crime are getting hurt.
How about taking the people who knew about Sandusky, and putting them in jail (for a long, long time)? This is starting to feel like the bank bailouts where everyone but the people involved got the shaft.
quannlace
Last night on one of the public TV channels they reran a couple of food shows ‘The Hot Dog Show’ and ‘The Ice Cream Show,’ showcasing various well-known places around the country.
In the “Ice-Cream’ one, they mentioned a place on the Penn State campus, that develops their own flavors. One of the most popular? Paterno Peach.
Oh My.
The show’s from 1999. They might want to update it.
BGinCHI
@geg6: Sounds like this is aimed at a lazy, complicit administration, not at faculty and the curriculum. It’s a demand that the mission get back on track, that it’s a place of learning first and touchdowns second (or, gosh, maybe third).
Cassidy
@geg6: How is this affecting academics? Have scholarships been pulled, budgets cut, etc.?
Roger Moore
@geg6:
Except in as much as it shows a generally cavalier attitude toward rule following and inadequate supervision from the highest levels of management. If one program at the school was allowed to run amuck without consequences until the law stepped in, there’s no telling what other programs were allowed to do. I’d at least like to see an especially thorough accreditation study to show that adequate academic standards are being enforced.
AHH onna Droid
@geg6: no, I dont think it’s bullshit. Whats bullshit is that accreditors do their jon and shit ripoff schools can go shopping for kangaroo accreditation and still get that sweet student loan cash. That debt should be unsecured and bankrup tr able.
Shorter: they aren’t piling on. Theyre reminding PU of their obligation to make institutional changes to prevent this from happening again. Theres a reason ‘ it happened here’ instead of at MCC, and that reason is procedures and the institution taking it seriously. If Penn doesn’t change their ways, like with Rcc, the child abuse will continue.
Poopyman
@Cassidy: Well, of course per the article:
I’m pretty sure it’s way too early to give a good answer to your question from geg6 on the front lines.
But I think mistermix missed the nut of the article:
Always about the benjamins.
gelfling545
@geg6: Well, no the academics don’t seem to have had a part of this but lax oversight is lax oversight and creates a culture in which bad things can go undetected in any area. I think it is quite appropriate for Middle States to question this.
Cassidy
AHHHH! ANTHROPOLOGISTS GONE WILD! THE MATH MAJORS ARE DOING PHYSICS! IT’S OUT OF CONTROL!
frapalinger
Corbett’s got some ‘splainin’ to do about all this too. $650,000 in contributions from center county and barely any investigators assigned to this case while he was attorney general.
aimai
Leave Penn State Aloooooooone!
Look, seriously? If these incidents had involved someone in authority letting homeless men into the showers on a regular basis and that had cost the University 1/10000 of the fines in terms of hot water and clean towels there probably would have been more serious sanctions and more serious attention to the issues surrounding security and staffing and training in the gym. Straight up: using the gym/showers after hours with no security and staff logging this in and out? Unbe-fucking leivable.
aimai
Poopyman
@frapalinger: Yeah, last I heard he was still “reading the Freeh Report” when asked for a comment. That was about a month after it was published.
Villago Delenda Est
Not bullshit, and numerous posters have pointed out why it’s not bullshit.
Penn State’s administration needs to be on notice. This fizzies in the shower shit is not funny, it’s serious.
jrg
@gelfling545: That’s bullshit. Take the recent dust-ups at UNC over the African Studies department. Athletics were directly involved. No other department (that I know of) is under investigation, except for African Studies, which was in cahoots with the Basketball and Football programs.
It’s athletics, plain and simple. The stakes in academics are not high enough to “justify” covering up child rape. There’s too much money in college athletics.
Punchy
I’d comment on this, but I’d have to mention college football and then I’d be labeled as a Pedophile Supporter.
So instead….rainbows are pretteh.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Roger Moore:
I generally agree. But the sports programs, and especially football have pretty much been separate entities with little connection to academics. It’s still appalling and there should be consequences for the school but Sandusky was a rotten apple in a completely different bushel basket from Math and Physics.
Cassidy
@aimai:
We have a gym here in the hospital, nothing major, and there is no sign in and sign out. You just go and clean up after yourself. My wife’s company has a gym and she ahs access after work hours. I would imagine this is pretty common.
Cassidy
@Punchy: ETA: Not worth it today.
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
More like professors turning over way to much of their teaching duties to grad students, teaching whatever the hell they feel like instead of sticking to the syllabus, or handing out good grades to all and sundry because it’s easier than arguing with students who don’t want to accept that they’ve failed. All of those have a real bearing on the quality of education a school provides, and they’re all the kinds of things that will happen if academic oversight is lax.
Cassidy
@Roger Moore: I know. I just think the mental image of academics out of control is funny. I”m imagining something along the lines of Accepted. That was a funny movie.
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: Exaggerate much?
This might happen at a few places, but it’s not anything like the norm. You sound like Bill Bennett.
Anecdote is not argument.
Face
OT: Somebody call ABL…there’s been a mass driving.
News and bearclaws at 11.
Linda Featheringill
If it is true, and I think it is, that PSU administrators knew anything about the child rape going on and did nothing, they are accessories to a felony, which is also a felony.
If the same administrators led the university to commit such felonies, not only should the individuals be tried in a court of law but the university itself should be required to show why it should not be shut down.
And, yeah, the money. Geez. If we didn’t have the right to civil suits, we couldn’t get anything fixed in this country.
4tehlulz
Oh, this is nothing. This is what PSU really is afraid of.
Zagloba
Fixed ;)
I’m completely on board with this move, btw: If child-rape can fly under the radar, why the hell wouldn’t I believe the school will ignore academic forms of misconduct if the U’s bottom line benefits?
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
And the reason it’s not the norm is because there are academic administrators monitoring the professors to keep them in line, and accrediting organizations keeping the administrators in line. If there isn’t any monitoring, some, but by no means all or even many, professors will do whatever the hell they want with their classes. Some of them really want to be doing their research rather than teaching, so they’ll blow off their classes in one way or another.
I’ve been in classes where it’s happened, and as much because the professor thought he was too big to be touched as because there wasn’t enough oversight. The case I remember specifically involved my Thermodynamics class. The professor decided that since he was on the short list for the Nobel (and won it a few years after I was in his class) he could ignore the syllabus and teach us about his research. I’m still unsure of myself in thermo, though I did learn some cool stuff about femtosecond laser spectroscopy. This was in a school that cared about academics above all and had a monitoring system in place to make sure professors were doing their jobs. I shudder to think what would happen in a school that had genuinely lax oversight.
Hypatia's Momma
Maybe they should have spent a little more money on coursework in political science and history instead of football. Then there wouldn’t be all this confusion over the definition of “Communist”.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Face:
Good thing it’s unheard of for people to deliberately drive into crowds, or you’d look like even more of an idiot right now:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Vista_massacre
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Zagloba:
That’s a big if. Football has influence and power far beyond that of any academic department. Few alumni will be up in arms if the head of the math department is canned and charged with a crime.
Roger Moore
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Sure, but we’re not talking about a crime, we’re talking about non-criminal academic misconduct. The administration has already proven itself willing to ignore child rape because they were worried about preserving their reputation; do you really trust that same administration to investigate any other kind of misconduct at the institution? If they’re willing to cover up a heinous crime, why would they shrink at covering up grade inflation, plagiarism, research fraud, or any other kind of non-criminal academic misconduct?
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: Context is everything here. At big R1 universities you certainly do have profs, especially in the sciences and technical degrees (broadly, generalizing) doing large classes and trying to put in as little work and grading as possible. This is drive by administration too, as grant money is king.
But at the majority of universities in this country, which are not R1 institutions, teaching is much more hands-on and direct. There are no TAs or their role is very limited.
If you went to one kind of university, it doesn’t mean they are all the same. There are MANY different kinds, and they are mostly not like the Big 10, land grant, R1 schools.
None of my colleagues and almost none of my friends across the country (in English) teach in the way you describe.
Emma
@Roger Moore: Not sticking to the syllabus? They MAKE UP the syllabus. In Universities, within broad parameters, the professor decides what gets taught. And way back in mumble-mumble, when I went to University, grad students always taught/helped to grade the very large survey courses.
Hypatia's Momma
Cliche: There is always more and it is always worse.
Please let this be an unfounded rumour started by horrible hateful people. Please, please, please, please.
The Bobs
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Don’t forget this one:
Priscilla Ford
MosesZD
@geg6:
Really, it sounds more like another person who is upset that a University that put the football gravy-train and it’s head coach above everything — academics, human decency, morality, etc. — doesn’t like the just and deserved consequences. REAL CHILDREN were raped. REAL LIVES WERE DESTROYED IN HORRIBLE WAYS.
PSU lost some wins, got a black-eye and is on probation while being reminded that it completely lost focus on what was really important beyond lucrative TV contracts obtained by its semi-professional football team.
Sometims I wish humanity would go extinct. Then maybe the bonobos could evolve in peace and do a better job of sapience…
burnspbesq
@jrg:
As of yesterday, that’s no longer true. The outing of what is widely believed to be Julius Peppers’ transcript pretty clearly indicates that the rot is broader than just AFAS. The only A on the “Peppers transcript” (in quotes because its authenticity has not been definitively established) was earned in a summer session exercise science class, at a time when any grade lower than an A would have resulted in academic ineligibility for the impending football season.
The Carolina academic scandal puts enormous pressure on the NCAA, because policing this stuff is at the core of its mission (regardless of whether you think it was justified, the NCAA’s action against Penn State was at least arguably a stretch in terms of its authority). It’s also difficult because Tarheel men’s basketball is acash cow for the NCAA (and Nike) to a much greater extent than Penn State football.
Going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
Roger Moore
@Emma:
Not in core academic classes. If you’re teaching Physics 101, you don’t get to decide that Newtonian Mechanics is boring and teach about the Standard Model instead. If you’re teaching Organic Chemistry, you don’t get to ignore SN-1 and SN-2 reactions and start talking about organometalic synthesis. Etc.
geg6
@Cassidy:
Not in academics. Yet. But it will soon. Accreditation is about academics mainly. I’ve been on the committees for accreditation reviews before, once here and once at another college.
As for the administration who were involved with the Sandusky coverup, every one of them is gone. Every.single.one.
As for the dick who seems to think the entire university is covering up more crimes in the academic departments, go fuck yourself. You know nothing about this place at all, but you consider yourself qualified to scream about what should be investigated and how we’re all guilty. You’re an idiot.
And this is exactly why I should have stayed out of this thread…
Emma
@Roger Moore: I suppose in the hard sciences it would be different. Except I mind me of a mathematics professor teaching a basic algebra course whose syllabus began with “have first six chapters of textbook read by the first class” and didn’t cover them at all. But bloody well put them on the midterm.
Cassidy
@MosesZD: Actually, she’s someone who works for PSU and if the school were to be shutdown, etc. or academics get cut to make up the shortfall, could lose their livelihood. On top of that, she’s right in pointing out that there are a lot of people who’s lives are still being affected in all of this for no other reason than picking this school to attend/ work for.
Cassidy
@geg6: That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying that an administration that is craven enough to cover up the raping of children for as long as they did will certainly have no moral issues covering up lesser improprieties. Even if the rot has been cut out, it wouldn’t hurt for someone to come in and take a look.
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
And if the rot didn’t spread to academics, the best way of proving it is to be open about it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and all that jazz. Being investigated sucks, but an honest investigation will vindicate the innocent as much as it condemns the guilty.
Capri
@Roger Moore:
Even in my rarified corner of academics (teaching advanced courses at a veterinary school) – every course syllabus is approved by a committee. Nobody is ever given a course title and then told to just “run with it.”
What is tolerated in academic departments, like athletics, is driven by the $$$. If you are able to consistently land high-dollar grants, the university will tolerate quite a wide variation in behavior. The department and rest of the university will look the other way for stuff that would get non-faculty canned in a heartbeat and non-producing faculty censured at the very least.
freemark
@Linda Featheringill:
Seriously?
How can anything you say be taken seriously if you actually believe this. That would be like saying Baltimore should be abandoned if the mayor is convicted of a felony. Penn State is an academically very good school with 40,000 plus students.
sneezy
@geg6:
I disagree. The administration of PSU was grossly negligent in allowing the football program to operate with what looks like no oversight whatsoever for decades, a state of affairs that resulted in serious crimes being committed on campus by a PSU staff member.
That seems to me like a perfectly appropriate thing for its accreditor to concern itself with. Bloomberg reports “Penn State may be violating government regulations and the commission’s standards of leadership, governance and integrity, according to the commission.”
Certainly, there is plenty of evidence of serious problems with “governance and integrity” at PSU.
Agreed, but it doesn’t sound as if the accreditor will be concerning itself particularly with academics, either.
geg6
@freemark:
Actually, it’s 90,000+ students.
And for all those screaming about the administration needing to be punished, the current administration wasn’t in charge at the time and, in fact, have been doing some of the hardest work I’ve ever seen administrators do in all my years in higher ed to try to implement changes and keep morale up. They don’t deserve any of this, any more than I do or that our students do.
Cassidy
@geg6: Unfortunately, you guys are gonna have to be in “suck it up mode” for the next few years. Just the way it is.
geg6
@Cassidy:
No, it isn’t. I don’t have to suck it up at all. I did nothing wrong and I’m proud of what I do. And I won’t quit saying so. That’s what has so many people here so pissed. They want me and all the students, faculty, and staff, in addition to the new administrators to suffer and take blame. I refuse to do it. I’m not going to hang my head over this. And I will fight back when people say that I should.
You know, I didn’t graduate from Penn State (not undergrad anyway) and I always just considered this one of the several jobs I’ve had in higher ed, albeit the best one. I always detested JoePa and couldn’t have cared less about PSU football (I went to Pitt and we Pitt alums have our reasons that go back long before any of this ever happened) and still don’t. But my loyalty to the university as a whole has become a huge thing ever since this all broke. And it’s because of assholes who seem to think that, because of a small number of people who committed horrible crimes, everyone here is to blame and is culpable. It’s no better than being a bigot against some ethnic group because a few people of that ethnicity did something awful. I’ve always stood up against bigots and I see this fight as no different, other than how sad it is that so many of the bigots in this case come from the side that claims empathy and open-mindedness. Well, I sure have learned that simply being on the left side of the political spectrum doesn’t mean you aren’t a bigot.
sneezy
@geg6:
Probably, the accreditor wants to verify that the new administration has implemented changes to policies and procedures to ensure that what happened before doesn’t happen again. Given the nature of what happened before, that hardly seems unreasonable.
Also, what happened is not merely the result of a few bad apples who have now been replaced. It’s also the result, in part, of a seriously dysfunctional culture, centered on Paterno and football, that prevailed for decades. That can’t be changed just by replacing a few administrators.
So probably, the accreditor would also like to hear the new administration explain what plans they have for instilling a different culture. Again, this hardly seems unreasonable.
And if ultimately, this whole thing results in PSU and people of the state of Pennsylvania embracing a different culture that values the university more for its many virtues and the many contributions it makes to the region and state, and less for its once-hallowed football program, that’s all to the good.
I certainly don’t think you, or the vast majority of PSU staff, are personally responsible for what happened. But I also don’t think that anything I have said here gives you any reason to call me an asshole or a bigot. You tend to paint with an awfully broad brush.