VOTE AS IF THE REPUTATION OF YOUR ALMA MATER DEPENDS ON IT. IT DOES.

The upcoming election for Governor offers the opportunity to get the media to focus on the Truth because the Truth clearly shows Tom Corbett damaged Penn State university without regard for the Truth.  Popularly elected Alumni Trustees will have the power to make the Truth known so vote for the Trustee candidates who are willing to fight for the Truth.  

by Barry Bozeman

May 8, 2013 will mark the end of this year's Board of Trustees election. The turnout as of April 24 is just under 19,000 votes lagging behind 2012 and 2013 by 20 to 25%. As we have attempted to explain in several posts here on SMSS, the makeup of the BoT runs counter to the interests of Penn State University:

In our view, Tom Corbett and those who are beholden to him, are in clear breach of their fiduciary duty to Penn State due to clear and compelling conflicts of interest. Their violations should constitute grounds for removal from the Board of Trustees. Corbett's desire to gut Commonwealth funding for Penn State is just one obvious example of his personal conflict with what is in the best interest of Penn State. His handling of the attack on Penn State and his part in the firing of Joe Paterno and the termination and indictment of Graham Spanier is even more obvious and repellent. We support a strong group of Trustees who will fight Corbett and bring these breaches of fiduciary duty to light in this election year. How can a Trustee bound by law to do what is in the best interest of Penn State be the architect of these attacks on Penn State and remain on the Board of Trustees ? 


No friend to PSU

The Governor is automatically placed on the Penn State Board of Trustees. He also appoints six (6) members, in addition to his choices for PA Secretaries of Education, Conservation, and Agriculture, who sit on the Board along with a non-voting personal representative. This block of Trustees depends on the Governor for their positions, effectively making him the single most powerful presence in both voting power and influence.

Six (6) members of the Board are known as Business and Industry Trustees. These members are "self -selected" by an arcane procedure far from being transparent or apparent to those outside the process. Another six (6) members of the Board are known as Agriculture Trustees, who are selected through a county-by-county vote of the Commonwealth's agricultural societies (i.e., the PA Grange and the PA Farm Bureau).  We will discuss the business relationships of most of these members and the influence the Governor holds over them in our next installment.

ONLY Nine (9) members are elected by Alumni, the most independent and democratically selected group. That's only 9 members to attempt to balance 11 of the Governor's directly controlled members plus 6 each from Business & Industry and from Agriculture. This means every Alumni elected member not committed to opposition to the "old guard" members who violated their fiduciary duty and capitulated to the Gov and John Surma - and their vendettas against Graham Spanier and Joe Paterno - is a critically wasted opportunity. 

In this election year the Alumni-elected trustees can create interest in the Truth about the Governor and his actions that did so much damage to Penn State. Those actions can be brought to light by your representatives on the board and they will attract attention because of the election. This is the time to get the truth out by the media that has not covered the truth. 

See THE SURMA VENDETTA stories (3) listed in the right hand column  

CORBETT & SURMA - UNCOMMONLY COMPLETE CONFLICTS of INTEREST

and

CORBETT, SURMA, FRAZIER, TOMALIS & BALDWIN - UNCOMMONLY CLEAR CONFLICTS OF INTEREST 

Recent revelations concerning the role of Cynthia Baldwin make this election even more important. There is now a larger PSU General Counsel's office that has on order of 10 attorneys. Originally, Baldwin was to have an office of four people and continue to contract most of the work to PSU's former legal firm, McQuaide-Blasko.  However, Baldwin directed work away from M-B and channeled some it to her old firm of Duane/Morris.  Reed Smith (Frank Guadagnino) was brought in during the aftermath of the Sandusky scandal.

New PSU chief legal counsel Stephen Dunham is in lockstep with the Old Guard  BOT (and Tom Corbett) and is fully committed to the Freeh Fiction and its detrimental effect on PSU. Sources in the know in State College reveal that Dunham is the de-facto President of PSU and is calling the shots on most decisions.  Dunham is fighting Ryan Bagwell's effort to obtain emails related to the scandal and also opposed the subpoena issued by the plaintiffs in the Paterno vs. NCAA lawsuit.  It's clear that Dunham is a barrier to the truth being revealed about what happened with the NCAA Consent Decree and the Sandusky affair.

Rather than serving the best interests of Penn State University, which would be served by the acquittal of the PSU Three plus the complete posthumous exoneration of Joe Paterno, Dunham is serving the self-interests of the 11-9-11 BOT who made the disastrous decisions the caused the Sandusky scandal to be labeled as the Penn State Scandal.

The reasons that acquittal is in the best interest of Penn State should be obvious. 

1) Acquittal destroys any vestige of viability the public might suspect exists in the Freeh Report. 

2) In the absence of a valid Freeh Report, the NCAA is even more obviously in violation of its own rules.

3) The media should be forced to report that the entire basis for the condemnation of Penn State as complicit in the Sandusky affair was in error. And 

4) Any further lawsuit against Penn State will be seriously endangered. (McQueary vs Penn State) 

Due to these great benefits, the office of the General Counsel of Penn State should be doing everything in it's power to assist the causes of Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

Penn State has a new president who is certain to be less familiar with the situation than most of us reading this article.

Who is influencing and informing his opinion?

And who is in charge of directing the actions of the PSU General Counsel's office?  

The only people in any position to consult with the Office of the General Counsel are the Trustees and the only Trustees with the interests of Penn State above the interests of the Governor and his anti-Penn State cronies are those elected by the Alumni.

Even Onward State should recognize that Penn State's best interests are served by the acquittal of Spanier, Curley and Schultz. If Stephen Dunham is supposed to be responsive to the Board of Trustees - the more trustees who can force him to justify his support of the Freeh Fiction the better. The more trustees there are to inform the new President and to point out the obvious benefits of acquittal the better.  

If nothing else it seems the Penn State General Counsel should make available to the PSU3 Three's attorneys all correspondence and email concerning Cynthia Baldwin and at minimum file a "friend of the court" brief in support of the Affidavit of Senior Fellow David Rudovsky of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Causing Stephen Dunham to make a decision obviously against the best interests of Penn State would only serve to hasten the day of his departure. 

Freeh is required by contract to return to Penn State on demand of the board to answer for his report. The more Trustees who favor this grilling the better. At some point even the 10 Corbett appointees and their supporters from Agriculture, Business & Industry will be forced to listen to the elected Trustees but that will depend on numbers and the willingness of the elected members to fight for Penn State. 

SO VOTE AS IF THE REPUTATION OF YOUR ALMA MATER DEPENDS ON IT. 

IT DOES.

The FREEHdom Fighters do not endorse specific candidates. We can suggest you choose  candidates like Ryan Bagwell and Rudy Glocker or PS4RS candidates 

These candidates support reform and oppose the Corbett-conflicted cronies.

Candidates like Joel Myers and the Upward State group who oppose reform and want to "move on" to avoid accountability and personal responsibility do not deserve your vote.