Omar Aqani
BUS9558-S3DB (8684)
July 25, 2022
PBS: Penn State Sexual Abuse Scandal
On November 4, 2011 - The grand jury report is released about Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse.
For over a decade, Sandusky the former Penn State defensive coordinator sexually abused at
least eight young boys. Several members of the Penn State administration failed to notify law
enforcement after learning about these incidents, allowing this pattern of behavior to continue.
According to The New York Times, “Behind the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal at Penn
State lay a series of failures all the way up the university’s chain of command — shortcomings
that were the result of an insular and complacent culture in which football was revered, rules
were not applied, and the balance of power was dangerously out of whack.” (The New York
Times, 2012).
I think the way the Sandusky scandal was handled by the higher ups at Penn State was a total
failure, because even when the sex scandal broke, the officials at Penn State continued to drop
the ball; the head coach Joe Paterno chose to protect Football over children; he was aware of
his assistant’s behavior and was reluctant in reporting it to the athletic director promptly. Other
officials and university vice president acted as passive overseers instead of displaying the barest
amount of accountability.
Public’s trust in Penn State was broken and it’s very hard to restore. According to Mai and
Akerson, “When leaders withhold information, or when people find out indirectly and after the
fact what leaders could have told them directly and sooner, trust is weakened.” (The leader as
Communicator, 2003)
In my opinion, Penn State’s handling of the incident was even worse than allowing it to happen
in the first place. If Penn State is educating their public relations strategy to students the same
way they implemented it in this incident, I wouldn’t recommend hiring those students in public
relations positions.
This crisis could have been managed better if athletic director Tim Curley and former university
vice president Gary Schultz were to conduct an internal investigation as soon as they learned
about the allegations instead of trying to cover it up.
References:
Richard Pérez-Peña, (July 12, 2012). In Report, Failures Throughout Penn State. The New York
Times. Retrieved from:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/sports/ncaafootball/in-freeh-report-on-sanduskyfailures-throughout-penn-state.html
Robert Mai, Alan Akerson. (April 25, 2003). The Leader as Communicator: Strategies and Tactics
to Build Loyalty, Focus Effort, and Spark Creativity. Amacom