Posts tagged ‘Karen Peetz’
The Penn Stater Daily — Feb. 27, 2014
Lessons from crises: As president of Bank of New York Mellon and chairman of the Penn State Board of Trustees, Karen Peetz ’77 is familiar with crises. She reflects on both the financial crisis and the Sandusky scandal in a piece from today’s CNNMoney: Postcards blog and shares lessons learned from both ordeals. Among her remarks: “We have to show we understand that the world in which we operate has changed and that we embrace new ways of thinking and operating. In other words, we have to prove ourselves — prove ourselves worthy of trust.”
All the right moves: If you’ve got a couple free minutes, check out this video featuring a TedXPSU project from earlier this week. On Tuesday, the music school’s chamber orchestra set up shop in the HUB, and passersby were invited to conduct the group in a classical performance. Several students jumped right in—and delivered some surprisingly convincing performances.
More than hockey: We told you about ESPN‘s John Buccigross’s visit to Penn State a few weeks ago, when the famed sportscaster took in a men’s hockey game at Pegula. Buccigross talked more about his Penn State experience with the Centre County Gazette for this piece, posted this morning. A few of his favorite things about State College: Cafe 210, Damon’s mozzarella sticks, and the Pegula Ice Arena’s spacious urinals. Yes, you read that right.
Drop the bass: Ever found yourself wondering if Penn State has a student group for all the bass-fishing enthusiasts on campus? Well, here is your answer, courtesy of Onward State.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
PS4RS Sweeps Alumni Election–And Other Board of Trustees Notes
Barbara Doran was the top vote-getter in the alumni trustees election.
Here’s the short version of Friday’s Board of Trustees meeting:
The university president and governor are no longer voting members of the board. The governance reform package passed after minimal discussion, a back-and-forth between trustee Anthony Lubrano ’82 and Stephen Dunham, vice president and general counsel, about what, exactly, would constitute a breach of fiduciary duty that could prompt the removal of a trustee. Lubrano, who did not seem satisfied with the answers, voted no.
And the three alumni trustee candidates endorsed by Penn Staters For Responsible Stewardship—Barbara Doran ’75, William Oldsey ’76, and Ted Brown ’68—dominated the election. Each of their vote totals—15,085 for Doran, 13,940 for Oldsey, and 11,403 for Brown—more than doubled the total of the fourth-place finisher, incumbent Paul Suhey ’79, who had 4,521 votes.
Bill Oldsey finished second.
(Penn State announced the results by candidate number, not in order of votes received, so they’re hard to read. Click here to read the results in order, courtesy of the Centre Daily Times.)
The longer version? That’s more complex, and something that’s going to play out over the coming months.
Several trustees made a point of saying that the governance package passed today isn’t the final word on reform. And the PS4RS sweep means that a growing number of people critical of how the board has handled the Sandusky scandal are now on the board itself. The board will also need to elect a new vice chair, because Stephanie Nolan Deviney ’97g was not re-elected, and the standing committee assignments could change, too.
Each of the winners, who will join the board in July, spoke afterward about issues that go beyond how Joe Paterno was treated by the university. Oldsey, who has spent his career in educational publishing, stressed that both he and Penn State were in the same business—“the business of education”—and mentioned World Campus, in particular, as an area of emphasis. Brown talked of the importance of commonwealth campuses and the need to pay faculty and staff better to recruit top talent. And Doran spoke of the need for term limits for trustees and her frustration that longtime members of the board were essentially grandfathered in on the 12-year limit.
Ted Brown finished third in the alumni election.
All three also stressed the need to build relationships with the current board members, which they said was the best way to make change happen, and the importance of making current board members understand that PS4RS is not a fringe group.
“They’ve dismissed PS4 as this militant radical group, Franco Harris ’72 is crazy, all this kind of thing,” Doran said. “It’s much deeper than that. I’ve been on the (capital) campaign for five years; I know all sorts of donors. And when you’re running for the board and people think you have a shot at it you hear from a lot of people who feel it’s safe to speak up.”
Lubrano said afterward that the alumni trustees may begin caucusing together—and that all nine alumni trustees would be invited, although he wasn’t sure all would attend. That would include the three alumni trustees who were on the board during the Sandusky scandal, and whose terms expire in 2014: Marianne Ellis Alexander ’62; Jesse Arnelle ’55, ’62g; and Joel Myers ’61, ’63g, ’71g.
Other notes from the meeting:
—The election of agricultural trustees and selection of business and industry trustees also took place. Incumbent Keith Eckel will be joined by M. Abraham Harpster ’94, co-owner of Evergreen Farms in Spruce Creek, Pa. Karen Bretherick Peetz ’77 received another term as a business and industry trustee; she’ll be joined by Richard Dandrea ’77, a Pittsburgh attorney.
—After it became clear over the past week that the governance reforms would be voted on as a package, board chair Keith Masser ’73 received some criticism, given that he had indicated in testimony before the legislature that the reforms would be voted on individually. (He said the same to me after the March meeting.) He attempted to find a middle way during the meeting, announcing that there was a parliamentary procedure that would allow trustees to make a motion to exclude a provision from the vote. No one took advantage of it.
Masser said after the meeting that he shouldn’t have said that each change to the bylaws, standing orders, and university charter—there were dozens—would get an individual up-or-down vote. “It was impractical,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking when I made that statement. But that wasn’t really the intent of the question. The intent of the question was ‘Are you going to railroad this package through?’ That’s what I heard, and I wanted to be clear that no, we’re not railroading the package through.”
—Dunham, the university counsel, responded forcefully when questioned by Lubrano about the circumstances under which a trustee could be removed from the board. Lubrano pressed Dunham about whether the university had compared its proposed policy to those of other Big Ten universities and to define exactly what would constitute a breach of fiduciary duty.
Dunham said he thought that criticism of the provision was based on an earlier draft, which was linked to a code of conduct. “Including yourself, Trustee Lubrano, you talked about the ‘Lubrano rule,’ started talking about the code of conduct. That’s changed. This … clearly does not relate to any individual trustee, any individual.” And then, pausing after each word for emphasis, Dunham added: “It. Just. Could. Not. Be. More. Clear.”
—While the public comment section (moved to earlier in the meeting for the first time) had its usual complement of people who chastised the trustees for their response to the Sandusky scandal and/or asked for more board engagement with the public, a broader range of issues came up Friday. Prominent among them: the controversial gas pipeline to the West Campus Steam Plant, which is to be converted from a coal-burning plant.
Residents of State College protested the route for the pipeline, through a residential area, and Columbia Gas has since agreed to start over and work with Penn State to study other possible routes, including through campus. Trustee Myers commented afterward: “There is a feeling by some people in town that the university is arrogant, and I think we need to bend over backwards to articulate what we plan to do and get buy-in for these kinds of things.”
Lori Shontz, senior editor
More from Sunday’s Trustees Meeting
Board chair Karen Peetz.
The upcoming search for a new Penn State president took up a big chunk of yesterday’s meeting of the Board of Trustees, but the group covered some other ground as well. Here’s more on what they talked about:
Accreditation. President Rod Erickson gave an update on the warning Penn State received two weeks ago from its accrediting agency, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The president and vice president of the commission were on campus to meet with Penn State officials last Thursday, an Erickson called it “an excellent meeting.” Middle States has 14 accreditation criteria, and in Penn State’s case it has concerns about three of those criteria: integrity, governance, and institutional resources. The university has until Sept. 30 to provide an report on what it plans to do to address those concerns.
“There’ll be a small site-review team here during October,” Erickson said, “and we hope to have all of those issues satisfied in time for the mid-November meeting of the full commission. I have every expectation that we either have met, or will meet, all of those requirements.”
Vacant position. It doesn’t sound like trustee chair Karen Peetz ’77 plans to make her own pick to fill the vacancy created (more…)
A Few Notes From the Trustees Meeting
The Penn State trustees are meeting in two parts this weekend, with some weighty discussion items, including the Freeh report, a timeline for the presidential search, the NCAA sanctions, and ways to move forward.
This afternoon’s segment was scheduled to include a 30-minute meeting of the full board, followed by committee meetings. As it turned out, the board meeting ended up running close to an hour and a half.
I can’t pretend to give a comprehensive accounting of this afternoon’s session, but I can share some highlights:
—Board chair Karen Peetz ’77 opened with a statement that promised more openness from the trustees: “We are entering a new era of high standards of corporate governance,” she said, “where the University’s—and this Board of Trustees’—deliberations and actions are open and transparent. Except for limited sensitive, legal, or individual personnel matters, the board meetings will be open and available to all.”
You can read Peetz’s entire statement at Penn State Live.
—About 40 members of the general public attended the meeting; a few of them wore (more…)
The Freeh Report, and its Fallout
“The evidence clearly shows, in our view, an active agreement to conceal.”
Of all the answers former FBI director Louis Freeh gave today after the release of his group’s 267-page report on the Sandusky scandal, this might have been the most blunt. The report’s findings center on a Penn State leadership culture devoid of accountability at the highest level, in which a handful of men—Graham Spanier, Tim Curley ’76, ’78g, Gary Schultz ’71, ’75g, and Joe Paterno—failed in their responsibility to expose a serial pedophile. Their motivation, in Freeh’s words, was “avoiding the consequences of bad publicity.”
The Board of Trustees is cited as well for a failure to press for answers and hold the university’s administration accountable. The picture presented is clear: Jerry Sandusky ’66, ’71g was the monster in all this, but he was enabled, directly or not, by many others who had the power to stop him.
On Thursday, as throughout the scandal, much of the attention focused on Paterno’s accountability. On this, Freeh was careful but direct. “We have a great deal of respect for Mr. Paterno, and condolences for his family on their loss. He’s a person with a great legacy, terrific legacy… he, as someone once said, made perhaps the worst mistake of his life. We’re not singling him out. We’re putting him in a category of three other people who were major leaders of Penn State. He was also a major leader of Penn State. The facts are the facts… There’s a whole bunch of evidence here. We’re saying he was a major part of an active attempt to conceal… I regret that. But what my report says is what the evidence and the facts show. We laid that out as fairly and clearly as we can.”
The reactions from elsewhere in the Penn State community followed later in the day. Late Thursday morning, the Paterno family released a statement that defended its patriarch. “The idea that any sane, responsible adult would knowingly cover up for a child predator is impossible to accept,” it reads. “The far more realistic conclusion is that many people didn’t fully understand what was happening and underestimated or misinterpreted events.”
The family statement goes on: “Joe Paterno wasn’t perfect. He made mistakes and he regretted them. He is still the only leader to step forward and say that with the benefit of hindsight he wished he had done more. To think, however, that he would have protected Jerry Sandusky to avoid bad publicity is simply not realistic.”
Penn State president Rod Erickson and the university trustees met the media in Scranton in mid-afternoon. Board chair Karen Peetz ’77 and Ken Frazier ’75, who led the board’s investigative panel, both emphasized the trustees’ collective accountability in the scandal. Said Frazier, “We, the Penn State Board of Trustees, failed to provide proper oversight for the university’s operations.” Peetz echoed that statement, but said no trustees planned to resign, focusing on the acknowledgment of culpability as the first step in moving forward.
Both Peetz and Frazier addressed Paterno, commending his accomplishments and his massive positive impact on the university. But Peetz also acknowledged the “clarity that comes out of that report, that shows 61 years of excellent service to the university is now marred.”
The Board’s official statement on the Freeh Report, including details of action already taken and future plans, can be found here.
The public response to the report was immediate and harsh, much of it damning of Paterno and demanding NCAA sanctions against the Penn State football program. In Oregon, Nike announced that Paterno’s name would no longer adorn the childcare center at its headquarters. Phil Knight, the Nike founder and longtime Paterno family friend, said in a statement, “According to the investigation, it appears Joe made missteps that led to heartbreaking consequences. I missed that Joe missed it, and I am extremely saddened on this day. My love for Joe and his family remains.”
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Taliaferro, Lubrano, and McCombie Win Trustees Election
Anthony Lubrano speaks with alumni at the Meet the Candidates event held before the Blue White game. Photo by our editor, Tina Hay.
Exactly six months after the grand jury presentment was leaked—it was late afternoon, Nov. 4, when the charges made against Jerry Sandusky ’66, ’71g became known—the most contested Board of Trustees election in Penn State’s history ended. Adam Taliaferro ’05, Anthony Lubrano ’82, and Ryan McCombie ’70 will begin their three-year terms in July.
Everything about the election was unprecedented—the 86 candidates, the 37,579 votes cast, the hiring of KMPG to audit the results, which were announced in Friday’s Board of Trustees meeting. The university assigned PINs, allowing alumni to vote electronically, to 197,517 people, meaning that 19 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots.
Taliaferro, a lawyer and New Jersey selectman who’s best known as the football player who was paralyzed in a game against Ohio State, but beat the odds and learned to walk again, received 15,629 votes. Lubrano, a businessman who donated money for the baseball stadium, Medlar Field at Lubrano Park, received 10,096. McCombie, a businessman and retired Navy SEAL, received 4,806 votes.
Karen Peetz ’77, chair of the board, said she doesn’t anticipate any problems integrating the new alumni trustees, although emotions have run high since the Sandusky scandal, especially over Joe Paterno. She said Penn State is “extremely fortunate” that so many alums cared enough about the university to run.
The agricultural societies that elect six trustees also voted this week, with incumbent Carl Shaffer, president of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, and Donald Cotner ’71, president of an egg company, winning with 112 and 100 votes, respectively. Current business and industry trustees Kenneth Frazier ’75 and Edward Hintz ’59, whose terms expired in 2012, were re-elected to the board; business trustees are voted on by the board members. Gov. Tom Corbett has not yet decided on his appointees; the terms of two of his six appointees expire this year, as well.
Ryan McCombie meets alumni at an Alumni Association event in April. This photo, too, by Tina Hay.
During the meeting, Peetz noted that the board is considering changes in its structure, citing the reorganization of its standing committees in March. James Broadhurst ’65, who is chairing the governance and long-range planning committee, said the board is looking into term limits and how to better use the experience of the emeriti trustees, among other suggestions.
At this point, one of the spectators in the room asked if the board were taking questions from the public. Told that was not the case, he then said he just wanted to make a statement—that the trustees consider making it possible for students and faculty to interact directly with them.
But no aspect of the trustees has received more attention recently than the alumni vote; the Associated Press reported that it drew more attention that the Pennsylvania primary election. Eighteen other candidates received more than 1,000 votes:
Barbara L. Doran ’75: 4,040
Mark S. Connolly ’84g: 2,967
Ben Novak ’65, ’99g: 2,957
Vincent J. Tedesco Jr. ’74: 2,385
Anne Riley ’64, ’75g: 1,883
O. Richard Bundy ’93, ’96g: 1,864
John W. Diercks ’63, ’67g, ’75g: 1,761
Jayne E. Miller ’76: 1,653
Jonathan L. Wesner ’65: 1,530
George T. Henning Jr. ’63: 1,503
Joanne C. DiRinaldo ’78: 1,455
Thomas J. Sharbaugh ’73: 1,410
Darlene R. Baker ’80: 1,212
Patty Marrero ’88: 1,172
Matthew J. Lisk ’95: 1,060
Amy L. Williams ’80: 1,048
Marta Pepe Forney ’00: 1,047
William F. Oldsey ’76: 1,007
Three more alumni seats will come open next year. I’m sure I’m not alone in suspecting next year’s election will be hotly contested, too.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
