MORE REASONS WHY This Board of Trustees Election is of Critical Importance

by Barry Bozeman 
May 8, 2013, will mark the end of this years Board of Trustee's election. The turnout as of April 24th 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 make up of the BoT runs counter to the interests of Penn State University.

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 all sit on the Board along with one (1) non-voting personal representative. The Trustees in the Governor's block depend on him 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 nine members to attempt to balance nine members directly controlled by the Governor plus six each from Business & Industry and from Agriculture. This means that every Alumni elected member who is not committed to opposition of the "old guard" members who violated their fiduciary duty and capitulated to the Governor and John Surma - and their vendettas against Graham Spanier and Joe Paterno - is a critically wasted opportunity. 

See THE SURMA VENDETTA stories (three) 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 with something like ten (10) attorneys. Who hired these attorneys and to whom do they owe their loyalty? It appears that Chief Counsel Stephen Dunham is in lock step with the Old Guard and Tom Corbett, fully committed to the Freeh Fiction and it's detrimental effect on PSU. 

It is clear that the Governor, and those dependent on him for their positions and power -- along with Ken Frazier, Joel Myers, Ira Lubert and just about every old guard Nov 2011 Trustee -- all have a vested interest in seeing Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz convicted of the specious charges against them. BUT the best interests of Penn State University will be served by the acquittal of the "Conspiracy of Silence" Penn State 3 and by the complete posthumous exoneration of Joe Paterno. 

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 based on false information contained in the Freeh Report;

2) In the absence of a valid Freeh Report, the NCAA's obvious violation of it's own rules becomes even more apparent;

3) Acquittals should force the media 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 lawsuits against Penn State would be seriously endangered. (McQueary vs Penn State) 

These great benefits which would result from the acquittals of Curley, Schultz and Spanier should be prompting the office of the General Counsel of Penn State to do everything in its power to assist these Penn State Administrators. So the question arises - whose interest is the office of the General Counsel serving? Are these attorneys working in Penn State's interest or in the interests of Corbett and his cronies on the BoT? 

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 informing him and influencing his opinion? Who is in charge of directing the actions of the office of the PSU General Counsel?  The only people in any position to consult with the Office of the General Counsel are the Trustees, and the only Trustees who are placing the interests of Penn State above the interests of the Governor and his anti-Penn State cronies are those Trustees 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, then the more trustees on that Board 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's attorneys all correspondence and email concerning Cynthia Baldwin and, at a 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 nine 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 although some of us as individuals have endorsed and made our endorsements known. We can all 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, Jesse Arnelle and the Upward State group who oppose reform and want to "move on" to avoid accountability and personal responsibility do not deserve your vote.