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Penn State Case

In: Social Issues

Submitted By Leserick
Words 1884
Pages 8
ACC 7480
Penn State Case
Leslie Erickson
October 1, 2012

The Penn State Scandal reflects many failures of the governance system at all levels of the university and not only with in the Board of Trustees. As reported in the Freeh Report, chapter 1 (Key Findings); each school and large department of Penn State have their own Human Resources Staff. Amongst the individual Human Resources Departments if they hadn’t opted out; they were at least lazy with standard rules and procedures for implementing University Policies and rules (includes over 350 policies and procedures for which oversight and compliance is decentralized and uneven). In addition there was no centralized office, officer or committee to oversee compliance with laws, regulations, policies and procedures. Some departments even monitored their compliance issues with the very limited resources available to them from within the departments. The university Police Department was responsible for compliance with the Cleary Act which requires the university to collect crime statistics relating to designated crimes; including sexual offenses occurring on university property and make timely warning of certain crimes that pose an ongoing threat to the community and prepare an annual safety report to be distributed to the campus community. The Cleary Act also requires “Campus Security Authorities” (Coaches, athletes and directors) to report crimes to the Police Department. From 1991-2007 the university delegated Cleary Act compliance to the Police Department’s Crime Prevention Officer (CPO) who had not received any formal training before taking the position. In 2007 the duties were transferred to a departmental sergeant and instituted some training programs. Yet, still only a minimal amount of time was available to devote to the Cleary Act. So, awareness and interest at the university remained

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