Paterno questions linger at trustees meeting

HERSHEY - Penn State's trustees heard Friday - if they didn't already know - that the firing of football coach Joe Paterno soon after Jerry Sandusky's arrest on child molestation charges remains an open wound among the school's vast ranks of alumni.

The subject was briefly debated by board members, but in a half-hour public comment section alumni were more heated, including calls for trustees to resign and for the NCAA to rescind its harsh sanctions imposed on the school last year.

The main target of criticism was the university's internal report into how university officials handled reports in 1998 and 2001 that Sandusky, a former assistant coach, was behaving inappropriately in team showers with boys. Sandusky was convicted of 45 criminal counts last year and is in state prison.

The report, produced by a team led by former FBI director Louis Freeh, has been a target of critics, including Paterno's family.

Paterno's firing, said alumnus Philip LaPorta of Leesburg, Va., has "wreaked havoc" on Paterno's family, the football program and the university.

"It is evident by the things that you have said and the things that you have failed to say regarding the Freeh report, your moral failure is cataclysmic," LaPorta told the board during a meeting at Hershey Medical Center. "Your failure in leadership is inexcusable."

Trustee Ken Frazier, for the second day, defended the Freeh report as independent and complete, based on available evidence and witnesses.

Frazier said the school had to "deal fairly and responsibly with the undeniable reality of harm to children on our campus by a former Penn State coach," and the documentary evidence that Freeh turned up was part of that process.

"We cannot put our heads in the sand and pretend that children were not hurt or that the documents do not exist," he said.

Frazier cautioned against investigating the Freeh report, warning it would be an attempt to rewrite history that would damage efforts to move the school past "this horrible event."

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Paterno questions linger at trustees meeting

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