In the wake of the Sandusky scandal, many Penn Staters – faculty, students, alumni – have been questioning how the bad decisions of so few people could lead to so much injury and damage done to so many. They have also been frustrated in their search for ways to take an active role in rebuilding Old State’s reputation and instituting the reforms needed to make it better. This struggle is not a coincidence; it is by design.
For much of its existence, Penn State functioned under a system that harkened back to the classical vision of a university as a place where people gathered and grew together in pursuit of knowledge, truth and personal development. Through tripartite shared governance, the administrative staff, the faculty, and the student body all played their own unique and crucial roles in shaping the University. The Faculty Senate had broad power to impact policy and curriculum at the school, while the student government had very real and important responsibilities, like chartering campus organizations and distributing the activity fee. Administrators were hired mainly to maintain the physical and legal infrastructure necessary to sustain operations. All of these derived their authority from a board of distinguished Trustees who were ultimately charged with managing the University’s affairs. In recent decades, this paradigm has been reversed.
Responsibilities of the Trustees have been minimized, while students, and even the faculty, have been marginalized. Over the years, faculty members have seen their ability to direct the growth of Penn State curtailed drastically (recently, the Senate took issue with the lack of faculty input on the appointment of President Erickson), and students have been reduced to little more than paying customers consuming a product. Meanwhile, the University president’s office, and the administration in general, has been vested with ever more power and authority. Not only has this consolidation of power robbed stakeholders of their rightful roles in guiding Penn State, it has also created an environment where the miscues and mistakes of the Sandusky affair were bound to occur.
As a Trustee, Ben Novak will rely on personal communication, traditional media and the internet to engage students, faculty members and the broader Penn State community in a conversation about meaningful changes that return the principles of shared governance to their rightful place in University life.
