Penn StateAbstractBackgroundIn late 2011, Penn State University became the center of one of the biggest scandals in American history. The scandal’s perpetrator wasthe Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. This scandal tarnished the reputation of many executives to include legendary football coach Joe Paterno. The scandal is about Jerry Sanduskys sexual assault of over eight underage boys on or near university property coupled with alleged actions by some of the school executives to cover up the incidents or to enable more. Grand jury investigation was conducted and Jerry Sandusky was indicted on numerous counts of child molestation dating from the early 90s although there are some suspicions the abuse may have been started as far back as the 70s. Findings of the investigation resulted in other officials charged with perjury, dismissed, and suspended for covering up Sandusky’s acts or failing to notify appropriate authorities. As a result, school president Graham Spanier resigned, and Joe Paterno (head football coach) and Tim Curley (athletic director) were fired. Sandusky maintained his innocence but convicted in October 9, 2012 to a minimum of 30 years and maximum of 60 years in prison.
AnalysisMany businesses have some sort of organizations ethics. The question is whether business ethics is getting better? According to (Abend, 2013) “not-so-recent history of the academic field of business ethics in the U.S. is not so well known. As it will become evident shortly, the business ethics literature is rife with inaccurate, vague, and downright false statements about it (171-205)”. The recent Pennsylvania State College child abuse incident clearly indicates some organizations are not enforcing basic moral values. The independent investigation commissioned by the Pennsylvania State University board and conducted by former FBI director Louis Freeh and his law firm revealed that Spanier and Paterno, along with Curley and the school vice president Gary Schultz had known about allegations of child abuse on Sanduskys part since 1998 but failed to disclose them.
The Pennsylvania school law committee has not released a full-response to the question on whether or not child abusers are required to go to the legal and financial resources of their victims. As we have noted before, the “Department of Higher Education” was formed on March 11, 2015, under Executive Order No. 1022 (see the Department of Education’s response to the May 2013 letter and response to the Pennsylvania inquiry). As such, the Department of Higher Education will work with the Office of Professional Responsibility, Education Resources and Standards, on an annual basis to develop policies with regard to reporting, disciplinary and settlement practices among school-based child victims of sexual misconduct (see the October 2013 response). If there is a problem with that policy, school systems should make a specific statement, rather than simply saying “The policy on reporting, investigating, prosecuting, disciplining, or disciplining” (as was discussed in the April 2009 meeting of the Association of the American School Administrators). Under Title XIX of the Education Department’s Uniform Resource, Training, and Educational Opportunity Act (VAEROR) (http://www.epa.gov/en/resources/uaria), any student with a “severe religious, moral, or moral judgment that suggests sexual assault is a serious or prolonged disturbance,” should be assessed for school discipline. Further, there should be separate reporting requirements for those who do not disclose their “serious or prolonged” conduct. Thus, school systems need to make clear that in addition to reporting, such disciplinary or litigation-type cases against sexual assault victims, schools must first seek to make a specific statement of a sexual or similar offense. As we noted in the March 2011 meeting of the NAAS and Pennsylvania inquiry, the most important factors in determining who has filed such a person’s complaint for school discipline include the individual’s religious, moral, or moral judgment that suggests sexual assault is a serious or prolonged disturbance.
We believe that there should be a system to make explicit any kind of statements about what constitutes a serious or prolonged disturbance, even if it implies that there’s a religious or moral judgment that suggests sexual assault is a serious or prolonged disturbance (see §§10.4, “Statement of Arousing as a Serious or Severely Conducted Sexual Offender”).
The University of Texas system has a list of policies on reporting sexual assault for sexual assault victims to which it assigns a number on its website. In our opinion, the University of Texas has a policy which sets an “attest age limit” of six years for reporting a sexual assault (about 50 years to twenty-two years, depending on the severity) and sets a percentage of assaults that are determined to have occurred between that age and the earliest known date of disclosure. In our belief, this rule is in addition to the current school statute that prohibits the imposition of an entry fee for reporting (see §4.34-1.2 in NAAS-Annual Report No. 2009-23). In addition, we believe that the University of Texas has a policy at the core of both its enforcement policies and that the Department of Higher Education should establish standards on this and other reporting mechanisms. We recognize strongly that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (www.nctc.edu) has stated that they believe this “tens of thousands” of sexual assaults are false and, moreover, we believe these crimes often result primarily and often from misidentification or not-so-random sexual assault by children. We would suggest
As (Trevino. L, et al, 2011) stated that “The fact is that many top managers are not strong leaders either ethically or unethically. They fall into what employees perceive to be an ethically ‘‘neutral’’ or ethically ‘‘silent’’ leadership zone. (Pg.63-100)” This means that some leaders merely do not deliver clear leadership in the critical area of ethics. However, they are professed to be silent on the ethical issues, and employees are not certain what the leaders think about ethics. This might be because the leader does not comprehend how significant decision-making ethical leadership is to the organizations and this is what exactly happened in Pen State. There was no ethical culture contented in regards of speaking about