Penn State trustees talk about decisions they made

Joel N. Myers, a member of the Pennsylvania State University board of trustees, was shopping on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia on that November day when details of a horrifying child-sex abuse scandal involving a former Penn State football coach were made public in grand jury testimony.

His son sent him a text about it.

"My reaction was, this can't be true. I'm on the board. I would have known about it," Myers, founder and president of AccuWeather and a longtime Penn State trustee, told The Inquirer on Thursday.

Within days, the board forced out president Graham B. Spanier and fired its beloved football coach, Joe Paterno - the latter move bringing a vociferous protest from alumni, students, and others who regarded Paterno as synonymous with all the glory that Penn State has enjoyed through its football program over the last six decades.

For the first time, board members this week sought to explain their decision-making process in a series of media interviews, including a 30-minute sit-down with The Inquirer at the Nittany Lion Inn in State College Thursday morning. The interview with five of the board's 32 members was held one day before the board was scheduled to convene its first regular public meeting since November. Alumni are expected to turn out in force and express their dissatisfaction with the board.

During Thursday's interview, board members addressed the issues that alumni have been complaining about publicly in recent days and they emphasized the anguish they endured during those 100 hours leading up to the terminations, as they personally and as a group wrestled with the right steps to take.

They maintained that before November they knew little about the child-abuse allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky other than that there was a grand jury investigation. They also explained why the board unanimously concluded that Paterno could no longer serve as head coach, though they said they were sorry about the way they had to deliver the news to him and were still grateful for all he did for Penn State.

Paterno, said trustee Linda Strumpf, a retired chief investment officer from New York, met his legal obligation in reporting to his superiors what he knew about Sandusky's alleged 2002 sexual assault of a young boy in a campus shower stall, but that wasn't enough.