Dubois: Lessons from Penn State for UNCC?

The Penn State child sexual abuse scandal and the unprecedented NCAA sanctions levied against the school are making other schools take notice of their governance structures too.

UNC Charlotte Chancellor Phil Dubois told the Observer's editorial board today that he'll be going through, with the UNC Charlotte board of trustees, the Freeh report. That report lambasted Penn State officials including legendary Coach Joe Paterno and former school president Graham Spanier for failing to protect at least 10 children who were victimized by Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant coach.

The report also took to task the Penn State board of trustees for failing in its oversight duties.

The Freeh report has a number of recommendations about structural or systemic changes and checks and balances needed at Penn State.

"I want to go through them with our board to see if there is anything we need to take a look at," said Dubois. "For example, if you talk about something at your board meeting involving litigation, making sure that you also talk about other things that are risk issues that don't relate to litigation - yet...
It's just a simple thing. But the [Freeh] report pointed out that after the [Penn State] president first talked to the board [about the Sandusky allegations] that there was no subsequent conversation."

Dubois said he'd be "very surprised" if other universities were not having similar conversations about their "governance" following what happened at Penn.

He also noted that one issue that was pinpointed in the report about "the president's span of control" was one he could relate to. The report posed the question of whether the job as Penn State president had become so big that it was difficult to pay sufficient attention to all the things needing attention. "You've got too many people throwing things at you everyday."

It's good to hear Dubois talk about delving into the Freeh report to see what lessons can be learned so such a failure of governance can be avoided at UNC Charlotte. Hopefully other universities are doing the same, and not simply chalking up what happened at Penn State as an anomaly that couldn't happen anywhere else. The scale of the failure at Penn State might be hard to replicate elsewhere. But a culture that gives athletics out-sized influence, or that is not diligent about investigating and probing allegations of wrong-doing can happen anywhere.

With football coming to UNC Charlotte in the fall of 2013, school officials already have a structure in place that puts the right emphasis on academics over athletics. Dubois says the culture between athletics and academics is strong at UNC Charlotte.
"The athletics director has sat on the chancellor's cabinet since forever," he said. "The academic advisors [for athletes] report to academic affairs. The support services for the student athletes are in the academic center."

That seems to put the focus exactly where it belongs. Student-athletes are students first. It's good to hear some college presidents have the priority in the right order.

Fannie Flono