She experienced firsthand
the clubby, jock-snapping culture, the sense of entitlement, the
cloistered existence. It's what drove her five years ago from her job as
the vice president who oversaw student discipline.
She was told she was too aggressive, too confrontational, that she wasn't fitting in with "the Penn State way."
She clashed often with
Paterno over who should discipline football players when they got into
trouble. The conflict with such an iconic figure made her very unpopular
around campus. For a while, it cost Triponey her peace of mind and her
good name. It almost ended her 30-year academic career.
Another person might have felt vindicated, smug or self-righteous when former FBI Director Louis Freeh delivered the scathing report on his eight-month investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. But Triponey sensed only a deep sadness.
Photos: Paterno as Penn State coach
Penn State students take to the streets
The inquiry, commissioned
by the board of trustees, exposed how the personal failings of Paterno
and three other Penn State leaders -- along with the university's
football-first culture -- empowered an assistant football coach who
molested fatherless boys for more than a decade.
"There's no joy,"
Triponey told CNN as she sat down for an interview Friday, the day after
the Freeh report was released. She said she found solace in the public
recognition of Penn State's "culture of reverence for the football
program," as the report phrased it, and that it is "ingrained at all
levels of the campus community." Freeh found that the culture
contributed to the Sandusky scandal.
She agrees with Freeh's
suggestion that the university's trustees lead an effort to "vigorously
examine and understand" Penn State's culture, why it's so resistant to
outside perspectives and why it places such an "excessive focus on
athletics."
"It's comforting to know that others can now understand," Triponey said. "It didn't have to happen this way."
Her former boss at
Wichita State University described Triponey as "a dedicated, ethical
professional" who was devastated by her experience at Penn State.
"Vicky knew that she had
attempted to do the right thing in disciplining the football players,
but she was unable to do so in the Penn State environment," said Gene
Hughes, a president emeritus at Wichita State and Northern Arizona
University.
At Penn State, Triponey
was among the few who stood up to Paterno, the legendary "JoePa" who for
61 years was synonymous with a football program that pumped millions of
dollars into Penn State. And she paid dearly for it. At the end, nobody
at the top backed her. And it didn't seem to matter to anyone whether
she was right, or even if she had a point.
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At
the heart of the problem, the Freeh report stated, were university
leaders eager to please Paterno above all else, a rubber-stamp board of
trustees, a president who discouraged dissent and an administration that
was preoccupied with appearances and spin.
Triponey has been saying that since 2005.
Sandusky, as the
mastermind of college football's legendary "Linebacker U," enjoyed
insider status and used Penn State's sporting events and athletic
facilities to lure victims even after he retired in 1999. When he was
indicted and arrested in November, the report said, Sandusky still had
his keys to the Penn State locker room.
Triponey, a slim blonde
who dresses preppie and carries herself with the reserve of an academic
lifer, was always an outsider at Penn State, even though she grew up in
central Pennsylvania. She was not involved in the Sandusky matter; she
says she never met him. But she is keenly aware of the campus culture
that allowed him to prey on boys for years, virtually unchecked.
"The culture is deep,"
she said. "The culture is making decisions based on how others will
react, not based on what's right and wrong." It focused on the interests
of those at "the top of the chain," she added. "Others at the bottom
didn't matter."
Triponey was just one of
the 430 witnesses who spoke with Freeh's investigators; her story,
which she laid out for them over several hours in March, was supported
by e-mails uncovered among the 3.5 million electronic documents the
investigators examined.
"When I visited with
them, that's when I started to be more hopeful," she said. "They got it,
and they were determined to expose it. They found evidence of the
culture that allowed Jerry Sandusky to exist.
"Now I can articulate it," she said. "That is what I was railing against."
Triponey is not named in
the 267-page report; her experience is laid out in a footnote at the
bottom of pages 65 and 66. The section deals with the janitors who were
afraid they'd lose their jobs if they reported they'd seen Sandusky
molesting a boy in the showers in 2000.
"I know Paterno has so
much power that if he had wanted to get rid of someone, I would have
been gone," one janitor told investigators. "Football runs this
university."
"If that's the culture at the bottom," Freeh told reporters, "God help the culture at the top."
The Triponey footnote
sheds some light on the top. "Some individuals interviewed identified
the handling of a student disciplinary matter in 2007 as an example of
Paterno's excessive influence at the university," the footnote stated.
It described "perceived pressure" to "treat players in ways that would
maintain their ability to play sports," including reducing disciplinary
sanctions.
"I wasn't part of the
evidence. I was confirmation of the evidence," Triponey told CNN. "This
is not about me. This is about what Jerry Sandusky was allowed to do."
Penn State can learn
from its mistakes, she believes, but needs new leadership, fresh blood
-- someone from outside Happy Valley.
"It's a cocoon. It's a
bubble. That's why those inside the bubble are really struggling.
They're afraid; they're embarrassed; they're struggling with what to
do," she said.
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