Following two straight days of private meetings that resulted in the firing of its beloved head football coach and president, Penn State’s board is ready to come out into the open to discuss the scandal that’s brought the university to its collective knees.
According to the Associated Press, the school’s Board of Trustees will hold a public meeting Friday. All 32 members of the board are expected to be in attendance, including governor Tom Corbett, who made his first extensive public comments on the scandal yesterday.
In a statement issued Thursday, the board said it was in the process of forming a special committee “to undertake a full and complete investigation of the circumstances that gave rise to the Grand Jury Report.” That report contained a 40-count indictment of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who is alleged to have raped and sodomized eight children dating back to 1994. At least one of the rapes is alleged to have occurred in a shower of the Lasch football building; the information regarding the alleged rape, witnessed by a then-graduate football assistant, was never handed over to the legal authorities for investigation.
The special committee, the release went on to state, “will be commissioned to determine what failures occurred, who is responsible and what measures are necessary to insure that this never happens at our University again and that those responsible are held fully accountable.”
The identities of the members of that special committee are expected to be announced during today’s meeting.