Graham B. Spanier, who has been Pennsylvania State University’s president for 16 years, and Joe Paterno, the football coach for nearly half a century, were fired by the university’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday night in the wake of the child sex-abuse scandal that has led to graphic charges of assault against a former football defensive coordinator, implicated two high-ranking university officials who are accused of failing to report allegations of abuse to authorities and of lying to a grand jury, and tarnished the university’s reputation in a matter of days.
The U.S. Department of Education also announced on Wednesday that it would investigate whether Penn State has violated a federal law known as the Clery Act. The Clery Act requires colleges to disclose information about crimes on their campuses and to warn students and employees of threats to their safety.
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Penn State’s board, which voted unanimously, has named Rodney A. Erickson, executive vice president and provost, as the interim president of the university. Tom Bradley, the university’s assistant football coach, has been named interim head football coach.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Paterno, 84, who recently became the winningest coach in Division I history, had said he would retire at the end of the season, but the board’s decision makes his departure, as well as Mr. Spanier’s, immediate.
Neither Mr. Spanier nor Mr. Paterno had been charged with breaking any laws in connection with the sex-abuse allegations, but the egregious nature of the charges brought against a former Nittany Lions’ defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, fueled public anger about the lack of action taken by university officials and led trustees to promise, and make, swift decisions. Calls for Mr. Spanier’s ouster, in particular, had begun to swell as the week wore on, with hundreds of students chanting for his removal outside the university’s main administrative building on Tuesday night.
Mr. Sandusky, who retired in 1999, has been charged with sexually assaulting at least eight boys over 15 years, including incidents of abuse witnesses reported seeing in a university locker-room shower. He denies the accusations.
Timothy M. Curley, Penn State’s athletic director, and Gary C. Schultz, its interim senior vice president for finance and business, stepped down earlier this week and surrendered to the police on charges of perjury and failing to report the child-abuse allegations against Mr. Sandusky that were brought to their attention.
The board’s decision was announced shortly after 10 p.m. in a hastily called news conference at a university hotel. “These decisions were made after careful deliberation and in the best interests of the university as a whole,” said John P. Surma, vice chairman of the board. “We promise you we’re committed to restoring public trust to our university.”
Mr. Surma was the first Penn State official to answer questions from reporters since the scandal broke on Saturday, and the pent-up frustration among the news media was palpable. As he finished his prepared comments, reporters shouted questions from all sides, focused most intensely on why Mr. Paterno had to go.
“Because of the difficulties that have engulfed the university, and they are great, it was necessary to set a different course for the institution,” Mr. Surma said.
Mr. Spanier, 63, issued a statement after the board’s announcement Wednesday in which he said that “there is wisdom in a transition in leadership so that there are no distractions in allowing the university to move forward.”
“Although I have always acted honorably and in the best interests of the university, the buck stops here,” Mr. Spanier added. “In this situation, I believe it is in the best interests of the university to give my successor a clear path for resolving the issues before us.”
Thousands of students gathered on a street near campus Wednesday night after the board announced its decisions and voiced support for Mr. Paterno. They blew horns, threw toilet paper over the crowd, and chanted, “We want Joe.” One sign read, “Joe Pa forever.”
The gathering later threatened to turn ugly, with mobs of students and others angered by the coach’s firing pouring into downtown State College, toppling two light poles and overturning a news van. There were also reports of rocks thrown from the crowd, breaking car windows.
Long Ties
Mr. Spanier, who has led Penn State since 1995, has long ties to the university. It is where he began his teaching career, in 1973, working as a professor of human development and sociology there for nearly a decade. During some of that time, he also served in administrative positions in the university’s College of Health and Human Development. His wife, Sandra, is a professor of English at Penn State and is the general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project. Both of their children are graduates of the university.
The university last year extended Mr. Spanier’s contract by three years, through 2015, and provided for an annual salary of $700,000. In 2009-10, Mr. Spanier’s total cost of employment, including pay and benefits, was $800,592, the fifth highest among public-university presidents, according to the most-recent Chronicle analysis of executive pay.
The first in his family to attend college, Mr. Spanier earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University. He has built a career as an administrator and as a researcher and scholar. Before taking over the presidency of Penn State, in 1995, he held leadership positions at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Oregon State University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. As president of Penn State, he held academic appointments as professor of human development and family studies, sociology, demography, and family and community medicine. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Family Issues and has more than 100 scholarly publications, including 10 books.
He has also been active on national higher-education issues, including serving as chair of the Association of American Universities, leading a commission on the future of land-grant institutions, and spearheading high-profile committees of the NCAA.
Mr. Spanier, who was once seen as a possible candidate to lead the NCAA, now chairs the Bowl Championship Series’ Presidential Oversight Committee and plays host to a college-sports television program, Expert Opinion, featured on the Big Ten Network. In August, after the NCAA held a gathering of Division I presidents aimed at charting major changes to college sports, Mr. Spanier had strong words for wrongdoers: “There is an unwavering determination to change a number of things about intercollegiate athletics today,” he said at the time. “Presidents are fed up with the rule breaking that is out there.”
At Penn State, a university with 96,000 students on 24 campuses, Mr. Spanier has overseen an annual budget of $4.3-billion. During his tenure there, he has expanded many of the university’s two-year branch campuses into four-year colleges, opened a School of Information Sciences and Technology, and advocated a universitywide effort to deliver distance education at a time when many institutions were delivering only a handful of individual programs online.
The official biography of Mr. Spanier on Penn State’s Web site also portrays him as “unconventional.” He is a magician who has performed with musical-theater students and student musical groups, he plays the washboard, and he and his racquetball partner have frequently won co-ed intramural championships. He has occasionally substituted for the Nittany Lion mascot.
Recently, Mr. Spanier has been fighting state budget cuts, including a proposal earlier this year by Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, to trim appropriations for Penn State and other institutions by about 50 percent, an amount that would have been the biggest one-time percentage cut to state higher-education dollars in history. Facing slimmer budgets, Mr. Spanier has waged a campaign over the past couple of years to standardize faculty workloads, in part by eliminating teaching deals that individual professors have negotiated.
Moving Forward
Several higher-education leaders said on Wednesday night that Mr. Spanier’s departure is important for Penn State while, at the same time, they praised numerous aspects of Mr. Spanier’s presidency.
“Graham’s departure comes under extremely sad and still uncertain circumstances, but it enables Penn State to begin to move past this crisis,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education.
“Graham Spanier is a good colleague who is widely admired and respected within the higher-education community,” she said. “He has nearly single-handedly led Penn State University in its transition from a solid regional institution to a university renowned for its teaching, research and scholarship.”
Walt Harrison, president of the University of Hartford who has worked with Mr. Spanier on various NCAA matters, said that he respects the former Penn State president both for his administrative capacity and his humanity. “I’ve found him to be almost the perfect combination of a president with strong analytical skills, a love of learning, enthusiasm for student life, and a strong set of values,” he said.
He said he regrets the end of Mr. Spanier’s tenure at Penn State, but he understands the decision. “All of us who are presidents realize that we take on a lot of responsibilities for which we have been held accountable, and we know that we serve at the pleasure of the governing board and the university.”
In the days and weeks ahead, almost every college in the country will probably be reviewing its policies and procedures related to guarding against sex abuse on campus, much as campuses bolstered emergency-notification practices after the shootings at Virginia Tech, said Terry W, Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.
“This is a sad day for everyone associated with Penn State and for everyone involved in higher education,” Mr. Hartle said. “The alleged events are absolutely horrific.”
Graham B. Spanier at a Glance
Age: 63
Education: B.S. in sociology, Iowa State University, 1969; M.S. in sociology, Iowa State, 1971; Ph.D. in sociology, Northwestern University, 1973.
Career: Mr. Spanier has been president of Pennsylvania State University since 1995. He began his teaching career there in 1973, serving as a professor of human development and sociology through 1982. Before returning to Penn State, he was vice provost for undergraduate studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Oregon State University, and then chancellor of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
Family: His wife, Sandra, is a professor of English at Penn State who specializes in 20th-century American literature. She is also the general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project. Their two children, Brian and Hadley, are graduates of Penn State.
