While the turmoil at Penn State has been the academic equivalent of a Category 5 storm, it will probably not have much long-term impact on the university, experts say.
Virginia Tech students at a simulcast of a memorial service after shootings killed 33 in 2007.
Certainly, it will take years, perhaps a decade, to resolve the fallout from the sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed the football program — including the university’s own investigation, the likely lawsuits and possible action by the Department of Education and the N.C.A.A. And there may be months of new revelations, resulting in hitches in fund-raising, athletic recruiting and even admissions.
But citing other universities’ experiences with crises, many higher education officials and crisis-management specialists predict that the effects will not last a year.
“From other situations where universities have had what I’d call Category 5 crises, like the Texas A&M bonfire collapse or the Virginia Tech shootings, history suggests that even if there are short-term effects on donations, applications or recruiting, they fade fairly quickly,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.
In 2007 at Virginia Tech, where Seung-Hui Cho’s horrific shooting rampage left 33 dead and prompted a barrage of criticism of the university for neglecting to notify the whole campus as soon as the first two victims were killed, both admissions and fund-raising were actually stronger the following year, and have only strengthened since.
“It might sound trite, but prospective students and their families saw on TV a united student body and incredibly supportive alumni population working together with strong university leadership,” said Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech. “It was painful and stressful, but the institution kept moving in the right directions, dealt openly with problems and shared our experiences with others.”
Duke University was shaken in 2006 by rape accusations against three players on the men’s lacrosse team; the charges were dropped the next April, but not before the campus and its athletes endured a firestorm of negative publicity. Early decision applications in the fall of 2006 dipped somewhat, but there was no dip in regular-decision applications, and in the spring of 2007, when high school seniors were making their choices, the university’s yield was actually higher than in the previous year.
“In all the information sessions I did that season , there was only one time when anyone raised a question about it,” said Christoph Guttentag, Duke’s admissions director. “Most people saw it for what it was, which was an issue that wasn’t going to have any significant effect on their child’s career at Duke.”
For many, the Wednesday night scenes of Penn State students rioting in support of Joe Paterno, the football coach who was fired that evening, brought to mind student protests after the September 2000 firing of Bob Knight, the hot-tempered longtime Indiana University basketball coach. On learning that Knight had been dismissed, thousands of student protesters marched on the president’s home. There was an effigy burning and other small fires, and some students were arrested.
Some alumni then withheld their donations. Although Indiana had robust overall donations the year of the firing, giving to athletics that year dropped to about $7 million, from about $8 million the previous year.
“Bob Knight was a polarizing figure,” said Mark Land, a spokesman for Indiana University. “There were people who thought he was unfairly treated, but there were also people who said, ‘I will never give as long as you employ him.’ ”
Of course, the scandal may play out differently at Penn State, especially given how long prosecutors say the sexual abuse went on.
“I’ve not seen anything on this scale, where the leadership’s been on notice for 10 years that something was going on, and took no action,” said Harlan Loeb, who is in charge of the United States crisis and risk management practice at Edelman, a public-relations firm. “That has to have a big effect on trust and reputation.”
Already, one advertiser, Cars.com, has temporarily withdrawn its sponsorship on ESPN’s “Saturday Afternoon College Football” for two weeks, covering broadcasts of Penn State’s games against Nebraska this past Saturday and then against Ohio State.
The timing of the scandal is unfortunate for Penn State, which uses rolling admissions. The first deadline, which gives applicants the most favorable considerations, is Nov. 30.
And right now, many college counselors, parents and students say Penn State’s allure is tarnished.
“This scandal will not affect the quality of the education the students will receive, but it certainly could affect individual employers’ views of the education P.S.U. provides,” Karen A. Mason, director of college counseling at Pennsylvania’s Germantown Academy, said in an e-mail. “Incidents like this trigger concern that other problematic issues at the university may have been overlooked.”
Hartle, though, at the American Council on Education, said he thought it was a matter of time before Penn State again deserved its nickname, Happy Valley.
“With some deft outreach and some hard work, even the angry students on the streets this week are likely to become, like their predecessors, happy and loyal supporters,” he said. “Colleges and universities are much bigger than any one individual or scandal. Their crises become part of their history.
“When you say Kent State, people still think of the May 4, 1970, shootings. But I can assure you that Kent today is a stronger institution than it was then.”
