Rodney Erickson Has Questions To Answer

As part of his pledge for transparency, President Rodney Erickson will host his second Town Hall Forum today at 4:30 in the HUB Auditorium. The event will also be live streamed.

This event comes a day after it was announced — not surprisingly — that President Erickson was served a subpoena to testify before a state grand jury investigating the allegations of sexual abuse against Jerry Sandusky.

This revelation will certainly be addressed today, and President Erickson has some questions to answer. What is the earliest date he knew that Jerry Sandusky was suspected of child abuse? And how did he know it?

The answers to this question haven’t always been clear for President Erickson. After the Bill O’Brien introductory press conference, Erickson stumbled over questions about when and what he knew.

In a video put out by the Patriot News, Erickson claimed that he didn’t know about the alleged abuse until the Grand Jury presentment came out in November, even though the Patriot News had a story in March indicating that Sandusky was being investigated. When Erickson was pressed again as to how he didn’t find out about the Sandusky allegations until November, he responded with, “Well I dont know, I can’t go back and respond to those kind of questions.”

This is just one of many questions that President Erickson and the other administrators with him will be pressed to answer, especially now as investigations are well under way.

The town hall tonight was organized by our student governments — UPUA, CCSG, and GSA — and I encourage everyone to participate in this dialogue with our University administrators.