Penn State: Vigil draws 10,000; Frazier to lead probe

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Kenneth Frazier, president and chief executive officer of Merck & Co., was appointed Friday to lead an investigation into how Pennsylvania State University officials handled reports of possible sexual abuse of children by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Frazier, a member of the university's board of trustees, will lead the investigation for the trustees, whose governing board promised to conduct an impartial, open, and in-depth inquiry and to release the full findings to the public.

About 10,000 people gathered Friday night outside Penn State's Old Main building for a candlelight vigil to support the sex-abuse victims. Speakers included former Penn State linebacker LaVar Arrington and the university's student body president, T.J. Bard.

"May we never forget the victims, and may we fight until no child is harmed again," Bard said.

After the Old Main bells struck 10 p.m., a moment of silence was observed, leading into the Blue Band playing the alma mater. At the end of the vigil, the crowd took part in a "We are Penn State" cheer.

Also Friday, Penn State's acting president, Rodney Erickson, pledged to "reorient" the university's culture after the scandal.

"Never again should anyone, regardless of position, at Penn State feel scared to do the right thing," he said. Unanswered, though, was how successfully the university could investigate itself. The special investigative committee will not have subpoena power or be able to compel anyone who may face potential criminal charges to speak.

The board of trustees, gathered for a regularly scheduled meeting, said the committee would seek to:

Determine what failures occurred in the university's handling of allegations against Sandusky.

Figure out who was responsible.

Recommend measures to ensure nothing similar ever happens.

Frazier said it was too soon to discuss what consequences might be imposed on university employees who were determined to have failed to act appropriately.

He will be assisted by board member Ron Tomalis, the state secretary of education. Their committee will be composed largely of board members, along with members of the university community and an outside legal counsel.

The board met at the Nittany Lion Inn, on the edge of campus, two days after firing fabled football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier.

Those firings followed a grand jury report that said Sandusky had sexually assaulted a series of boys over more than a decade. Many of the alleged assaults occurred on Penn State's campus, where Sandusky maintained an office as an emeritus professor.

Much of the criticism aimed at the university can be traced to its handling of an alleged 2002 campus assault by Sandusky. In that case, a graduate coaching assistant said he had seen Sandusky sodomizing a boy of about 10 in a locker room shower.

The graduate assistant reported the matter the next day to Paterno, who subsequently notified the university's athletic director, Tim Curley. Curley and Gary Schultz, vice president for finance and business, investigated the matter and concluded there was no need to notify law enforcement. They downplayed its significance to Spanier, who accepted their appraisal and let the matter drop.

Prosecutors have charged Curley and Schultz with covering up the alleged assault by Sandusky and lying about it to authorities.

Though not charged with any crimes, Paterno and Spanier have been tainted by their failure to take sterner action. Neither notified law enforcement.

The graduate coaching assistant who reported the alleged assault - Mike McQueary - has emerged as a witness in the case against Curley and Schultz. Now a receivers coach for the team, McQueary was put on administrative leave Friday after the university reported he had become a target of threats.

"It became clear that Coach McQueary could not function in this role under these circumstances," Erickson said Friday.

Frazier takes on the crucial investigation job at the most tumultuous time in Penn State history - and brings to it not just a lawyer's discerning eye but a compelling personal story.

He is the son of a North Philadelphia janitor, raised in the roughest of neighborhoods, who rose through the ranks at Merck.

As Merck's general counsel, Frazier led the company's defense of more than 5,000 lawsuits brought by users of Vioxx, a painkiller that was found to raise the risk of heart attack and stroke. The potential legal costs of the drug were estimated in the billions of dollars.

He attended Northeast High School and Penn State before earning a law degree from Harvard.

Frazier once told The Inquirer that "by the accident of geography, my father's house was at 18th and Diamond Streets," but "the standards of my father's house were universal in that he believed in hard work and the importance of education."

At Thursday morning's board meeting, Erickson was met with a standing ovation when he strode to the lectern, where he promised to work to restore the university's integrity.

"I accept this role under circumstances that I never could have imagined," he said. "My heart aches for the victims and their families."

For Penn State, he said, "healing cannot occur until we understand how responsibilities to these children failed."