Penn State’s school board is saying legendary football coach Joe Paterno was fired for lack of action. He told his bosses about the Sandusky allegations, but they say that was all he did. Child abuse allegations are serious, and so I think that we need a checklist of what people need to do. Is that the one case where we need to be checking in on our superiors 24/7 that they follow through? Usually we are not our boss’s boss, but since child abuse cases are awful, is that the one case where a factory worker can totally leapfrog a C.E.O. and go directly to the cops to report it? Should a boss know about it before cops? Should a joint meeting between cops and bosses be called? I want some child advocacy group to get a nationwide checklist approved, so that no one else can be fired like JoePa was. We all need a checklist that we can follow if this kind of stuff is ever reported to us. Do we mention it to our bosses first, or go straight to cops? Would a boss rather hear it first? Should we close our boss’s door when we’re talking to him, and have our boss use speakerphone so we can both dialogue with cops at the same time? How should JoePa have gone about stuff? Should graduate assistant Mike McQueary have talked to the cops instead of his dad and JoePa after all this happened? After he told his bosses, what should his action have been? I think a national checklist that everyone can follow would be good. We need to be united as a nation, and even our world, in how we handle reports and allegations against our most precious citizens, the children! I think if everyone was told to follow, to a “T”, the same authorities-approved plan, then people could say, in evaluating employees, “Did he/she follow this plan for reporting abuse?”, and grey areas would be avoided!
