Over the past several days, the national news has been dominated by the issuance of an investigative report about the Penn State child sexual abuse scandal, a topic I previously addressed here. The report makes clear that football coach Joe Paterno, university president Graham Spanier, and other university leaders were aware of the problem and failed to report it to authorities. To Penn State’s credit, it commissioned and released the report that will surely be Exhibit A in many civil suits against it, and that will likely add fuel to the criminal prosecutions of some of its top administrators. Meanwhile, there have been quite a few interesting developments here in North Carolina: 1. The News and Observer reports here that “[t]he homicide rate rose nearly 6 percent in North Carolina last year, but the overall crime rate was the lowest since 1977.” The overall trend is in keeping with a marked reduction in the crime rate nationwide over the past several decades. 2. Also in the News and Observer this week was a piece by Judge Joe John, the director of the State Crime Lab. The op-ed is essentially a response to the paper’s previous story, noted here, reporting that about 25 lab employees had failed certification exams but that their failures had not been promptly disclosed to prosecutors or to defense attorneys. Judge John states that (1) 87 percent of lab employees are certified, even though (2) employees aren’t required to be certified until next year and (3) certification isn’t [...]
Faculty Coordinators
