PSU Completes Half Of Freeh Report Recommendations

STATE COLLEGE, CENTRE COUNTY - Section 5 of Louis Freeh's report recommendations focuses strictly on the athletic department, an obvious focal point since many of the issues stemmed from there. The school's completed 11 of 12 recommendations. From making sure that "...the Athletic Compliance Officer has oversight of the entire program", to determining who's permitted to use Penn State athletic facilities. David Gray, Penn State's Senior Vice President for Business and Finance says that's a big change.

"They used to have free access to those facilities but now obviously it's much more constrained to students, faculty and staff."

 Gray says the university has tackled many issues over the past four months.

"We have about 53 of the 119 recommendations that are either substantially complete, complete, or on going by their very nature."

The school requires mandatory conduct abuse training for its volunteers and employees. It's expanded Board of Trustees Committees to handle legal and audit risks.

"This is not something that we want it to be a checkbox exercise and you know, we're done with it, were taking these things to heart..."

Gray says there are still half of the bigger, more complex recommendations left. Things like hiring a Director of University Compliance, creating a new Human Resources information system that's computer based, and changing the university's culture.

"...that's not something you can snap your fingers and you're done within a week or two... Some of these things are going to take a fairly lengthy period of time to do."

Gray says that the trials of former Penn State officials haven't stalled their progress. He Adds they expect all 119 recommendations to be underway by May or June, and completed by December of 2013.