Here’s a story from the Wall Street Journal that got far less traction than I think it deserved (“A Discipline Problem/Paterno Fought Penn State Official Over Punishment of Players“).

In an Aug. 12, 2005, email to Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier and others, Vicky Triponey, the university’s standards and conduct officer, complained that Mr. Paterno believed she should have “no interest, (or business) holding our football players accountable to our community standards. The Coach is insistent he knows best how to discipline his players…and their status as a student when they commit violations of our standards should NOT be our concern…and I think he was saying we should treat football players different from other students in this regard.”

The confrontations came to a head in 2007, according to one former school official, when six football players were charged by police for forcing their way into a campus apartment that April and beating up several students, one of them severely. That September, following a tense meeting with Mr. Paterno over the case, she resigned her post, saying at the time she left because of “philosophical differences.”

Somehow I doubt that an institutional resistance to meting out discipline against athletes was unique to Penn State. I’ve certainly heard enough scuttlebutt over the years about UH campus incidents involving athletes that were ignored, covered up, or handled outside of official channels to wonder whether this is one of the “if there’s smoke, there’s fire” situations.

I wonder whether former officials involved in investigating student conduct violations or sexual misconduct on the UH Manoa campus would have tales to tell?