Penn State General Counsel Steps Down, Leaving Scandal Behind

This week, Penn State University announced that Cynthia Baldwin, its first general counsel, is stepping down. She had held the position of PSU GC, vice president, and chief legal officer since January 2010.

According to a statement posted on the university’s Penn State Live site:

When Cynthia Baldwin accepted the position of full-time vice president, general counsel, and chief legal officer for Penn State in January 2010, it was with the understanding that she would serve in a transitional role to help establish and organize the office, manage Penn State’s legal function, and pave the way for a permanent general counsel to be hired following a national search. . . Baldwin said the time has come for her to transition. The office has been up and running for some time now, and is ready to be taken over by a permanent general counsel.

Nowhere in the statement is any mention of the ongoing legal imbroglio involving allegations of sexual abuse against a member of the PSU football team’s coaching staff, Jerry Sandusky. The Centre Daily Times, in fact, reports that “Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said the timing of the transition is unrelated to the fallout from the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal that is embroiling the university.”

Baldwin has, of course, been very much involved in the university’s response to the scandal, which has already led to longtime head coach Joe Paterno and PSU president Graham Spanier losing their jobs. The Philadelphia Business Journal reports, “As the school’s chief legal officer, Baldwin counseled top officials when two Penn State administrators, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, testified a year ago before a grand jury investigating retired assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who was arrested in November and charged with 50 counts of child sex abuse.”

According to PSU, Baldwin put together a fully staffed legal department during her two-year term as general counsel, describing it as “a very busy unit, with two attorneys, a paralegal and an administrative assistant at University Park, and two attorneys and a paralegal based at Penn State Hershey.”

Given that the university is facing what the Business Journal describes as “significant liability in civil cases that will no doubt be brought forth by the alleged victims in the Sandusky abuse accusations and the school’s response,” the pace will only be accelerating for the department that Baldwin has assembled and the successor who will eventually take her place.