Tucked into his pocket for several years now, the chair of St. Bonaventure University's Trustees, Bill Swan, keeps over his heart a pamphlet of Franciscan Values, a list of life lessons printed by order of friars founding the school. As his alma mater turned into a national punch line, its credibility in crisis, there were these words that had come out of president Robert Wickenheiser's mouth that left Swan blind with rage.

	Jan van Breda Kolff

	Robert Wickenheiser

"It was the Franciscan thing to do."

So, there was Swan fighting back tears on the telephone Monday morning, remembering the way the school's deposed president had turned those vows into a shield to justify his part in a conspiracy to ramrod an ineligible basketball player into school, inspiring a scandal that has brought St. Bonaventure to its knees.

"What we're saying is, 'How dare you?' How dare anybody in the administration, any leader, blasphemy these values, this marvelous rep we have?," Swan said from his Buffalo, N.Y., office. "To say that (admitting Jamil Terrell), 'It was the Franciscan thing to do,' ... How dare you say that? That's not what Franciscanism is about.

"We all know what the intent was. ... And we know what had to be done."

The trustees didn't just start to save St. Bonaventure's membership to the Atlantic 10 Conference with the ousting of Wickenheiser as president Sunday, with the suspensions of Jan van Breda Kolff and the president's son, assistant coach Kort Wickenheiser, and the refusal to renew athletic director Gothard Lane's contract. They also started to soothe the school's aching soul. When officials introduced respected religious scholar Father Dominic Monti, O.F.M., as the interim president at a school rally on Sunday night at the Reilly Center, students delivered the standing ovation that they couldn't on Saturday afternoon for the forfeited basketball game to Dayton.

For now, St. Bonaventure and its trustees have an unmistakable mission: take back the school. This scandal could get darker before it gets better, but the truth needs to get out. All of it. St. Bonaventure has hired Richard Hilliard, an Indianapolis law firm partner and a former NCAA enforcement director, to investigate the program, including an "irregularity involving the grade record of an athlete, and a change in that record." That athlete reportedly is Terrell, the same player Wickenheiser unscrupulously admitted to the school with a welding certificate instead of the required associate's degree.

"We're hoping this action is an indication that we're bigger than any individuals, that this isn't the downfall of Franciscan values but the egregious mistakes of a few people," Swan said. "We have a lot of apologies to make. What our people did was wrong. We had a lack of leadership in a time of crisis."

Once St. Bonaventure made its move to rid itself of these corruptive co-conspirators, Wickenheiser and van Breda Kolff, there is no reason it should be thrown out of the Atlantic 10. The Bonnies have maintained a good, clean program for a long time, and have had no trouble with the NCAA since sanctions in 1968. They have an 87 percent graduation rate for student-athletes over the past NCAA cycle. They are deserving of a second chance.

And let's understand something else: In a conference of presidents who have been responsible for hiring Jim Harrick, Tom Penders and John Calipari in recent years, they can spare everyone the indignation of bringing up the expulsion issue.

If St. Bonaventure goes, what happens when everything on the Harrick years come tumbling out of Rhode Island's investigation? They have to go, too, right? Swan planned to call Atlantic 10 commissioner Linda Bruno on Monday to discuss the trustees' vision and could even request a chance to address the Atlantic 10 athletics directors at the conference tournament in Dayton on Wednesday. Bruno isn't talking until the president's meeting on April 1, but one conference official said: "What the (St. Bonaventure trustees) did is a good first step."

The university presidents were right to ban the Bonnies from the 2003 conference tournament, but there is no way the athletics directors want to throw the Bonnies out of the Atlantic 10. For the A.D.'s, the precedent is too frightening.

"I really hope that our swiftness and severity of action sends a strong message to Linda Bruno and the Atlantic 10 that we mean business here at this university," Swan said. "One hundred and forty-five years is going to stand tall, and I will beat my chest as much as we have to apologize for the transgressions here, for the lack of leadership shown."

Among those apologies, Swan will make a noble one Monday night on campus in Olean, saying sorry to the St. Bonaventure basketball players for the school letting them down. This is the saddest part of this story, the way these players refusing to finish the season turned into a greater affront to the national consciousness than a president perpetrating academic fraud. "You can chastise the kids for doing what they did, but the leadership was lacking in a time of need," Swan said. "We confused the kids."

As Dale Tepas, a 1971 graduate member of the Bonnies Final Four team in 1970, said: "Kids are always going to vote with their hearts, not their heads. And maybe not vote the right way. They needed someone to guide them. And it wasn't there."

Which gets back to the work of the trustees now, bringing leadership back to the university, back to athletics, back to men's basketball. Lane's contract runs out in May. He's gone. Van Breda Kolff will never coach there again, but it could still cost the school several hundred thousand dollars to buy out the final four years of his contract. Whatever the cost, he can't leave fast enough for the university community, one that wished Lane never chose him over Siena coach Rob Lanier two years ago.

Where the Bonnies need to start within athletics is bringing back George Mason associate A.D. Kevin McNamee -- a past Hall of Fame swim coach and associate A.D. -- as its athletics director. At St. Bonaventure, too many people measure loyalty by singing the alma mater as the school burns down, as opposed to telling the painful truth of its realities.

High-ranking St. Bonaventure officials were discussing McNamee on Monday, and they should pick up the phone and make the call to him. Sources said his name is on top of the early search list that includes former basketball coach Jim Satalin and ex-Atlantic 10 commissioner Ron Bertovich. They're terrific names, but McNamee is needed now. His integrity is unimpeachable. He's the one man with the credibility to look at the Bona' Nation in the eye and insist things will change under his watch.

"I'm a believer that in any good business, or athletics, you continually try to bring in new blood with new ideas," Tepas said. "But what we know now is that we have to bring some tradition back to the university, rebuild the trust with the alumni. And I don't think a qualified individual from the outside will be able to make the same kind of impact as a qualified Bonaventure alumn."

After the anger turned to introspection in this scandal, something interesting happened with alumni. They thought long and hard about what they want the school to represent, what they wanted St. Bonaventure to be, and the message to the university was clear: Get rid of the corruption. Get people invested in the school the way they're invested in it. Get St. Bonaventure people back running St. Bonaventure.

For now, Lanier isn't leaving Siena for St. Bonaventure. It just isn't happening. Two years ago, it had the chance, but Wickenheiser and Lane obliterated it. Lanier promised Siena several years on the job, and the way he's winning there, his next job is in the Big East. It isn't back at his alma mater. Which leaves another alumnus, Canisius coach Mike MacDonald, who despite fewer victories due to devastating injuries the past two seasons won 20 games and made it to the MAAC championship in 2001. There is a growing ground swell of support for his candidacy.

"We're not as so worried about his record the past couple years," one influential alumnus said, "as we're desperate for his character in the program now."

This is the way the Bonnies fight back now, the way they start to take back the school from a president and a basketball coach who could cost St. Bonaventure its good name -- just not its spirit, its soul, its vow to never let this happen again.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj@aol.com.