Penn State an example of failings by many groups

When Joe Paterno was dismissed as the head coach of the Penn State University football team last week, the crowd that had gathered in front of his home cried out, with sincerity, "Thank you for everything, Joe." Slowly, these became chants of "PENN STATE! PENN STATE! PENN STATE!" They were students, alumnae/i and members of the community expressing their gratitude for a man who had been, for nearly 50 years, inextricable from their sense of identity. They were voicing their dissatisfaction that he had to go so soon. Then a riot broke out. Some students overturned a media van, and the police had to start using mace. There were students posturing for the news cameras, emphatically waving their index fingers as if to signal "Number one!" This was a macabre display, a blurring of misery and festival that reveals a disturbing lack of perspective in the place they call Happy Valley.

There are now three tragedies in State College, Penn. The first is the appalling child sexual abuse scandal, in which former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been charged with 40 counts of sexual abuse of young boys, including seven counts of statutory rape. According to the grand jury report, Sandusky had used his position as coordinator of a charity youth football program to lure his victims, and he committed these heinous acts in the showers and locker rooms of Penn State athletic facilities.

The second is the cover-up that bespeaks a moral cowardice on behalf of the entire chain of command at Penn State. When Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant working for the football team, found Sandusky raping a 10-year old-boy in the shower of the Penn State locker room in 2002, word of Sandusky's actions flowed upward to Paterno, then to Athletic Director Tim Curley, Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz and Penn State President Graham Spanier. Each link in the chain of command took only as much action as he was obligated to take, covering himself so that, if any word got out, no one could say he did nothing. But at no point in these proceedings did anyone experience the moral outrage or human decency to intervene, alert the authorities, go to the public, follow up to make sure the man was fired and arrested or do anything that might stop the sexual predator from striking again. Instead, they protected him, kept quiet and pretended that nothing happened.

One would hope that, at an institution so ostensibly dedicated to the well-being of youth, more people would give a damn about this, yet the only care any of these men demonstrated was loyalty to the Penn State brand and to their own image. The only thing resembling disciplinary action was the banning of Sandusky from bringing children onto Penn State's main campus and football facilities, yet, even then, Sandusky was allowed to operate a summer camp on one of Penn State's satellite campuses up until 2008. These men were complicit in Sandusky's crimes, and their silence and inaction is inexcusable and unforgivable. That is why all these men are no longer working at Penn State.

The third tragedy, then, is the aftermath to all of this. The Penn State community writ large reconfirmed how misplaced its values really are. When the Board of Trustees announced that Paterno was to be fired, effective immediately, the news was met with a chorus of boos, as though the firing was some egregious affront to the university. Some members of the community refuse to believe the allegations and regard the decision as hasty, others simply do not think the allegations constituted a fireable offense, and others just cannot see why all of this is happening to them. The bottom line is that there has been an insultingly large wave of apologists leaping to Paterno's defense saying things like "What else was he supposed to do?" and "This is just unfair."

It gets worse. There were rallies in support of Paterno before there were any rallies in support of the victims. One Penn State alumnus and booster is trying to raise money for a legal defense fund for Sandusky. McQueary, the man who initially reported what was happening in the Penn State showers and who does share in some of the blame for not doing enough to stop Sandusky, has been getting death threats, presumably because the upshot of his participation in an investigation about a sexual predator led eventually to the fall of Paterno.

In a scandal where there are clearly defined victims in need of compassion, the Penn State faithful have tried to position themselves as victims. And, like Paterno and everyone else in the chain of command, so many members of the Penn State community have turned a blind eye to Sandusky's atrocities, only to focus on football. And they have the audacity to ask why they had to fire "Joe Pa."

Perhaps this is what happens when an institution defines itself by one man, letting the man stand as an avatar for the institution's own integrity and honor. Penn State has shown that its loyalty to the ideal of Paterno is far stronger than any commitment to an objective moral code, and perhaps denial and delusion are consequences. It seems bizarre that so many people needed to be reminded that the University was bigger than Paterno, but the way in which Penn State revolved around idolatry for Paterno cannot be understated. So many people, beyond football players, went to Penn State because Paterno headed the football program there. Joe Pa was an idol, winner of two national championships and more football games than any other coach in college. He had nobly devised the "Grand Experiment," whereby big-time collegiate athletics could cohabitate with academic success, and, in turn, the graduation rate of his players was consistently towards the top of Division I athletics. He further brought to the university great prestige and revenue, for the prevailing narrative among college sports was that Paterno did things the right way. Thus, for so long, Penn State allowed Paterno to bestride that narrow world like a colossus and, moreover, believed him to be immortal and unimpeachable, a man of honor and moral character. Now, the varnish has been stripped from his hitherto vaunted program, and he has been exposed as a deeply fallible man guilty of a profound moral failure. What is so dispiriting is that, in his wake, he leaves an angry mob that has learned nothing.