In the nature of taking a couple steps forward and a million steps back, Penn State University chose to honor former head football coach Joe Paterno (1966-2012), in the midst of attempting to recover from Jerry Sandusky’s child abuse scandal on the 50th anniversary of Paterno’s first game as coach. On Sept. 17th during a home game against Temple University, Penn State moved forward in honoring deceased Paterno’s 46 seasons with the Nittany Lions despite being fired in 2011 for his involvement in a child sex abuse scandal centered around his assistant coach, Sandusky.
Sandusky, who is now serving a 30 to 60 year sentence, was convicted of 52 counts of sexual abuse on campus to young boys from 1994 to 2009. He would use the award winning organization he created and ran with Paterno to provide care for foster care children, The Second Mile, to scope out his next victims. The boys were between the ages of eight and 12 years old. Paterno, who died in Jan. of 2012, allegedly knew about the abuse as early as 1976, and is proven to know since the 1990’s, took part in keeping Sandusky’s actions in the dark.
Despite the negative response that was heard about Penn State’s choice to honor Paterno, they did so anyway.
“I think a lot of people who come from Penn State families are proud of Joe Paterno and the Paterno family is very dear to many of them— but I know many people are upset about Joe Paterno’s role in the Sandusky scandal,” 2016 Penn State graduate, Amanda Simon said. “I myself am part of the group who thinks this [honoring Paterno] was an unwise decision. There are many who think he deserves some kind of recognition, especially after he passed away, but I think it would’ve been much wiser, to just let it be.”
Paterno’s family claims that the media aimed to shame Paterno and jumped on the story in hopes to tarnish his name. “He was an icon at Penn State,” 1988 Penn State graduate, Cheri Wagner said. “The sanctions against him and the University were above and beyond anything that should have been done. I am embarrassed by Jerry Sandusky, although I feel his actions are all on him. I am asked about it because I am an alum, but it gives me the opportunity to talk about the Joe Paterno we all loved, and the positive influence he had on students and players alike.”
Allegedly, a man that came forth as a victim of Sandusky’s back in 1976 claimed under sworn opposition that he approached Paterno about the abuse and was rebuffed by him. The same victim claimed he was even paid a settlement by Penn State.
As of today, Penn State representatives do not respond when asked about the honoring of Paterno and refer back to their initial press release back in 2011 when speaking about the scandal.
“As an alum, I believe that the great majority know all the good Joe did for the university in general and the sports programs specifically, and that he should be honored for his many contributions.” Wagner said.
Despite the negative response that was heard about Penn State’s choice to honor Paterno, they did so anyway.
“Half of the people think that it was tragic but some innocent people got mixed up in it and it wasn’t their fault, and some people are still enraged about it and are trying to fight the spread of sports culture around campus,” Amanda Simon said, “the whole time I’m sitting here asking how could an institution put such an emphasis on sports culture that something like this could happen in the first place?”
How this article passed an editorial review is beyond me.
Wesley Dodd,
Penn State has healed fine. Penn State started healing when we realized that going by public opinion is worthless.
You talk about not deserving to heal, as if all of PSU is to blame. Nobody but Sandusky has been convicted of anything.
Tone-deaf? Now you’re just tossing out buzzwords from the watered-down media. Honoring a man never even charged with a crime isn’t tone-deaf to anyone, including victims of crimes. Honoring people that follow the law, as Paterno did, is simply just honoring the law. Whatever your opinion of Paterno, he was a law-abiding person. That’s not up for debate. He did many great things and was one of the greatest coaches ever, so honoring him at a football game where he become one of the greatest ever is always appropriate.
You’re right. The man has been dead for years, and you’re here getting all triggered by a small commencement ceremony about a man never ever charged with a crime and saying PSU doesn’t deserve to heal unless it stops bringing him up. You seem to be the one rolling in the past.
“We need to remember current day heroes who are making a difference, instead on continuing to divide and alienate the public to Penn State’s unwillingness to accept accountability for the failures of the past.”
There are many current day heroes, and Penn State does that as well with military appreciation day, THON, etc…
The second half is where you spin off into ridiculousness again. Accountability for failures? Whose failure exactly? See, you don’t want any “healing”. You want all of Penn State to forever say, “We caused this an allowed this. This was all our fault.” Which is nonsense, obviously. You have nobody in the program even charged with anything. You have nobody in the entire thing even convicted of anything except Sandusky. The 3 administrators facing any charges, the ONLY people facing any charges, have had all the major charges dropped and the rest appear on the way to being dropped.
You represent the problem. The idea of “healing” in your mind is for everyone at PSU to accept the blame and guilt for Sandusky, as you think they deserve it. That is nonsense and not based in reality. Once you get to a point that you accept this was just one criminal and you blame him and not the entire school(ya know, reality), then we’ll be on the same page about moving forward.
If you are going to blame the entire school and think holding the entire school accountable is needed for “healing”, honor Paterno anyway (a man never even charged with a crime) and you’re frustrated we tell you to take a hike, then you should get used to that frustration. We’re never giving in to the nonsense you and the media are selling.
Penn State will never begin to heal and will never deserve to heal, until they leave this past in the past, unless they have specific criminal prosecutions that can make a difference. I don’t see any point of tone-deaf alumni to bring up Joe Paterno in 2016. The man has been dead for years. Enough already. We need to remember current day heroes who are making a difference, instead on continuing to divide and alienate the public to Penn State’s unwillingness to accept accountability for the failures of the past.
Some of this just seems fabricated. Paterno never helped run Sandusky’s Second Mile charity. The charity also did not primarily “provide care for foster care children.” Many of Sandusky’s victims were in single parent families.
The real failure in the Sandusky scandal was by the two child protection agencies who failed to detect Sandusky abusing boys right under their noses for over 30 years while they certified Sandusky as a fit foster parent, a fit adoptive parent and a fit mentor to fatherless boys.
Sandusky should have been stopped in 1998 when he admitted to bear hugging boys in the shower. Yet the police, DA and two child protection agencies took no precautions to protect vulnerable boys from Sandusky.
So I read your article. Lets start with the factual errors. To the best of my knowledge Paterno had nothing to do with Second Mile and even asked the AD to have them removed from what were facilities for the adult Football Players.
Paterno never saw anything. Everything that was relayed to him (at least based on all statements I have seen) was second hand. When an adult (His assistant coach reported it), he made sure the incident was reported to the AD and to the campus police force.
Re: the following:
Allegedly, a man that came forth as a victim of Sandusky’s back in 1976 claimed under sworn opposition that he approached Paterno about the abuse and was rebuffed by him. The same victim claimed he was even paid a settlement by Penn State.
This person came forward (as far as I know) AFTER the entire Sanduski thing was widely reported. I have to wonder if there was a financial reason for this as this person was never part of the criminal case etc. Also what is “Sworn Opposition” I am not familiar with that legal term.
A man’s life has been trashed without the ability to respond. I would ask that folks that report on this actually do detailed fact checking rather just reconstituting the sloppy work of others with sloppy work of their own.
And please don’t try to cite the Freeh report. He has already had to admit under oath that it was an opinion piece.