Most folks know my doctoral degree is from Penn State University. If you didn’t, now you do. I used to be very proud of that degree. I worked long and hard for it under challenging circumstances, and was extremely proud that my PhD came from a world-class university that everyone recognized. As of a few days ago I ceased being proud — not of the degree, but from where it was earned.
Many of us know the mind-boggling news out of Happy Valley, that a sexual abuse scandal has existed on Penn State’s campus, specifically within its lauded football program, for the better part of two decades. I’m too sickened by the details to write them in a column, so I’ll leave things at this: if the allegations (and we all need to keep in mind that these are still allegations, not convictions in a Court of Law) against former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky are true, the moral stench from the mountains of central Pennsylvania extends from more than Sandusky, athletic director Tim Curley, and another administrator, Gary Schultz. The stench comes from legendary head coach Joe Paterno, university president Graham Spanier, assistant coach Mike McQueary, and even a couple of janitors who saw evil but didn’t speak up about it after a 2000 incident.
Let’s start from the top: Graham Spanier sold his soul to the devil to return to Penn State and become its 16th president in 1995 after a previous tenure in Happy Valley between 1973 and 1982. He had a distinguished record. He was even the founding editor of the Journal of Family Issues, ironically. I was in the final leg of my PhD work when Spanier interviewed for his current job. It didn’t take many folks long to figure out he’d do anything to get the job. Now he’s sitting in his office trying to figure out how to hang onto his job. If — and that’s the key word for the moment, given where the legal process is -- Sandusky, Curley and Schultz are convicted or cop a plea in court, Spanier’s head needs to roll, because this all took place under his watch and the buck needs to stop at the president’s desk. Spanier is no longer a spring chicken; he’s in his mid-sixties, has been an educator for nearly forty years. He’s already at the summit of his career, comfortable and possibly governing on autopilot after all these years. If Spanier has been aware of Sandusky’s alleged antics since the beginning of his presidency, his office and position is now a lot less comfortable with nowhere to hide.
Everyone knows the stellar coaching career of Joe Paterno, an icon for 46 years who put Penn State on everyone’s map. Never mind the fact that Penn State has had its share of Nobel Prize winners among the faculty; Paterno’s football program brought big-time recognition to the American masses. Cries for his graceful retirement have existed for at least a dozen years, but at approximately 85 years old, Coach Paterno continues his winning tradition. Unfortunately, his record for a clean program is now irrevocably dirtied, not by players, booster money or agents, but by one of his former assistant coaches. No matter how the legal proceedings play out, Paterno is toast and this is really the final straw for those advocating his removal. At 85 years old, he’s been through enough and served the university enough, but in some ways he’s failed at serving his university and community on a much different level. Yes, football is “God” at major universities like Penn State. I understand and appreciate the mentality because I played college football too, but for a team Penn State routinely trounces on Saturdays.
I’ve met Paterno on a few occasions during my adult life, as both a player on an opposing college team thirty years ago and as a doctoral student teaching physics courses and tutoring for the athletic department nearly twenty years ago. Each encounter was positive; he always struck me as a nice man who cared about students and academics. But football and Paterno aren’t G-d, and Paterno needs to step down at the end of the season and allow a total housecleaning of the football program and athletic department.
What about McQueary? As a graduate student assistant, meaning he was already a college graduate and legal adult, he allegedly witnessed a 2002 shower rape by Sandusky, didn’t stop it, didn’t try to interfere with it, or protect the little boy being assaulted. But he ran home to his father and reported what he saw to him and Paterno. Paterno went to Curley. We all somewhat know the rest of the story from other newspaper articles or news stories written far better than my column.
What about the janitors who saw something in 2000? What about then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar, who never filed charges against Sandusky after a reported incident and investigation in 1998?
Right now no one’s talking on the record. Sandusky is under a gag order by his own attorneys. The typical Tuesday press conference Paterno has before football games was first scheduled for this afternoon but with limits as to the scope of questions and topics Paterno would address. Then the press conference is canceled without Paterno’s approval. Then reports come out that Paterno would step down immediately. Now we hear he’ll remain head coach for the foreseeable future. Given his age and the circumstances, it’s probably wise for Paterno not to meet with the press during a media feeding frenzy. But something really isn’t passing the “smell test” as everyone relevant to this story has clammed up on the Penn State campus. Even during the Watergate scandal, President Nixon’s administration issued daily public denials until the roof caved in from the mounting evidence. Paterno needs to make a public statement because this alleged abuse took place within his football kingdom. Spanier needs to make a public statement because this alleged abuse took place on his campus. Yes, the legal process may warrant a gag order among the Penn State higher-ups, but this isn’t just any scandal or criminal case. Paterno and Spanier need to come out of hiding and speak up. Neither man has the luxury of time to circle the wagons and get their stories straight. There are too many inflamed wounds across the nation and national sports scene to give Paterno and Spanier time to work with spin doctors, not after the allegations that they’ve had at least fifteen years to prepare for the court of public opinion. I want to hear what both of them have to say. I want to believe this story doesn’t stink all the way to the top of this university. I want to allow the legal process to play itself out to completion, but today I have a hard time believing anything coming out of this particular alma mater.
Aside from the sickening details of this story, what nauseates me most is how the child protection laws in Pennsylvania theoretically allow Paterno, Spanier, McQueary, Gricar, the unnamed janitors, and any other number of adults off the hook for Sandusky’s alleged criminal behavior. What did adults know and when did they know anything? Who did they report things to? Did they report things enough to as many state agencies or entities as possible? Right now we don’t know, but we do know this: according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly, Paterno and other adults are not necessarily people of interest or under investigation because they “met the minimal criteria” with respect to the law’s obligation for reporting child abuse. I repeat that again... met the minimal criteria.
I’m sorry, but I’ve never been a big fan of meeting minimal criteria, or being “sufficiently adequate” when it comes to anything beyond how I cook my own meals and clean my home (once you use a wheelchair and walker, some standards get a little lax). To me, this is the biggest crime of the entire criminal story. Why? Because if you can get by with meeting minimal criteria with respect to protection of children, what else can we get away with meeting minimal criteria for? Protection of the old, sick, disabled, racial or ethnic minorities, members of the GLBT community, the poor, not to mention anyone else vulnerable to the whims of our cold society?
For the time being, we all have to keep this scandal in perspective because a legal process needs to play out. However, we are working with the limited knowledge that McQueary and Paterno went through their “chain of command” and supposedly did their legal parts. Okay, maybe that’s the right way to do things at a large state university with incredible layers of bureaucracy and regulations to deal with, but we all feel in our bones that something doesn’t seem right. None of us is really in a position to be the moralist on protocol, least of all me, but one’s values need to be questioned when we hear “Met the minimal criteria... Said something to somebody... Did all I needed or could do.”
Did McQueary and Paterno do enough? Shouldn’t they have gone beyond the insulated walls of Penn State’s campus? Are they able to really live with their decisions to this very day? Can either or both of these men look straight in their mirrors and say “I did enough. I did my best. I couldn’t have done anything more”? I don’t know how either man can without blinking or turning away from the mirror, do you? In a sport where players are taught to play through the final whistle, you don’t tell anyone you met any minimal criteria or did all you needed or could do until everyone sees the final scoreboard. I’m left wondering if McQueary and Paterno walked off to the proverbial locker room long before halftime of this story.
Beyond the questions about McQueary’s and Paterno’s limited actions, we must ask why Sandusky retired at age 55 in 1999 when most Penn State football fans presumed he would be Paterno’s successor, why Sandusky was retired but still allowed to hold his Second-Mile camps on Penn State property, why Sandusky was allowed to be around young boys after being investigated for the first allegations of sexual misconduct, and why Sandusky wasn’t a pariah and unwelcomed at the campus after the 2002 incident McQueary and Paterno reported. Sandusky’s been under investigation in one form or another since 1998. Maybe Penn State wanted to wash its hands of Sandusky, but it didn’t really do a thorough job in retrospect, did it? Sandusky and his alleged problems never disappeared, leaving a lasting stain.
The more we read various news articles and the grand jury report available on the internet, the more we wonder if McQueary, Paterno, Curley, Schultz and Spanier, as well as Gricar and nameless janitors and other Penn State employees, were more worried about their own jobs and careers than these alleged abuse victims. Think about it... Just who the hell is Jerry Sandusky in the grand scheme of things? Yes, he was the man who guided Penn State’s defense to great achievement on the gridiron, but was he that powerful a person that all of the aforementioned people would fear him and his retribution if they went forward to local and state authorities? Sandusky’s an alleged, and now indicted, sexual predator, and all of these people enabled him, embraced him, protected him — Sandusky, not the kids whose lives are irrevocably damaged.
What gives? Sure, we know sexual pedophilia exists all over the world. This isn’t limited to State College or rural Pennsylvania. It goes on all over the United States, independent of geography, size of town or community, socio-economic status, race or ethnicity, or religion. The Catholic Church protected pedophile priests. Orthodox Jewish yeshivas protected pedophile rabbis. I’m sure it goes on with fundamental Christians, Muslims and Hindus too. The late tennis star and humanitarian Arthur Ashe once said “everyone needs someone to beat up on.” It shouldn’t be that way but people in power and the “haves” in our Orwellian world need powerless and “have-nots” in order to thrive. Without others to demoralize life isn’t worth living for some people, because there aren’t carcasses underneath to support their self-imposed pedestal. Pedophilia isn’t love, folks; it’s cruelty and a sick need to lord over others when nothing else justifies the pedophile’s status in his or her food chain.
It seems that McQueary, Paterno, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, Gricar and others all worried about their own bacon first, the mode of self-preservation. These allegedly abuse boys were collateral damage for the greater good of Penn State and Nittany Lion football. McQueary was just starting out his coaching career, so perhaps he didn’t want to do anything to kill his career before it ever got underway. How was he rewarded? He’s now a full-time, full-fledged and well-paid assistant coach for one of the nation’s biggest football programs. What happens if and when Penn State cleans house? How toxic will McQueary be on the job market in 2012? How many college football programs will honestly be willing to interview or hire him, much less any of Paterno’s long-time assistants? Could McQueary find employment in the NFL? I’d be reluctant to hire him, given how much outreach work the NFL does with schools and children across the United States. What about the Canadian League? Ha! Pedophiles are viewed even worse north of the border. Aside from the alleged victims, McQueary is the only named witness to these alleged acts. We could ask if McQueary had everything to gain by his limited actions and being stage one of a massive cover-up, or we could ask if McQueary had an axe to grind against Sandusky and made up the whole story. Could McQueary be part of an extensive scheme with a bunch of kids to ruin Sandusky? Why don’t we know the identities of the unnamed janitors, also alleged witnesses? Either way, McQueary seems to be someone who really wanted to have a coaching career at Penn State.
Paterno was well into his coaching legacy. Why risk it over a pedophile scandal? Spanier just took over the job of his lifetime in 1995. He sure as hell didn’t want to do anything to risk losing it. Gricar’s no longer a DA. Curley’s soon to be no longer an AD. Schultz and the rest of these folks will eventually become nameless details as time goes by. But just like Nixon’s gang at the end of Watergate, the Penn State royal circle will all eventually fall on the sword in one way or another.
But what doesn’t make sense is that no one made Sandusky simply disappear for good, leave State College, Centre County and possibly the state of Pennsylvania. He was allowed to remain. This makes no sense. As a former professor, I’ve seen university employees, especially faculty, chased from campuses for lesser reasons.
If the legal process plays out and we ultimately learn that Sandusky was completely innocent, that all these allegations were concocted as a means to push him off the coaching staff, then we have to give credit to all these people who stood by Sandusky and didn’t completely excommunicate him. But too many things would have to take place in order for such a scheme to work, and I shudder to think Mike McQueary was the mastermind behind a giant hoax for the sake of getting his own foot in the door of Paterno’s coaching staff.
If the legal process plays out and we ultimately learn that Sandusky was indeed guilty of everything, and all of these other Penn State employees coordinated a massive cover-up, not only should all heads roll and house be cleaned, we need to know exactly what Mike McQueary’s motivations were after witnessing the alleged events of 2002, why he, Paterno, Curley, Spanier and all these other adults did as little as they could to rectify the situation, and more importantly, what special hold did Jerry Sandusky have on everyone else that they allowed a pedophile to continue business as usual in their presence. Shame on them all.
Just like everyone, I’m guilty of an endless list of things I’m not proud of, perhaps even ashamed of. Today I have something else to be ashamed of, my association with Penn State.
Reminder — Don’t forget my new book is available (and on sale) in both paperback and eBook (PDF) format at Lulu.com.
Philosophy of “Packer” Pedagogy:
Vince Lombardi, critical thinking and problem-based learning
