THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN’S MAIN CAMPUS IS SITUATED ON TREATY 6 TERRITORY AND THE HOMELAND OF THE MÉTIS.
THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN’S MAIN CAMPUS IS SITUATED ON TREATY 6 TERRITORY AND THE HOMELAND OF THE MÉTIS.
SARAH PETZ
The Manitoban (University of Manitoba)
Penn State head coach Joe Paterno leads his squad onto the field.
The details of the scandal are disturbing, to say the least. Former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been charged with 40 counts related to the sexual abuse of boys he met through his charitable organization, Second Mile — a charity that will likely close in the wake of the scandal. A grand jury report shows that reported incidents go back over a decade and that many of them allegedly occurred in Penn State locker rooms and showers.
According to the report, several witnesses came forward with reports of Sandusky’s sexual abuse. In 2000, a janitor who allegedly witnessed Sandusky performing oral sex on a ten-year-old boy in the showers reported the incident to his supervisor, who did not report the incident to officials. In 2002, then-graduate assistant and current assistant coach Mike McQueary informed Paterno that he claimed he saw Sandusky raping another ten-year-old boy in the Penn State Lasch Football building. Paterno informed university administrators. What recourse was taken? McQueary was told that Sandusky was barred from bringing children onto campus.
No investigation began until 2009, after another victim reported that he was sexually abused by Sandusky.
Adding to the list of people who were involved in this scandal are Tim Curley, the university’s athletic director, and Gary Schultz, the university’s senior vice-president for finance and business. They have been charged with perjury and failing to report what they knew of the allegations.
As a student, I would be outraged to learn that the leaders of my institution protected an alleged sexual predator for years, during which time Sandusky is said to have abused upward of 15 children (though only eight have laid charges). But what did thousands of Penn State students take to the streets for? Not to voice their outrage over the blatant, shameful failure to do anything to protect these boys, but to parade and chant in support of Paterno.
Arguably the most successful college football coach in U.S. history, Paterno was an institution at a school probably better known for its football program than its academics. Last year, the school’s football program brought in over US $70 million in revenue. As Buzz Bissinger, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Friday Night Lights, pointed out in his biting column for the Daily Beast, Paterno had “instant credibility” and arguably had more influence than university officials themselves. This sentiment was demonstrated in his salary for 2009, which clocked in at over US $1 million, higher than that of the university’s president. It perhaps gives some explanation as to why students were so quick to defend their beloved coach. Football is more than a game for Penn State: it’s part of their identity.
Yet if he really was the father figure to Penn State that everyone describes him as, why didn’t he act like one when it really counted? According to the allegations, he had a chance to put a stop to Sandusky’s alleged abuse, and he didn’t. “When he had a chance to be a man … he should have sat down with that graduate assistant, who was an eyewitness to brutal sodomy and said, ‘Son, either you’re going to the police or, if you’re scared, I’ll go with you,’” Bissinger passionately argued on CBC Television. But instead, Paterno passed along information to university officials, and that’s it.
In his column, Bissinger argues that this case is reflective of college football culture as a whole. “Totally disconnected from the academic experience, they are insulated kingdoms with their own rules and reigns of terror because of the money they make, trading in illegal recruiting and illegal gifts and illegal favors, and now, thanks to Penn State, alleged sexual abuse of children by a former coach who must have assumed he would always be protected,” he writes.
This case goes so much further than Paterno, and it’s maddening that there has been so much focus on the fall of his legendary career when all evidence suggests that Penn State coaching staff and university officials did nothing to stop an alleged sexual predator in their institution. Yet I seem to be reading editorial after editorial on how incredible his coaching was, and not on this central issue of the entire scandal. Worse still, I’ve had to watch students of Penn State choose to defend a football coach rather than victims of abuse.
You don’t need to know much about college football to know that this is absolutely disgraceful.
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Photo: PennStateLive/Flickr