May no act of ours bring shame

Today I found myself thinking about an elective I took at a community college about the Holocaust. It was less a history class than a course focusing on the philosophy of evil, for lack of a better term - why seemingly good people do terrible things. We read about the Kitty Genovese case, and the theory that people will be less likely to respond to cries for help if they think others are around to do so instead. We looked at the Milgram Experiment, which found that people will continue to administer progressively more intense electric shocks to another person as long as someone who appears to be in authority tells them it's okay. In modern times, there's plenty of anecdotal and scholarly evidence to show that, under the right circumstances, most people are capable of anything.

I hope there's a class like this at Penn State. It looks like they could use it.

Just before I went to bed last night, Penn State's Board of Trustees finally fired both the university's president and head football coach Joe Paterno. As I wrote last night, I think it was the right decision. A few thousand Penn State undergrads felt otherwise, and spent the evening pulling down light poles, overturning news vans and getting appropriately pepper-sprayed. They weren't demonstrating on behalf of the (at least) eight alleged victims, or out of anger at the coaches and administrators who swept this under the rug from (at least) 15 years. No, they rioted over a football coach getting fired. I'd like to give some leeway to the kids here, given what a bubble college life can be. I seriously hope the students quoted in this story, in particular, grow up at some point. "WE ARE... over-privileged children* with no perspective whatsoever!"

*Though... aren't current Penn State students the same age now as some of the victims would be? You'd think THAT would be a bit of a reality check.

Anyway, I continue to read comments from Paterno supporters (including in the above linked story) that he's being made a scapegoat, he did everything he should've, etc. Pardon me, but that's BS. Let's walk through this one, shall we? (A lot of this is drawn from the grand jury summary released this week. Read it only if you have a strong stomach.)

Backstory: there were allegations against Jerry Sandusky in 1998 serious enough for the local DA to look at them. At least one public school principal banned Sandusky from his campus. A Penn State janitor reported walking in on Sandusky and a young boy, and was so upset at what he saw that his coworkers feared he'd have a heart attack.

So, when a graduate assistant coach (widely reported to be current Penn State assistant Mike McQueary) comes to Paterno back in 2002 and tells him that, the night before, he walked into the shower room and saw Sandusky committing anal rape on a boy he estimated to be 10 years old, it wasn't like this was something out of the blue. Some have speculated today that the 1998 incident is what led Sandusky to retire abruptly in 1999. Also, McQueary played for both JoePa and Sandusky, and grew up in State College. This is not some campus rumor drifting up the ladder; it's an insider reporting what he saw with his own eyes.

It's not clear how much detail the assistant/McQueary went into with Paterno. An uncomfortable chat with the man who holds your professional future in his hands about his colleague of 30 years is not, after all, sworn testimony. But, here's the thing. Even if all McQueary said that day was "I saw Sandusky naked with a kid in the shower," who on earth would not say, "Elaborate, please?" Either Paterno blew off what he was hearing, or he deliberately stuck his fingers in his ears. Then he did the bare minimum of ass-covering by passing the report to his athletic director, the vp, the president, etc. "May no act of ours bring shame," indeed.

No, Paterno didn't molest anyone, but still he may have broken the law. Pennsylvania is a state that requires reports of sexual abuse of children to be reported to law enforcement. It's a misdemeanor no to do so, but still. More seriously, the federal Clery Act requires every college to publish an annual report of crimes taking place on campus, even those that are never prosecuted. If Penn State's top administrators knew about a credible allegation and did not investigate it even through campus channels, this university could be in very serious trouble. Like, six-figure fines and potentially losing federal financial aid trouble. THAT is why these men lost their jobs.

But, I think a huge part of why this has become such a major story is that this happened at Penn State, and not, say Miami or Ohio State or USC. Penn State fans can take pride at their athlete graduation rate and the fact that they've had no NCAA violations during Paterno's tenure. But narratives matter. As grotesque as the charges against Sandusky are, what's really feeding the widespread fascination and/or shock with this case is the troubling reality that it was JoePa, the "win with honor" paragon of integrity, who failed utterly when it counted. The great coach who inspired generations, who recruited "clean" kids and would've cut one of his players in a heartbeat for doing a tenth of what Sandusky is accused of - when it mattered, when honor and courage and fortitude weren't just vocabulary words for a pre-game pep talk but tools that might've saved an innocent child from the worst harm there is - Paterno choked.

I have no doubt that Paterno is a good man. So were the people who went to bed that night in 1964 while Kitty Genovese bled to death outside. If you won't help them - and I do mean you personally - then who will?

Yes, it's sad that Paterno's legendary coaching career will end like this. And by "like this," I mean, "by the revelation that he covered for his friend the serial child rapist," not "OMG the media sucks so hard, bro."