Author: Jack McHenry
For nearly half a century, the Penn State football team was one of the most successful in the country. Under coach Joe Paterno, who began his tenure at Penn State in 1966, the program flourished into a powerhouse, winning two national championships, three Big Ten Championships, and 24 bowl games. Paterno became college football royalty, and Penn State University and State College, Pennsylvania became his kingdom. Indeed, the program at Penn State seemed to possess unusually good character. The academic track record of Penn State football players remained significantly higher than the national average and among the highest for elite programs. Paterno melded academics and athletics in a way that was mutually beneficial to both spheres, including donating over four million dollars of his own money to the university, most of which went to academic causes. These actions defined a kind of Penn State exceptionalism that made State College into a Camelot—an image Jerry Sandusky swiftly destroyed when he was officially indicted on Nov. 4 for sexually abusing children over the last several decades.
The Penn State scandal is unique in its scope and magnitude. The impact stretches far beyond the deplorable crimes of Jerry Sandusky; it reflects the failure of an administration and football program to live up to the high moral character that defined it. Joe Paterno cultivated his image as ethical leader for over four decades, but had his work and image undone when he failed to report and follow up on Sandusky’s crimes.
The timeline of Sandusky’s career and alleged sex abuse is important to understanding Paterno’s own moral failures. Sandusky coached at Penn State from 1969 until 1999, when he mysteriously stepped down from his position as defensive coordinator. He continued to maintain a strong presence in State College through his Second Mile charity, a football camp for under-privileged children that provided other supportive services. After his indictment, it was revealed through a grand jury report that Sandusky had sexually abused eight boys repeatedly from 1994 to 2009, and was even investigated in 1998 by police for sexual abuse. Penn State knew that Sandusky had been investigated, but if they took any action it was to quietly make him resign. This had little effect on his criminal activity and demonstrated very little disciplinary action on the part of the university because Sandusky kept an office on campus and continued to run his football camp, where he was in constant interaction with numerous young boys. It would seem that given the man’s track record, the university would restrict his access to young children, or at least further investigate, but neither action was taken. Some kind of quiet, forced resignation was probably the route Penn State went for disciplining Sandusky, and it speaks volumes about how influential the football program is, and how it corrupted the better judgement of university officials just to keep the shining Penn State image clean.
The event that was most indicative of Penn States’s failure to properly deal with Sandusky’s criminal actions was demonstrated in 2002, when then graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky subjecting a 10 year old to explicit sexual acts in the Penn State showers. McQueary reported the incident to Paterno, who informed athletic director Tim Curley. Curley, with the approval of Penn State president Graham Spanier, decided that the proper course of action would be to restrict Sandusky from bringing Second Mile kids to the football building. That was the only action taken. All major authority figures that had responsibility to act in this situation, Paterno, Curley, and Spanier, failed to take proper action. In an effort to minimize the profile of criminal activity at Penn State and tarnish the image of the football program and the university, these men essentially created conditions for Sandusky’s crimes to occur, and that is a substantial moral failure on their part. Paterno had a reputation for being tireless in checking on how his players were performing in their classes, constantly following up on professors to make sure his players were succeeding in the classroom. No such action was taken, however, when it came to see if the sexual assault of a 10 year old in the showers had been dealt with properly. Along with Curley and Spanier, Paterno’s lack of initiative to pursue proper justice for Sandusky’s crimes demonstrates a moral failure to help the child victim and properly investigate Sandusky.
Shortly following Sandusky’s indictment, Penn State took drastic actions. The Board of Trustees fired Paterno and Spanier, the university’s president. The entire campus and surrounding community were shaken to the core as the entire university went into something that resembled a state of mourning following the ending of Paterno’s career and even prompted a few thousand students to riot. From the disgusting crimes of Sandusky to the firing of Paterno, the walls of Camelot have crumbled.
The moral failure of leaders at Penn State to sacrifice their image and pursue Sandusky’s crimes caused young children irreversible damage. Perhaps the greatest irony in this continual unraveling of Penn State is how these crimes, which occurred in the realm of athletics, were able to ravage the university and community as a whole, proving that Paterno’s melding of athletics and academics at Penn State was effective to a fault. Furthermore, the football program had become intertwined with the fabric of the university’s own identity, so the scandal the destroyed the football teams image and identity also greatly damaged the university’s image and identity. Paterno had to be held responsible for his actions, or lack there of, in the Sandusky scandal. While he did not commit the crimes, he was in a position of authority where he could have done much more to prevent them. Paterno created an image of character and integrity at Penn State that he backed up with his actions, such as the aforementioned commitment to bettering academics at Penn State. His actions when it came to Sandusky, however, lacked that character he embodied for his program, and thus Paterno had a major role in the undoing of the image and culture he promoted at Penn State since the 1960’s.
Jack McHenry is a senior DWA major. He can be reached at mchenry@oxy.edu
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