But the scandal** is** affecting the football program, and the prestige of the school. If they weren’t concerned with the public image of the scandal, what would be the motive for covering it up and trying to handle it internally in order to avoid public scrutiny?
ETA: In response to RNATB
The scandal is. I don’t think it would have it had been handled properly in the first place. Nobody would hold it against Penn State that they used to employ a child rapist and reported it to the proper authorities. If the school knew about Sandusky earlier on - say, when he was actually coaching - they would certainly have a motivation to cover it up, but nothing in the Freeh report suggests that, as far as I can tell.
I think the actual motive is what I suggested above - Joe Pa being a dick and putting his friend over the welfare of children.
I forgot to make my point about this quote. It utterly destroys the rationale that Penn State apologists have been using since the start of the scandal – that Curley and the other senior Penn officials were unsure what actually happened, and wanted to investigate the situation before involving law enforcement. Sandusky may have offered the name confident that the child would back up his story, but Curley didn’t want to investigate even that much. He took Sandusky at his word, and made certain that was the end of the investigation. Because without the child’s name, there were no other avenues of investigation open.
That doesn’t refute what I was saying earlier though. The goal of the coverup was to protect the program. Whether or not reporting him earlier on would have prevented the scandal is irrelevant, they went with “coverup”, for the purpose of protecting the reputation of the school and the athletic program, which would give the NCAA latitude to punish them according to the rules of their governing body. What Paterno did didn’t occur in a vacuum, it occurred with the assistance of the administration of the school. So it doesn’t matter if it was Paterno’s goal to “protect his friend”, the school administration must have felt either a strong loyalty to Paterno to follow his wishes on the matter, or they were personally concerned with how the report would make the school and/or athletic program appear to the public at large.
I hear Penn State is redoing the showers. Perhaps they are removing all the paper towel tubes?
Okay, I can buy that. I still don’t think NCAA sanctions are appropriate, but I am no longer opposed to them.
And yet, after all this time, after months of investigation, a grand jury indictment, a trial resulting in a guilty verdict for 45 counts of child rape and/or molestation, and an independent investigation which identifies a deliberate conspiracy to enable a pedophile…
We still have motherfucking scumbags attempting to claim that this is all about a persecution of Joe Paterno for no discernible reason.
There comes a point where protestations of “there’s another possible reason for all of this! There’s another possible explanation that exonerates the people involved! Why won’t you consider this other possible explanation?!” reveal that the protestor is a morally repugnant vile piece of animal excrement. Arguing for the sake of arguing is certainly a fun thing to do in other situations, but in the case of a multi-year cover-up of the rape of children for the purposes of maintaining the reputation of a sports team and the supposed demi-god that ran in, it’s evidence of a gross lack of class.
Your heroes, Paterno and Penn State defenders, sacrificed the mental health and physical well-being of actual, real children in the service of football. Play “what if? what about? It could be…? Here’s a loophole that could possibly make this less disgusting…” all you want. Your pedantic hair-splitting games don’t negate the mountain of evidence.
I think this is a really important point. Willful ignorance ought not protect you: there are times when you have a positive duty to ask questions even if you would rather not hear the answers, or really, rather live in a universe where the answers are different.
It looks the statue will remain standing for now:
Also this:
And this:
I think it’s fine to leave the statue up. In fact they should add another statue – of a naked young boy standing but bent over and grabbing his ankles. Place the young boy behind Joe’s statue, so it’s clear that Joe is looking the other direction and paying no attention to the boy.
Are you talking about me? If so, you clearly didn’t read my posts.
She’s talking about Fotheringay
I assume, anyway.
Oh. Carry on, then.
Our news reported that an initial plan for changing the showers involved adding cameras to cover every single angle from the locker room entrance to the showers to the toilets. Then someone thought a bit about it… :smack:
If they made those cameras pay per view they could probably raise a bunch of money for the victims.
One of the more disgusting aspects of this was this I saw on CNN.
From: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/13/us/pennsylvania-penn-state-investigation/index.html?iref=allsearch
This “American hero” veteran decided that risking his job as a janitor was more important than saving a kid form being raped.
If I was at work and saw the CEO of my company raping a little boy, I would step right up and ensure that not one more second of abuse passed, and fuck my job and career. And my critics can whinge all they want to about “but…in this economyyyyyyyyy you gotta understand his job was important…” and I’ll reply “in ANY economy not allowing men to do evil like this is MORE important.”
Aside from the fact that were he fired for something like this he could probably flip open the phone book and stab with his finger to find any lawyer who would take his case with no money up-front to sue the University.
No.
Yes. And others.
Indeed 
Back when this scandal first broke, I posted about it on Facebook, and one of my online acquaintances who happens to be a Penn State alumna, got fairly shrieky with me about not calling it “the Penn State scandal.” She insisted that it should be “the Sandusky scandal” because he was the primary offender and it wasn’t the school’s fault, yadda yadda.
I’m not stirring that pot again, but I have to wonder how she feels about it now.
This is hardly a phenomenon unique to a certain part on Pennsylvania. I can name a dozen athletes, across a range of sports, guilty of astonishingly terrible behaviour who continued to be cheered in a dozen different cities as long as they played well.