You keep trying to cast the problems at Penn State as the products of a few “criminals” or “crazies” but continuously deny the culture of football program worship that gives permission for the “crazies” and criminals to act out. I don’t really think the death threat folks are all that far outside the norm, they are probably just assholes. And they all need a shock to the system. A reset, if you will.
Right, right after we disband the Democratic Party for permitting a “culture of politics” that gives permission for the “crazies” to post death threats about W Bush, right?
Wrong. Punish the wrongdoers, leave the innocents out of it.
You keep trying to cast Penn State as some uniquely horrible thing. It’s not, it’s just another college football program, that acts in exactly the same way as any other. It’s of course totally irrelevant to you that “Paternoville” (the hardest-core of the hard core student football fans) renamed itself as a club and is donating this year’s income from their activities to children’s hospitals, and that for every student demonstrating at Paterno’s house last year there were literally 10 at the vigil for the victims, and the countless examples to show that the lunatics who are insanely pro-Paterno are not even close to the majority of Penn State’s population. No, you’re 100% sure that Penn State’s culture is unique and horrible and uniquely horrible and they MUST BE PUNISHED.
Yet again, another good reason to use the death penalty.
There’s nothing special about Penn State. Exactly. Football worship is an issue all over the place. It’s entirely conceivable that a similar scandal and subsequent coverup could happen at any other school.
Nobody hates Penn State itself. It is, however, the example that needs to be set. Nuke the football program, then turn to the other schools and say “This is what happens when you love football more than seeing child rapists be caught. Football is not that fucking important.”
Sorry it’s your school that got caught with its pants down. But Penn State isn’t special.
I would have the exact same position if it were any other college, or for that matter any other organization ever.
But that’s cool, while you’re at it let’s revoke the right of Catholics to have Mass for a few years, since some bad apples in their hierarchy covered up similar crimes. It only makes sense to punish people who didn’t do anything wrong, simply for being unknowingly associated with people who committed a heinous crime that had nothing to do with advancing the goals of the organization.
Actually, yes, I would like to see the dissolution of the Catholic Church for the crimes and coverups their people have committed. I don’t believe they should be permitted to continue to function as an organization, and I have issues with anyone who continues to claim they are an active Catholic when they know what the church has done.
Sure, the church has done good things. So have atheist groups. There is nothing intrinsically special about the Catholic Church itself that it must continue or else the good works it does will never be done.
To bring it back to this discussion, Penn State can rally around its basketball or lacrosse team instead if it likes, but the football program needs to be dissolved and started over from scratch.
If I kill a man, the fact that I give to charity is not a factor in how long my sentence will be. If the system is corrupt, then we dissolve the system, regardless of what good it might do.
Unlike banning Penn State from playing division one football for a year, that would be unconstitutional. At this point it seems like every day we get another piece of news that illustrates how screwed up the culture was at Penn State. The athletic department got deferential treatment when a staffer was suspected of abusing children. Nobody went to the police with their information. The leaders didn’t tell the board. The board had been doing whatever Spanier wanted for years. They negotiated a new contract for Paterno in secret. The chairman of the board didn’t tell the trustees that charges were coming down. The list keeps growing.
And yes, as much as it sucks in many cases, sometimes the members of a group suffer because the people in charge fucked up in a big way. That’s why the leadership of a company or a school isn’t supposed to do shit like this- because even if these four guys got fired and went to jail, it was going to be worse for Penn State than it was for them. That’s not an argument against punishing the institution - those punishments are necessary sometimes and they can serve to make sure the people in charge remember what they’re supposed to do, and other people in the group remember they are supposed to keep an eye on their leadership instead of giving up their responsibilities.
Even more than the culture at Penn State, it included the culture around Penn State too. I say this as someone who actually lived in State College some years back, so I have some idea about how the football program nests within PSU within central Pennsylvania generally.
To that point: the police, some of them–both university police and State College police–knew that something was up with Sandusky at least as early as May 1998. No doubt they didn’t have the full story, but they damn sure had something. The respective police chiefs, and Centre County DA Ray Gricar, put it away on a shelf. No charges, despite recorded evidence of naked shower embraces and genital touching. No further investigation.
Years passed, and Sandusky continued abusing one boy after another (the shower-rape victim seen by McQueary was just one of these). Central Mountain High School, for example, in the person of football coach and assistant principal Steve Turchetta, allowed Sandusky to pick up boys during school hours and take them away, with no parental knowledge. When one boy, against all odds, had the courage to tell his story, school officials discouraged his mother from taking action against Sandusky. According to the mother, school principal Karen Probst said, “Jerry has a heart of gold, he’s been around all these kids and you really should just go home and think about what this is going to do to your son and your family if you do that.”
It wasn’t just Sandusky and a couple of his buddies. It wasn’t just the football program, or certain Penn State administrators. It was, in effect, an entire extended community, steeped in Penn State football, that enabled these crimes. Sure, most people didn’t know what was going on–but when the opportunities arose, most of them didn’t want to know. Deeply suspicious behavior by Sandusky, over and over and over again, was dismissed with a smile and a wave, because it was Jerry, their buddy with the team!
And when they did know, they wanted to keep pretending they didn’t. They wanted the victims to be quiet and go away.
No punishment of a few individuals is sufficient. Not even a penalty for the whole official institution of Penn State (as there will be, when the lawsuits are settled) is sufficient, if the school’s colors appear on a football field anytime soon.
I think the program itself harbored a culture of silence and cover up. The football program is a huge money making machine, and changing out the leadership does not change that. The PSU culture has been built in large part by 40+ years of Paterno rule. That won’t change overnight. In fact, other people and programs at the university are STILL dependent on the football program money, so there will be tremendous push back against any real effort to change things.
True, the head was cut off, but everyone else still exists. The structure still exists. lower-level personnel will never bring anything to people in power because they want to keep their jobs.
It is my personal belief that the only way you can completely remove the culture of the PSU football program, which tangentially drives the entire university culture, is to kill it. It is the only way the message will be sent and believed.
Like my friend, who thinks that Saturday’s in the fall are part of his life on this planet, if it doesn’t go away, few things underneath the surface will change. Since Paterno is dead, the figurehead of the program will not be seen in handcuffs headed to jail. People don’t like change. People are selfish. I think people will want those Saturday afternoon parties, as long as this scandal didn’t directly harm them. People will want to forget… to heal. What better way to do that than getting drunk before the big game!
With the death penalty, PSU will have millions of dollars less every year to spend and corrupt itself. it will have to make due with less. Perhaps as it climbs itself back from the death penalty, they will come to realize that football should not be the focal point of an educational institution.
This of course is MHO only.
I can’t really even imagine what you mean. Of course it had to do with football. No one was willing to damage the football program by inviting scandal. The fact that similar scandals have happened in other circumstances doesn’t mean that football wasn’t what was being protected here. It clearly was. The PS football program was judged too important to let some scandal get in the way of its continued success.
The prevailing culture gave support to those who stamped out the scandal for all those years. People often don’t act right until they’re taught that the consequences are even worse for acting wrong.
The Chicago Tribune reports that Paterno’s statue has been removed from Beaver Stadium and Paterno’s name has been removed from plaques and displays around the stadium, although the university library still bears his name.
Also, that the NCAA is planning to announce sanctions against Penn State on Monday:
I was thinking about this, and I think what I’d really like to see that would start to address the alleged cultural problem while falling short of the ridiculous nature of the “death penalty” would be something like five years of close oversight. Put a NCAA ombudsman and a few inspectors, salaries to be paid by Penn State, embedded in the hierarchy of the athletic department.
Didn’t someone say that they had heard that it’s not going to be the death penalty, but Penn State will wish it had been?
If they’re gonna put an inspector anywhere, it should be inside the President’s office.
But they won’t. It’s Death Penalty all the way, baby!.
That’s been said. I think that has to be overstating it.
Personally I think the symbolism of playing football versus not playing football is more important on the cultural front than any amount of restrictions and penalties that could be piled onto a program that still takes the field.
I find the sudden decision to take the statue down somewhat suspicious–a matter of days after the trustees said it would not be coming down, and immediately before the NCAA announcement? Was this some kind of deal to avoid the full shutdown?
CNN is saying:
*Penn State University will face “significant, unprecedented penalties” from the National Collegiate Athletic Association, but it will not face the so-called “death penalty” that would have prevented the football team from playing in the fall, a source familiar with the case tells CNN.
But the source says the school might have preferred a one-year suspension because of the severity of the scholarship losses, postseason sanctions and other penalties the source wouldn’t specify.
“If I were Penn State or any other school and were given both options, I’d pick the death penalty,” the source said, adding the range of sanctions “is well beyond what has been done in the past” and “far worse than closing the program for a year.”*
I don’t know about the “why now” part, though it might well be an attempt to mitigate NCAA sanctions.
But I think it was a very smart move on their part to make the announcement about the same time as the crews started hauling it away. Had they announced it as, “We’re going to take it down next week”, there would have been a thousand angry students and alums gathered around it to “protect” it before the de-installation started. I think they avoided a riot.
Because this compares to a school losing a football team for a year. It’s totally the same. Having one college lose a football team for a year is exactly the same as keeping all catholics from having mass for years.
Just gonna suggest you go ahead and stop watching football for a couple years. Might help you get some perspective.
When I read that, I thought, “That’s got to be hyperbole or CYA.” ISTM that the NCAA always couches its penalties in the worst possible terms even though they often seem like a slap on the wrist. I doubt very much that after the penalties have been announced that we’ll think “The death penalty would have been better.”
Double secret probation? :eek:
A strong worded memo in a large bolded font.