Musings on the Penn State Scandal

The biggest non-political news this week is the Pennsylvania State University scandal. Allegedly, former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky had been molesting boys in the school showers for the past 15 years... or possibly more... and was caught by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary. McQueary then reported what he saw to athletic director Tim Curley, but the story ended there; neither McQueary nor Curley reported what they knew to the police.

This isn't just a scandal, it's a conspiracy. The amount of people who had information on what Sandusky was doing and how many victims are involved has a map.

Click for full size.

As you can see from the map, the knowledge of what Sandusky was doing went all the way to the top, up to PSU president Graham Spanier. The scandal became public when Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly indicted Sandusky on 40 counts of sex crimes against young boys after a 3-year investigation into allegations were brought to attention in 2009. Since the scandal broke, Sandusky has been banned from PSU's campus and has had most of his history whitewashed from the university. Graham Spanier has resigned as president of the university, several football officials have either been fired or resigned, and head coach Joe Paterno was fired after having been employed at Penn State since 1950. After Paterno's firing, a riot led by 10,000 students broke out on campus which involved riot police using tear gas and the flipping of a news van.

The whole situation is disgusting. When it comes to child molesters, Sandusky wasn't just some guy who was touching boys inappropriately, he was forcing them to perform fellatio on him and he had anal sex with them. Fellatio and anal sex with 10-year-old boys. These kids are going to be scarred for life and will more than likely never recover from the pain of abuse unless they are blessed with amnesia.

There's been a lot of criticism of the call for Joe Paterno's resignation/firing, but the fact of the matter is that there is no way Paterno could not have known what was going on for 15+ years, especially if McQueary told him what he saw. Paterno isn't guilty of anything legally, but he failed to report what he knew. For that reason, Penn State had good reason to end all ties with Paterno effectively immediately.

The students have been disgusting, too. Although a majority of the students called for Spanier's firing, the student riot protesting Paterno's firing was boorish, hooliganistic, and classless. High school students across the country have seen the riots and the scandal and you can bet that Penn State's enrollment will crash.

The last step besides the criminal court proceedings are for the NCAA to ban Penn State from appearing in the Big 10 championship or BCS standings for the next 10 seasons, the amount of time the abuse went untold to the police. The behavior by everyone at Penn State, from students to teachers to administrators, shows that Penn State values football and the deification of Joe Paterno over basic human decency. For that reason, there is no reason that Penn State should participate in football championships for quite some time until the culture changes.

This is the last I'll say on the matter because the rest is up to the courts...