http://www.oregonlive.com/playbooks-profits/index.ssf/2011/11/nike_has_no_plans_to_change_na.html

I am physically ill over what has happened and I cannot make an excuse for Joe. In all honesty, I think I may have taken the willful ignorance pass it up the chain approach like Joe.  I think if we’re being honest with ourselves many of us would do whatever we could to try to not get involved in a situation.

Joe should of pursued the issue further even if he only had general details of what happened.  But he passed what he knew on to his superiors, and the head of campus security, and, I assume, trusted them to deal with the situation appropriately, they failed and have been charged legally for their negligence and apparent lying about what they knew.

In 2000 a PSU janitor saw Sandusky performing oral sex on a boy in the locker rooms, this was reported to two other people including his superior.  His superior told him who he should report it to, if he wanted to, he did not do it.  Three additional people did less than Joe but I don’t hear calls to throw them in jail.

So my problem with all of this is that Joe was only one of several people who failed the children that were victimized by Sandusky, yet most of the vitriol seems to be aimed at Joe because he is the most prominent figure.  While Joe is deserving of some of this anger,  I cannot dismiss Joe’s 60 years of dedication and integrity to the students of PSU and college football as a mitigating factor. He has stated very recently that he wanted to keep coaching.  He didn’t need to do it, he wanted to do it because he loved it, and he loved working with the “kids”.  I hoped that he would just drop dead at the end of the last game of the season one year–dying doing what he loved.  

His retirement at the conclusion of this season seems to me to be a very harsh, but not inappropriate consequence.  The thing he loves most is being taken away from him and I wouldn’t be surprised if he passes-on soon after as older people often do when the things they love disappear in old age.  Dismissing Joe before the end of the season would cause unfair harm to the student athletes who have worked so hard to be a part of the Penn State team and were not a part of this other than being PSU students on the football team.  Why should they get punished?

It’s nice to know that you can do everything right for 84 years but one lapse of judgement, when others did even less, and America will pick up their pitchforks and torches and call for your head.  I don’t think that’s America at her best.

The law does not require the passing on to the police of unsubstantiated accusations.

Actually it does in certain circumstances as long as the accusation is credible. As an educator at a public university I believe the coach is considered a “mandatory reporter” under state law.

- Joe Paterno

So those who claim that there’s nothing more he could have done, there you have it from the man himself. Even he thinks he could have done more. He didn’t. He could’ve confronted Sandusky about it, but he didn’t. He could’ve demanded that Sandusky not be permitted to run youth football camps with the endorsement of PSU, but he didn’t. He could’ve denied Sandusky use of PSU football facilities, but he didn’t.

Should he be prosecuted? No. And neither should he continue to be deified as a patron saint of college football.

The grad student is most liable for not going to the police if he/she had actual first-hand knowledge.  Period.

It is easy to scream “think of the children,” and rightfully so.  But children’s rights are protected very diligently in these cases, not so much those who are wrongfully accused, and that tactic arises more often than you might think.  If there were strong protections against maliciously maligning one’s character with such accusations which are deliberate fallacies perhaps this wouldn’t be the case.  Those under such suspicion are not treated with respect, and given the gravity of such allegations, seldom with the simple legal “presumption of innocence until proven guilty.”  Yet given the gnat-like attention span of American news reporting, a student’s allegation against a teacher will be headline news for days, but that teacher’s exoneration and the student’s indictment on having made it up over some sort of petty vendetta will get remarkably little coverage.  

I’m a parent and believe that we brook entirely too much mistreatment of children at many levels, and believe in advocating for greater protections.  But it is utterly inappropriate to cast aspersions on someone’s character without proof of some sort.  

What should Paterno have done?  Tell the police what?  Hold the grad student’s hand as he/she made the call?  Put yourself in each of their places and consider their positions before going into knee-jerk hang-them-all mode, please.

My solution? Joe should announce that he is retiring after this season.  Right now PSU has a great chance of reaching the Rose Bowl…

This is a perfect example of how fanaticism in sports can warp the cognitive abilities of otherwise reasonable people. (Yes, “fan” is short for “fanatic.”)

If Paterno did something wrong then he needs to make amends immediately. If he didn’t then he needs to clear his name and move on. Either way the freakin’ Rose Bowl just doesn’t figure into it.

I think JoePa didn’t do that because he was afraid of what he would hear if he did that. I think the potential consequences were worse to him than more children being molested, and so he didn’t do it. He may not have thought of it in those stark terms, but how else do you get where things are today?

Somewhere, a point has been missed.  A very large point.

“So as your principal I was standing by letting you kids get buttsecksed by the dozens, and I’m going to step down.  But I feel it is best for me to be with you here for the rest of the year, because I’m obviously such a good guardian of you and your precious, nubile little behinds.”

Also, I can sort of understand the grad student’s plight because even if he *did* want to report things, he’s reporting a major football coach, which as we discussed is about like ratting on God if you’re at PSU.

But Joe WAS God in that place – he had no fear of reprisal, no cabal of superiors to worry about. …except the cabal he was a part of.  Absolutely sick.  Hopefully schools will start realizing that unlimited power for freaking football is a terrible idea, but I’m not optimistic.

Just recently I’ve be trawling the HP WebOS support forums for random hacks and ideas of things to do with my orphaned HPTouchpad. I eventually found myself reading a thread where Penn State Athletic Department employees were complaining about how unreliable using wifi was around the gym. Apparently, a number of posters on the thread were enthusiastic about using their touchpads to share pictures and the spotty wifi was a big issue to them.

Suddenly, while finishing reading the thread, “Penn State,” “HPTouchpad,” “Picture Sharing,” and “Assistant Coach” amalgamated into a particularly nightmarish vision that made me throw up in my mouth a little.

I have too much imagination and it’s all the bad kind today. :(

A lot of people here are completely missing that point.

How anyone involved let this slide is beyond me. And that includes the grad student who saw an adolescent being raped and chose to leave the scene. If I walked out of that shower room it would only be to come back with a 2 x 4 to beat Sandusky into a coma. And don’t forget, this was the second reported violation regarding the assistant coach. 

With these kinds of predators, there’s ALWAYS  an ominous, uncomfortable history that everyone chooses to ignore. 

And then Paterno contacted his superior and the person who oversaw the University Police Dept ?  Which is what he was required to do?

No, he was required to tell the actual police. You know, the ones who have the power to arrest people, not the ones charged with driving the shuttle van between blue lights so that drunk students can get home safely.

So.  Did he think that would make him sound MORE sincere?

A. raise holy hell everywhere
B. go to the cops
C. if nothing happened, resign your post, and tell everyone why

I remember seeing somewhere that he told Paterno that there was “inappropriate behavior” going on. We don’t know what exactly that grad student said, and likely never will, but not going to the cops, and letting this “paragon of the community” continue to destroy the lives of more boys is… morally corrupt, and likely puts you in a place of legal liability.

This whole case has made me furious in a way that very few abuse cases have. Probably because so many people willingly covered it up for so long – when saying ONE SENTENCE to a police officer would have saved children from rape.