Joe Paterno / limp college presidents

The meaning of Joe Paterno's life? Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe staked out a middle ground in today's column: "Joe Paterno did not personally perpetrate evil. What he’s being accused of in L’Aaffaire Sandusky is a failure to recognize evil" ... "He could have taken a page from the Red Auerbach book and [at 70, 75 retired and] been Joe Paterno, lecturer, consultant, raconteur,the Grand Old Man of Football. It could have been a delightful full-time job ... I’m guessing that the 75-year old Joe Paterno, good Catholic that he was, could not wrap his head around the idea of man-on-boy child molestation. I’m guessing he, like many people who never grasped the severity of the child abuse charges leveled against all those priests, regarded such activity as creepy, not criminal."

Ugarte takes a harder line in the When We Play Penn State thread. Jeff Hopkins is onto something in his follow-on post: "[Paterno] didn't fail his duty. His supervisors failed THEIR duty. He reported the incident to his supervisors and THEY covered it up. And that includes the current governor of PA, who was the local DA at the time." (Maybe they all failed their duty?)

Beyond the DAs who don't do their jobs, this may be one more example where the university president lacks the cojones or clarity of vision to do the right thing. Sports Illustrated in its 11/21/11 cover story The Shame of Penn State relates how Penn State President (1995-2011) Graham Spanier in 2004 "visited Paterno at his home to suggest that, at age 77 and after a 3-9 season in '03, he should retire. Paterno, in effect, told them to get off his lawn. They acceded."

In the Duke lacrosse scandal, President Richard Broadhead fumbled twice. First, he let the team get out of control years before several players in 2006 were accused (falsely) of sexual assault of an exotic dancer (compare that to the Coach K's squeaky clean basketball team). Then Broadhead let events ride him and he shut down the team for the rest of the season, then was slow to recognize the charges were trumped up and the DA was in fact the biggest criminal in the case. Broadhead's apologia, later: "[The case highlights] crucial problems of our culture -- problems of achieving justice in a media-saturated society, problems of fundamental fairness to individuals, and problems in the way the American public is informed and misinformed about the world we live in."

Black students unhappy with a conservative columnist of the Daily Pennsylvanian stole and destroyed the DP's press run. President Sheldon Hackney blew off the issue. A columnist, John Leo, created the Sheldon Award for "the university president who does the most to look the other way when free speech is under assault on campus." (This and other stories about how college administrations aren't bothered by ill treatment of the campus press in a now-old article: [articles.latimes.com])

Cornell President James Perkins was accused of coddling students during the Vietnam war and campus protests including the 1969 Willard Straight Hall takeover. Despite armed students inside the Straight, nobody died, unlike at Kent State a year later. For sompe people, the scars linger four decades later and it's hard to be as dispassionate as you might looking at the problems at Penn State or Duke.

[en.wikipedia.org]

Josh '99
[en.wikipedia.org]

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