Thoughts on Penn State and Morality

Joe Paterno

I listen to a fair amount of sports talk radio, specifically WFAN-660 in New York.  Usually, the topics of discussion surround the peformance of the local sports teams, which for the most part, bears very little impact on how we behave as human beings.  However, while listening to WFAN this past week, I was especially drawn to recent scandal involving a pattern of the sexual abuse of young boys among a member of the Penn State football coaching staff, dating back to the mid-1990′s.  The actions of this former Defense Coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, were egregious and almost unfathomable.

From a morality standpoint, this story has had more of an impact on my everyday thoughts and my own sense of human interaction than any other sports story in my lifetime.  The underlining issue that someone like Coach Joe Paterno, the head football coach at Penn State for the last 46 years was told about one specific incident in 2002 by eyewitness Mike McQueary (a graduate assistant and now assistant football coach) and didn’t report Sandusky to the authorities, is absolutely incredulous.  Paterno claims that he had passed along the information to his boss, former athletic director, Tim Curley, but why didn’t he confront Sandusky directly or go to the police with this information.

Both Curley and another high ranking Penn State official, Senior Vice President Gary Schultz, recently turned themselves in after being indicted for perjury and accused of failing to alert police about complaints.  In all likelihood, Paterno will never face such legal action, but could he have done more to bring this tragedy to light many years ago?  Absolutely.  Even Paterno admitted so himself in a recent interview.

What I have internalized from this tragedy is more the “cover-up” than anything else.  The question of why the higher-ups at Penn State did nothing to turn this into an investigation before Sandusky was able to get away with consecutive crimes against young boys is extremely thought provoking: To think “what would I have done in this situation” allows me to consider times when I may have “saw something happen,” but “did not say anything.”  The inaction of those at Penn State proves that a lack of public intervention can decriminalize the most vile of acts.  Even if only a few people (McQueary, Paterno, Curley) knew what had transpired back in 2002, the act of one person could have ultimately made the difference needed to stop Sandusky from ever committing another abusive act.

When it comes to morality and ethics, there is no “chain of command.”  You absolutely have the right and the authority to go straight to the authorities without getting permission from your superiors.  In New York State, the law actually permits the use of “lethal force” to stop a perpetrator during an act of sexual abuse.  Even if what is seen by a witness is so heinous that the witness refuses to fully comprehend, there should be an “open door” policy to pass the information along to the proper people.  In this regard, the entire Penn State community should be held accountable for years of incomprehensible behavior by one deviant animal of a human being.