The reason they’re taking the statue of JoePa down is that it would be a target of vandalism and a symbol of the school’s failure to report the abuse which would probably have stopped assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky from continuing to abuse young boys.
But it is also true that it may prevent the NCAA from giving the “death penalty” to the Penn State football program that rakes in millions of dollars for the school.
Penn State President Rodney Erickson announced the decision Sunday morning, calling the statue “a source of division and an obstacle to healing.”
“For that reason, I have decided that it is in the best interest of our university and public safety to remove the statue and store it in a secure location,” Erickson said. “I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse.”
Around 6:15 a.m. Sunday, campus construction crews and police started closing off the main road that runs past the statue and installed fencing covered by blue tarp to block sight lines of the statue.
By 7:30, workers had started the process of removing the statue from the ground. Only a handful of spectators watched from the sidewalk opposite the statue. No immediate uproar or protest could be seen or heard.
Speculation had run rampant as to the statue’s future since the release of Penn State’s internal investigation into the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal last July 12, which implicated Paterno and three high-ranking university officials in concealing allegations of sexual abuse against Sandusky.
The 7-foot, 900-pound bronze statue is one of the most symbolic pieces of Paterno imagery on campus. The school’s library, which also bears Paterno’s name, will not be altered in any way, Erickson said, because it represents the academic mission of the university Paterno helped foster.
To realize that heroes and icons have feet of clay is always one of the great disappointments in life. In the case of Joe Paterno, we have a man whose reputation was, in some respects, undeserved, and in other respects, manufactured by the school’s public relations department. That reputation was worth millions to the school who presented to the world the face of a teacher who cared more about his players’ development as human beings than he did their growth as football players.
The Freeh report showed he cared most about protecting his football program from scandal — even at the expense of the safety of children who were ultimately in his care.
Who was the real Joe Paterno? Why, at the most critical junction of his tenure at Penn State, when he had the opportunity to live up to the strict moral code he demanded of his players, did he fail a test of character by protecting a child sexual predator?
I suspect we’ll never know.
The stench of this scandal will take a long time to be scrubbed at PSU.
When the chips were down, Joe P voted his best interest, not anyone else. There’s a legacy for you.
Really, development as human beings? A former player, a coach, when confronted with a clearcut moral decision didn’t act but called his daddy then told Paterno. Perhaps others grew to be men but here is one example of the program not developing human beings but acolytes.
Still the removal wasn’t necessary. They could have accurately represented Paterno and the football program by simply adding a small naked boy on the ground beseeching Paterno as he is trod underfoot by the mindless players behind.
Yeah, what you said.
Still it’s a multiple tragedy, a lot of current Penn State students and football players are going to pay the price.
Paterno should have retired 15 years ago and dodged the bulk of this. Problem is he was old, with all the usual hesitancies that involves, but also that fifty years ago this kind of problem was usually just swept under the rug, and Paterno kept to that pattern long after it became unacceptable. Even as it unfolded, he didn’t seem to realize how it was going to play out.
Statue had to go, and I’ll bet that library gets renamed, too.
Apparently, the NCAA is going to announce its “corrective and punitive” measures tomorrow. and I am afraid I am probably going to disappointed.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/22/ncaa-to-announce-corrective-measures-for-penn-st/
You see, I don’t have a lot of respect for the NCAA, because at the end of the day there is too much fundamental disconnect between what is preached and practiced. It is a major league sports league raking in money masquerading as an extracurricula activity for the benefit of the student’s education. But at the end of the day it does at least try to limit the disconnect. So, when they announce their “corrective and punitive” measures tomorrow, I am going to be most likely disappointed. For you see, I don’t want sanctions, I don’t want TV bans, I don’t even want the ‘”death penalty”.
Tomorrow I’m going to want to know why PSU is still a member of the NCAA, for I’d like to know what it takes to get entirely kicked out, if not this.
“Tomorrow I’m going to want to know why PSU is still a member of the NCAA”
Well, if that’s your expectation, yeah, you’re going to be disappointed. I like your way of thinking though. Mine sort of runs towards piling all football equipment in the center of the playing field, burning it, then razing the stadium, scattering the ashes and sowing the ground with salt, if not nuclear waste.
That’s just me, though.
“It is a major league sports league raking in money masquerading as an extracurricula(r) activity for the benefit of the student’s education”.
You just summed up the problem in a nutshell. The NCAA is fundamentally corrupt at its core and has/is/will continue to generate scandals as long as it exists. Pro football and basketball must develop their own farm team system and higher education must stop offering athletic scholarships.
It is as simple as that. Don’t hold your breath waiting.
dont forget that penn state is one of the havens for global warming alarmists, in particular – michael mann
penn states football program generates much revenue for the university and some of it must get funneled into these laboratories of chicanery
i do love it when the left’s balkanized support groups are pitted against each other
regardless of what the ncaa (a pitiful organization to say the least) does- the nature of the scandal may have already caused irreparable harm to the football program– and, ultimately, the cash cow for a truly leftist bastion
i guess i would not be surprised if bailouts were in the future for penn state
“I suspect we’ll never know.”
Try $50,000,000 a year football profit, use of the University jet, and being able to bigfoot anybody who got in the way of same.
Paterno clawed and barely hung on as head coach 10-15 years ago, when his age first became a factor in the recruiting wars, as opposing schools told recruits they couldn’t be sure if they went to Penn State that Joe would be there for their full four years. The result was extremely mediocre records for several years in a row that threatened his job, before a bounce back to at least Big 10 respectability in the middle part of the last decade.
Obviously all that that’s small change compared to the real problem being covered up by the coach and the school at the time, but it may have contributed to the mindset that led to the cover-up. The age issue seemed at the same time to make Paterno hell-bent on hanging on to his job until they wheeled him out of his office on a gurney. Which they pretty much did, but Paterno’s focus as the turn of the century rolled around seemed to become more and more centered on proving his critics wrong that time hadn’t passed him by, and he would leave when he was good and ready to leave.
With an attitude like that, he wasn’t going to give his enemies any more ammunition by allowing Sandusky’s problems to become public, and once the cover-up began, there was no good way for Papa Joe to end it and not get his reputation crushed in exactly the way he did.
it is a shameful disgrace that so many well educated people in high positions chose to do the wrong thing. How could they not know, based on the history of other sexual predators, that a victim would someday blow the whistle and bring them all down? They could have chosen to do the right thing and prevented a lot of grief for the university. Not one of them of them stood up and said “this is wrong and we must do all we can to make it right” shameful. so shameful.
Punishment for the school does what exactly? Is it going to punish Paterno? No – it’s going to punish the students and athletes at the school right now. It’s like slavery reparations at this point – the guilty are beyond punishment – and at this point collateral damage is all anyone can exact. How is that justice?
As a warning to other colleges what can the NCAA do? Dig up Paterno and kill him again? Fire the ex-president again? I’m sorry for the boys who were molested and wish that there was more to offer in the form of justice, but punishing the next generation of PSU students is not the answer.
Institutions continue as they will, and the violated just put up with it as they must?
No. Penn State must institutionally pay. Now, I would settle for the Athletic Association being eliminated, as well as all coaching positions (unless already a tenured faculty member at the school). Other than that, they need to be gone from college sports, especially if the NCAA chooses to diddle with postseason and TV bans and the like.
We will see tomorrow.
The PSU sanctions from the NCAA will not amount to much. Oh, some TV and bowl games will be lost, but come September the young men clad in PSU gear will charge on the field to clash with another set of student-athletes, with thousands in the stands cheering on their heros.
There will be the obligatory moment of silence for the victims, then it will be right back to football.
There’s hundreds of millions of dollars involved, certainly no one is going to give a crap about some abused kids.
Wait for the 9am announcement today; somber tones, respect for the victims, blah blah, but NOTHING will get in the way of the almighty dollar.
The way our society is going, in 20 years they will put up a statue of Jerry Sandusky who will be considered a martyr to sexual liberation.