What Penn State Should Tear Down
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It's not about the statue.
In the days since the release of the Freeh ReportPenn State's own investigation of its child sex abuse scandal, helmed by a former FBI director, Louis J. Freeh, which found that top university officials, among them the late football coach Joe Paterno, "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade"there's been a rush to redress a horrible offense with a symbolic act, removing a seven-foot statue of Paterno outside the school's football stadium..............
Better to bicker over bronze than look into the soul of a scandalwhat created a climate on campus in which principles were suspended, leaders declined to lead, and more victims suffered. So much easier to focus tightly on a sculpture than to zoom out and consider the full canvas.
Because the full canvas is wider than a coach or a handful of officials or even Penn State. It's an athletic culture gone sick, as college sports has grown into a multibillion-dollar business, distorting standards that bind together healthy societies, and pushing imperfect people atop pedestals...........
What happened to the unsavory others didn't happen in Happy Valley. It was considered a sanctuary and when Paterno accumulated a record total of wins, the moralists mounted a high horse.
The high horse turned out to be another kind of myth, and underscored the hazard of casting real people as idols, much less statues dedicated while they're still active and coaching. The heroes at Penn State were proven to be Sandusky's victims, who bravely came forward to speak truth to power, after power utterly let them down...........
Will anyone step in and offer a correction? Deep in Freeh's report, there's a road map. "One of the most challenging tasks confronting the University community...is an open, honest, and thorough examination of the culture that underlies the failure of Penn State's most powerful leaders to respond appropriately to Sandusky's crimes."...............
That's the hard, uncomfortable work, and it can't just happen at Penn State.