First and foremost, it has to be acknowledged that the people most hurt by the sexual abuse scandal that is rocking Penn State University are the eight victims listed in the Grand Jury Report.
The lives of these victims have been changed forever because of the actions of their abuser, former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, and the university which failed to do enough to protect them for fear of the repercussions.
No decision on how the university proceeds should be made without taking their changed lives into account, as doing so would further throw salt into their wounds.
With that as the backdrop through which we view this situation, Penn State got it wrong when they fired legendary head football coach Joe Paterno last week.
Obviously this stance is not an easy one to defend as Head Coach Paterno was responsible and thus culpable for the lax culture around the program that allowed for Sandusky’s predatory nature to change the lives of these children.
His unwillingness to do more than inform his supervisor of the heinous acts that graduate assistant Mike McQueary reported to him in 2002 is despicable, and allowed for Sandusky’s reign of terror to continue. However, in a time like this Paterno is the only one that could have tried to right the wrongs and put Penn State back in a position to succeed.
Paterno is and always will be the face of Penn State, the moral compass who won on the football field “the right way” without relying on players who wouldn’t graduate or would get into trouble off of the field.
A bronze statue of him was erected in 2001 outside of the football stadium. They love and revere him at Penn State to a point where he was almost deified as a beacon of moral responsibility.
Despite his abject failings in the Sandusky scandal he is still so revered that the student body rioted upon hearing the news of his dismissal and then showed up to last Saturday’s football game with t-shirts and signs honoring their beloved JoePa. The shame there is that the attention was removed from the suffering of the victims and focused on the loss of a coaching legend.
For these reasons, firing Paterno, while entirely justifiable, has turned the scandal into even more of a circus-like atmosphere, while creating even more instability at the institution. Because of his deified status Paterno could have made a difference at Penn State if he had been allowed to stay at the program.
The man could have rallied the student body to support the victims, while bringing to light the heinousness of the crimes and becoming an advocate against such crime. He is the only person that the university would listen to at such a trying time, and instead of being counted on to help bring Penn State out of this he is banished from the university and unable to begin the healing process.
Firing Joe Paterno results in the exact opposite of ideals such as accountability and perseverance that he preached while coaching, and has created a situation where the focus in the scandal has been on football instead of the victims.
Despite his poor judgment and unwillingness to take McQueary’s allegations to the police, Paterno could have righted this wrong and made sure to reach out to the victims while focusing the public’s opinion on their health and well-being. Firing him didn’t afford him the chance to do so, and resulted in everybody, including the victims, losing.
