It's not just Penn State

[audiophile]

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/opinion/nocera-its-not-just-penn-state.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=penn%20state&st=Search[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/opinion/nocera-its-not-just-penn-state.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=penn%20state&st=Search&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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In an age when professors lose their jobs for having inappropriate sexual contact with students, it is hard to view this as anything other than a cover-up.</p>

<p>Maybe I am being unreasonable when I suggest that schools that have covered up scandals or looked the other way at wrongdoing should stop playing the sport for a while. Maybe it’s just not feasible given the amount of money sloshing around college sports. But there is something really askew here. Something needs to change.</p>

<p>If a university — and its community — can’t treat players and coaches the same way everyone else is treated, then what is it really teaching? Surely, the lessons it is imparting are the wrong ones.

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[MADad]

<p>The comparison to the Marvin Barnes incident is a little bit stretched. It involved an altercation between teammates, not sexual predation. It also happened 40 years ago–the same event today would be treated very differently, I’m sure.</p>

[mom2collegekids]

<p>I don’t know why people think this is “sports related.” I really don’t think so. I think it’s more because the horrible stuff happened in a highly concentrated male environment. I think if some women had known about the PSU and other situations, the whistles would have been blown. </p>

<p>Many males do not like reporting on each other. they just don’t like “getting involved.” Don’t know why, it just seems to be that way. Don’t know if various people have their own skeletons in their closets, so they fear that if they report on one person, then someone will report on them??? (I don’t mean that they all have pedophile histories, but maybe some other hidden secret…such as an affair that they wouldn’t want their wife to find out about.)</p>

<p>In my previous hometown, when some moms found out that a male teacher was kissing a student in his car, the moms contacted authorities. Some men knew, but did nothing. What the heck???</p>

[VeryHappy]

<p>IMHO, which is not at all fair, I think many men either misbehave or think a lot about misbehaving. So when one of their own is “caught,” they’re not too keen on outing the miscreant. It could be them next time. </p>

<p>Also IMHO, women are generally not predisposed to misbehaving. So they’re more shocked and upset when they see misbehavior.</p>

[audiophile]

<p>I don’t buy at all that this is a male:female issue. I don’t recall many nuns stepping forward to report pedophile priests in the Catholic Church, they had to have known or heard about them.</p>

<p>Rather I think this mostly an issue of money and occasionally power; people covering up to protect the institutions and their positions in them at all costs. And it’s not only sports, it’s government, business, educational institutions, and obviously even religious organizations.</p>

<p>I’ll give you that women in general may be more sensitive and protective towards children, but do you really feel that women are more ethical as a rule than men?</p>

[MADad]

<p>Agreeing with audiophile–in the Catholic church, nuns (females) don’t have the power–priests do. Maybe it would be different today, but 30 years ago I don’t think a nun’s word would be believed over a priest’s.</p>

[audiophile]

<p>…and it certainly appears that Laurie Fine knew what was going on, and I can’t imagine Mrs. Sandusky didn’t have a clue.</p>

[EPTR]

<p>I think it’s about politics within the organization in question. I don’t know how much of it is gender related. It has more today with what the person has to lose by reporting and when they weigh that out, some fall on the side of inaction. The world of sports is male dominated and most pedophiles are male so those factors may skew the gender issues raised.</p>