<p>I respectfully disagree. It is because it does not matter. We could have googled it like you and found out too if had been a necessary part of this story to anyone. There are much more important things in this story to understand than the skin color of the victims. </p>
<p>I agree with you about not shutting down the football program. But because of the TOTAL impact of those actions to ALL community members, not just because of the impact to black football players. </p>
<p>I find your statment about “racial blindness” interesting. I do everything to teach my child to treat all people equally, without regard to their color, background, status, or whatever. Is that not what we are striving for? That we would be irrate about ANY child being treated like this, regardless of ANYTHING else about them? Did I missunderstand MLK’s vision?</p>
<p>That David Brooks article bothered me because it almost absolves everyone involved. That was the most self-righteous way of calling everyone else self-righteous!</p>
<p>Goingmyway, I didn’t read it that way. I read it in the way that we all need to be better, that we all can do a better job.</p>
<p>The fact is that in study after study people rarely live up to even their own standards of moral decency. People frequently lack courage in the face of doing the right thing. </p>
<p>It is not that he is absolving those involved, he is saying any one of us can do better.</p>
<p>But, in my opinion, barring the ability to police ourselves, which, as human beings we simply seem to lack, all institutions should be policed by outside bodies and not by those who report to the higher ups in the institution itself. Because it is easy for us to see, as outsiders, what should have been done. And it would have been easier for an outside police body to see what needed to be done. Perspective is everything. </p>
<p>As for the race issue, how horrendous that those young men were wearing bullet proof vests to their graduation, that they lived in fear, that the man who was making over a million dollars a year and this reputation we are supposedly sullying, simply said, “I’m only a football coach.” </p>
<p>Only? a million dollars a year made off the back off african american amatuer athletes is a pretty big pay day for someone who has no responsibility for their well-being.</p>
<p>Also: does it bother anyone else that Paterno’s son was the quarterback coach for PennState? It seems kind of iffy to me.</p>
<p>slipjig, that was interesting, and probably is true to some extent, but somehow I can’t equate someone letting a sexist remark pass in silence with remaining silent on the rape of a child. Especially not when the rapist was known and continues to be seen in contact with children at one’s own place of work!</p>
<p>For the good of Penn State, they should just drop into Div 2 or 3. They can still have the football, but not participate in the crazed greedy monstrosity that Div 1 has become. That is at the root of all of this. Everyone running around to protect the team and the program.</p>
<p>I think where Brooks “missed the boat” is his claim that since many persons would not have the courage to do the right thing, that therefore the PSU officials should not be expected to. When Brooks decries PSU critics who say “How could they have let that happen” he ignores that there were very few with the power to stop Sandusky … and those same few also had responsibility for stewardship of Penn State programs. Turning a blind eye to Sandusky’s transgressions was bad. Putting PSU programs under threat of evisceration was a clear violation of their institutional duties.</p>
<p>True, I would love to figure out what percent of their actions were related to “saving” the PSU program vs “saving” their own job/reputation. Of course for many of these men, they probably do not know that there is a difference. And if they do, may not be able to identify where the line in the sand is.</p>
<p>Anderson Cooper had news that spanier lobbied for PSU to be exempt from having to provide access to their internal records, apparently they got their ducks in a row as part of their strategy to maintain secrecy and enable Sandusky. And his interview is sickening, his use of the word horsing around made it seem like they have all coordinated what to say if it came out.</p>
<p>poet- I would not call it common but it happens frequently enough. I think Pat Knight coached with his dad, the Bouwdons (sp) coached together, the Kiffens, the Suttons, the Paterno’s. I am not sure but Skip Holtz may have been on his dad’s staff, the Shulas. Tubby Smith also may have had his kid coach. I think there are plenty of others and I bet at lower less famous levels it is even more common.</p>
<p>I have no idea what race the victims are but I’ve seen promos of Second Mile including pixilated images of some of the children at Second Mile. They have been overwhelmingly white. This is true for the pix on the Second Mile website as well. Quite a few girls as well. Just sayin’…</p>
<p>It seems to me this is more of a class than a racial issue. But, if the victims who complained and went to the police in the 1990’s were black, and the case was then dismissed, the racist implications will be obvious.</p>
<p>“I have no idea what race the victims are but I’ve seen promos of Second Mile including pixilated images of some of the children at Second Mile. They have been overwhelmingly white. This is true for the pix on the Second Mile website as well.”</p>
<p>But the 1998 case wasn’t about rape and it wasn’t actually dismissed, was it? Pretty sure that was the incident when he showered with and hugged the boy and the boy’s mother filed a complaint. It sounds like it was not prosecuted (it wasn’t dismissed because no charges were ever filed) because a more serious charge could not be sustained and the DA, who has since gone missing, declined to prosecute.</p>
<p>Where did the kids for Second Mile come from? As I remember from very long drives in Pennsylvania, Happy Valley is far away from cities. If these were kids from more local areas, I would expect that they would be predominately white. If they came from further away cities like Philadelphia, then I would think there would be a greater proportion of non-whites. It all has to do with what areas they serviced.</p>
<p>On another point, I went from an article previously posted to the blog of the former GA. Talk about devastating comments about Joe Paterno. That man certainly believes he was covering up. It gets even creepier. He describes all the coaches and GA’s showering together which is not normal practice at other teams this guy was involved with. He also says that JoePa may have been beating his wife- at least he was joking about it. Just an overwhelmingly unflattering portrait.</p>
<p>Funny that Sandusky reached out to the Fresh Air Fund for more kids to help…when i lived outside NYC, the Fresh Air Fund consisted of predominately minorities</p>