<p>As far as I am aware (I could be wrong), Sandusky is still Professor Emeritus at Penn State.</p>
<p>Absolutely TXArtemis…I too was struck by juxtaposition of the Caltech situation. We strive mightily as a society to balance our desire to weed out the bad with our desire to protect against racial profiling, gun ownership, our financial industry, a woman’s right to her body and dozens of other things that do not ‘touch’ everyone with the right of those people in our society the ability to have access to those things or activities by legally excising the bad. Why should football at Penn State be any different.</p>
<p>The best way to heal is to get rid of anyone in authority provably connected to this and clean the slate. Next year’s team is already underdogs…those kids could use alittle support. Not a mob mentality of wack 'em all.</p>
<p>I’m sure that there are plenty of victims and families that would like the Catholic church banished from the US, but there’s an implicit understanding that it’s not “Catholics” that are bad it’s individuals that are evil. Well it’s not the Penn State athletes that are evil.</p>
<p>Remember, the recent Penn State trustee election (for alumni trustees) was won by people promising to uphold Paterno. One said they should appoint Paterno an emiritus professor forever, though he’s dead. One made a statement that was highly critical of Paterno’s firing and has only qualified that by saying he believes in the community “healing”. </p>
<p>This is why the NCAA has to act. The Board is captive to football. That is why there is a “lack of institutional control.” </p>
<p>But I doubt the NCAA will do squat and that, at least, will have the effect of revealing forever the truth behind the facade of morality that organization presents.</p>
<p>from the link posted by samiamy;</p>
<p>Tensions reached the breaking point in 2007 over how to discipline half a dozen players who’d been arrested at a brawl at an off-campus apartment complex. Several students were injured; one beaten unconscious.
Triponey met with Paterno and other university officials half a dozen times, although she preferred to remain neutral as the appeals hearing officer.
At the final meeting, Triponey urged the coach to advise his players to tell the truth. Paterno said angrily that he couldn’t force his players to “rat” on each other since they had to practice and play together. Curley and Spanier backed him up on that point, she said.
Triponey recommended suspensions; Paterno pushed for community service that included having the team clean up the stadium for two hours after each home game.
In the end, four players were briefly suspended during the off-season. They didn’t miss a game.</p>
<p>Substitute Dean of Engineering or pick any department. If it were discovered that the Dean was a pedophile and profs knew it and did nothing would you shut down the entire college of engineering and tell all the kids they have to go look for another college and return federal research dollars or would you replace all the evil deans and profs? What if it were a President of a selective but very small LAC and the deans knew, would you shut down the entire 800 student college or would you replace them with fresh blood? It’s really no different, just substitute the word football.</p>
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<p>So you shut down the program or you replace the board?</p>
<p>Govenor Corbett is on the board, can they boot him also?</p>
<p>His hands are dirty as well.</p>
<p>[The</a> woman who stood up to Joe Paterno - CNN.com](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/15/us/triponey-paterno-penn-state/index.html]The”>http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/15/us/triponey-paterno-penn-state/index.html)</p>
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<p>No it’s the professors and the students and the TAs and the swim team and the basketball team and the cafeteria workers, the lawn maintenance people, and hundreds and hundreds of people that ARE Penn State and those are the people that should NOT be harmed.</p>
<p>And yes, i think they could replace the entire board and if Pennsylvania’s governor is a smart man he would understand why.</p>
<p>“It’s really no different, just substitute the word football.”</p>
<p>Wow, just wow. If you cannot see the difference between an Engineering department and Football team in relation to what should be the actual mission of an educational institution, I am just speechless. And in the first place, I could not imagine any academic department having enough sway with the administration to cover up and help perpetuate such behaviour.</p>
<p>“So you shut down the program or you replace the board?”</p>
<p>Simply yes or you would let everything stays the same as if nothing has happened. Penn State will be fine long term and probably better because of it.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys: If the problem were restricted to the Dean of the Engineering School and a few profs, it likely could be resolved by replacing the offending dean and profs. But, if it extended beyond that, that may not be an adequate solution. If the problem extended to the entire school, as it appears to do in the PSU case, more drastic action would appear to be necessary. Replacing a Board of Trustees which is captive to football would be a good start, but inadequate to solve the problem. PSU needs to send a message loud and clear that the football program no longer runs the university. How do you propose to do that?</p>
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<p>The first obvious point is that there are frequently innocent victims when someone is punished. When a doctor or lawyer has one drink too many and kills another motorist, the spouse and children of the driver suffer if he is sent to jail. The doctor’s patients suffer, too. It is hardly uncommon for innocent parties to suffer when someone is punished. </p>
<p>As for the case of an engineering dean, it depends on the context. Suppose that the engineering school has a decades-long history of students and faculty avoiding criminal prosecution because the campus police deliver transgressors to the dean instead of booking them. Suppose that the engineering school brings in so much grant money that the university president is afraid to step on their toes. Now suppose that the entire campus and surrounding area put the engineering schol on a pedestal because of its national reputation, not to mention its contributions to the local economy. Only if you have all of the features can your analogy begin to capture the situation at Penn State. But even then, the critical difference is that engineering is central to the university’s mission whereas football is not, so there would still be a much weaker case for shutting down the engineering school.</p>
<p>This involved raped children. And the rapist was protected by Penn state football.</p>
<p>Sometimes you really have to step back and realize how absurd all the horrified reactions are to the notion of shutting down the football program for some period. As I understand it, the players will be quickly scooped up by other schools–or PSU could assure that they keep their scholarships while just attending classes like everybody else and finding other extracurricular activities to keep them busy. As for those who attend the games, they, too, can find another way to spend time and another reason to get drunk. Any employees who would be out of work could be made whole by the university. Lots of colleges don’t have football teams. They manage just fine. For years the first thing that came into anyone mind when Penn State was mentioned was football. That should never have been the case with an institute of higher learning, and taking action that will change that perception can only be a good thing. When college athletic programs become farm teams for pro sports, the whole system is screwed up.</p>
<p>I am never a fan of TYT Network (especially Cenk Uygur), but this short clip summarized many legitimate ramifications regarding the damning impacts of Freeh Report on PSU which had been raised here, as well as brief discussion of ‘death penalty’ at 9:05. </p>
<p>[Freeh</a> Report on PSU - YouTube](<a href=“Freeh Report on PSU - YouTube”>Freeh Report on PSU - YouTube)</p>
<p>To repeat something coureur posted:</p>
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<p>Because i don’t believe that a football program “runs an entire school.” I believe administration and the athletic department run the program and it sounds like there were problems within the administration and the athletic department. Just like a corporate exec, the management team and company spokespeople set the tone for a company doesn’t mean that everyone in that company believes the executive team, but they might tow to the party line to keep their jobs. And tt you missed the point entirely by ‘defending’ the educational mission of the college and saying that the situation with pedophiles in an educational area is ‘different.’ It is I who am speechless.</p>
<p>I also understand that it takes all the pieces of the pie for an educational institution to survive…if that is Div I or Div II or Div III the pieces of the pie might take on different proportions but if you want to eliminate football at Penn State to ‘make a point’ about the educational vision for the university then why not shut down all athletic programs for a year or two and rebuild the whole thing - no one is screaming for Penn State to shut down all their athletics.</p>
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<p>That could be said about UofM, Nebraska, several of the SEC schools and several of the Pac 10 schools, most of the schools in Texas…come on…I’m as guilty of being a educational snob as the next person but I understand the history of the scholar athlete as stretched thin as it has become in the past forty years.</p>
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<p>If I were a PSU student, I probably wouldn’t want to attend games for a while.</p>
<p>^^If you would normally go to football games, and not all kids do, my two oldest never have gone to their college football games, my youngest plays football and hopes to attend a college with a great football tradition rather than actually play Div III at a small school. Why would you not attend a game? What if your roommate was a football player or a marching band player or a cheerleader? What would you be thinking that would make you stay away? Personally, I don’t like going to football games, but if I were starting at Penn State in the fall I would probably go to the games to support those kids that are practicing and playing their hearts out in the August and September heat in total chaos.</p>
<p>With regard to the idea that “other schools” will “pick up” the Penn State players - really? Has the NCAA promised this - what do the other Div I coaches think? What do other universities of that caliber think? Are they ready to pick up the players on a dime so that they are “whole” and how will they do it? By the kids major/GPA/ACT/SAT sort of like a mini-recruiting session? If anyone believes this will happen I’ve got some land to sell you.</p>