<p>“Mini, those articles, as I read, them, don’t quote the spokesman as listing specifically what was revoked. That list is a list of elements of the package.”</p>
<p>Every article says the same thing: the spokesman named the elements of the package that were revoked.</p>
<p>As I noted already, there would be good reasons (in a very twisted way) why they would not revoke his academic title at this time. </p>
<p>I would love to be corrected - to learn that there really are ADULTS on the Penn State faculty. But I haven’t heard or read of any, and I’ve looked hard.</p>
<p>I keep learning things that turn my stomach. As in:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The football program refused to go along with training about abuse and the like. Penn State never managed to comply with the Clery Act until after Paterno was gone. The Clery Act has been in place since 1990.</p></li>
<li><p>Victim 1 in the trial and his family had to be moved by the county and placed in a house guarded by dogs with state police on alert because of threats of physical harm to the boy and at least his mother. Utterly shameful.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So it’s become clear to me that the Penn State community has to be punished. They all were wrong. You can say “they placed their faith in Paterno” but I’m with Thomas Mann on this: when asked to return to Germany after WWII, he said that Germany had sold its collective soul to the devil and would not so easily be redeemed. That is what Penn State has done: they sold their soul to the devil in the guise of football and a coach they wanted desperately to revere. Take it away from them. They should not so easily be redeemed.</p>
<p>Mini, there may be reasons not to revoke the title. But there are better reasons in favor of revoking.</p>
<p>The BOT can do the right thing. The BOT can support the school or the Football program. It has to decide its priorities. For me, it is an easy decision.</p>
<p>McQueary also had to be moved and guarded when this all came to light. The threat was from the PSU community, infuriated that someone was threatening the program.</p>
<p>Yes, law enforcement often does that (operate under the principles of Occam’s Razor) and then the lawyers pick it apart. Thank you for reinforcing what I was trying to say.</p>
<p>It requires a lot of twisting and a lot of suspension of disbelief to believe that the events that are portrayed in these emails didn’t, well, actually occur as the emails suggest. Or that the discussion was really with Joe the Plumber over installing astroturf, and whaddya know, the general contractor who installed astroturf for Penn State was also named Sandusky, small world. </p>
<p>Why is it so upsetting to you to draw the conclusion that Paterno knew / directed or influenced Curley / Schultz to keep the Sandusky-problem on the down-low?</p>
<p>Just quickly looked over Penn State’s HR policies, and there doesn’t seem to be a process for stripping someone of Emeritus status. There are processes for dismissals of staff and non-tenure-track faculty, and additional procedural safeguards for dismissal of tenured and tenure-track faculty. But the policies are clear that procedures for “dismissal” apply to people who employed by the university. Someone on Emeritus status is no longer an employee (unless hired on a temporary contractual basis); they just have the honorific title, and a few modest perks that go with it (parking at faculty rates, faculty library privileges, faculty discounts in the campus bookstore, a university ID card, internet account, access to recreational facilities, etc).</p>
<p>The policy on Emeritus Rank says this status is normally automatic for retiring professors, associate professors, librarians, associate librarians, senior scientists, senior research associates, executives, associate deans, and directors of academic units “in recognition of meritorious service.” It also says the President may grant Emeritus Rank “on an exception basis.” Not sure about the grammar of that last bit, but that’s the provision Spanier used to grant Emeritus status to Sandusky, who never held any of the job titles normally awarded Emeritus status. </p>
<p>But it says nothing about revoking or terminating Emeritus status. That seems to be something they just didn’t contemplate.</p>
<p>I’m with kayf (post #6428); I think Erickson, the interim president, should just send Sandusky a letter saying his Emeritus status has been terminated, shut down his internet account, and terminate his ID card so it no longer works in the library, university rec facilities, etc. Let the b**tard sue if he thinks he’s entitled to keep the title and the perks. And in the meantime, add a clear policy and procedure for termination of Emeritus status “for cause,” which would include, e.g., conviction of a felony.</p>
Yes, and it says that the simplest solution (in this case meaning the one with the fewest assumptions) is the most likely solution. I am not arguing that. I am not even arguing that Paterno most likely did it. I am arguing that Paterno probably DID do it, but with the dearth of evidence and the death of the accused that a definitive answer is supposition. I am agreeing with Occam’s Razor - the simplest solution is that Paterno was guilty of collusion in the cover up (and thereby perjury), and that is therefore the most likely explanation for what happened. What I am DISagreeing with is that this is therefore the only possible solution, something that Occam’s Razor does NOT suggest.</p>
As I said earlier, communications from the university on the Sandusky affair are being very tightly controlled. You are not going to hear any opinions on this from anyone but the spokesmen for the BoT and President. That does not mean that discussions have not taken place, it does not mean that the faculty does not want to do so, it simply means that after all the communications disasters someone has decided that this should not be released yet.</p>
I think it takes less twisting than you do, but I have already stated, repeatedly, that the most likely answer is that, as you suggest, Paterno “did it”. My issue is placing the certainty of that conclusion on the same level as the Theory of Gravitation, as many are wont to do.</p>
<p>
First of all, if you cannot understand why that conclusion is disturbing, you do not understand that Paterno was, if not as revered as the media thinks, at least respected as a straight arrow. His collusion in this matter is almost as disturbing as priests molesting kids - his prior reputation makes it worse.</p>
<p>That having been said, how disturbing it is has no bearing on its truth, nor have I suggested that this is the case.</p>
<p>Personally, I would be happy if there were an interpretation of the facts that didn’t mean that Joe Paterno was a secret monster all along. I’d like to think that he was misguided, misinformed, mistaken, etc. It’s getting harder to think that, of course, but some of the facts remain equivocal as to just what he knew and believed, and when. Unfortunately, I suspect the facts won’t get much clearer, because since he’s dead it will be awfully easy for others to say that Joe told them what to do, whether he did or not.</p>
<p>Obviously, Sandusky was a secret monster. I wish it weren’t true.</p>
<p>I agree, but he might find it a little … awkward. As it turns out, it was Erickson who signed off on Sandusky’s Emeritus status in the first place, saying in an email (paraphrasing), “Hopefully no one will look too carefully at this in the future.”</p>
<p>FWIW, I grew up in Pennsylvania. I GET that Paterno was respected as the straight arrow. Which is precisely the problem here - refusal to believe that someone who was otherwise a straight arrow likely colluded to cover up something very, very bad. But idolizing this man because he coached football is ridiculous. He wasn’t ever a “hero” - he didn’t run into burning buildings to save children. The overstatement of who he was as a person before the scandal is ridiculous. He was a winning football coach. That’s all. He wasn’t the second coming.</p>
<p>His prior reputation indeed makes it <em>worse.</em> But it doesn’t make it <em>unbelievable.</em> Suppose he had just been Coach Average, winning a few games and losing a few, and a coach in an unremarkable program without national stature. Would your reactions to the emails, etc. be any different?</p>
<p>Lasma, I have no reason to believe that Erickson had any issues with the original appointment other than Sandusky’s total lack of academic qualification. No one is suggesting the title be revoked for that reason. If I were Erickson, and anyone asked me, I would say exactly that. I made a mistake giving Sandusky the title in the first place. But the magnitude of the mistake of appointing someone academically unqualified to an honorary position pales in comparison to the molestation issue. Frankly, even if an academically qualified Professor Emeritus had been convicted of molestation (as unlikely as that would be), if I were Erickson, I would still revoke the title and let the b@@stard sue me.</p>
<p>Well… yeah, exactly. Which raises the question “Then why DID you grant it to him?” I don’t think that’s a question Erickson wants to answer. Especially when he admitted at the time – in writing – that it wasn’t kosher.</p>
<p>No, he was more than a winning football coach. He was a winning football coach who ran a squeaky clean Division IA program and who graduated almost all of his players. Those contrast him with the football coaches at many, perhaps most, of the other football-factories-masquerading-as-universities, aka the Division IA schools.</p>
<p>That is what makes his fall from grace surprising, and to me, somewhat of a tragedy. A lifetime of achievement and well-deserved respect from a lot of people, including a lot of us who had no real interest in big time college sports or Pennsylvania State University, now overshadowed by one series of horrid decisions. I’m not in any way defending what he did or did not do in the Sandusky matter, for that is indefensible, nor am I arguing that his lifetime of achievements should excuse his malfeasance in the Sandusky affair. He needs - or, more accurately, his legacy needs - to be held accountable.</p>
<p>If I were the decision maker, the statue would come down. In addition, the university needs to cleanse itself, to show general contrition, and the only way to do that, IMO, is to shut down the football program for two years. Yes, some innocent people will be inconvenienced, but they can be compensated and cared for. But until that happens, no matter what they do, many of us will consider it as business as usual and be unable to ignore the stench that continues to emanate from Happy Valley.</p>