We all have legal responsibilities, and we all have moral ones; things we must do, and things society expects us to do.
You have a legal responsibility not to rob someone, of course, but if you’re walking down the street and see another person getting mugged, you aren’t required to do anything. What we value as a society dictates that you should take some action, though—call the police, at least, or maybe help the person who’s in trouble.
But you really don’t have to do anything. You can cross the street and put it out of your mind. You can act like it never happened.
And if you are a graduate student assistant in the Penn State football program and you see a defensive coordinator sexually assaulting a child in the locker room showers, you don’t have to stop him or go running to every media outlet that will listen to tell them what you saw. That’s not what Mike McQueary did in 2002, when he allegedly saw former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky assaulting a young boy—he told head coach Joe Paterno. That should have been enough.
Instead, Paterno did nothing more than what he was legally required to do: He alerted Athletic Director Tim Curley, who told Penn State President Graham Spanier. No one told the police. No one seems to have considered the victim.
Paterno and Spanier fulfilled their obligation to the law, but not to our society; not to that child, and not to the seven other boys (and perhaps more, if new reports are to be believed), some as young as 8 years old, Sandusky allegedly assaulted between 1994 and 2008.
And as a result, Paterno has shown himself, his athletic department and his university to be a group of cowards who put their own interests before the safety of children.
When he announced he would step down at the end of the season, we all knew that would be too little, too late. By ousting Paterno and Spanier Wednesday night, Penn State made the right choice, removing from their university two people who violated public trust and thoroughly disgraced their university. The university’s Board of Trustees showed itself to be, if nothing else, more responsible and more willing to act than the school’s head coach and president. As sports columnist Bruce Arthur tweeted soon after the announcement, “The right heads roll.”
Until Wednesday, we’d seen nothing but silence from every level of Penn State’s Athletic Department. The closest thing we got to a statement from Paterno was the one he gave to hundreds of misguided Penn State fans who gathered outside his house to support him Tuesday night.
“The kids that were victims or whatever they want to say, I think we all ought to say a prayer for them,” Paterno said.
“Tough life, when people do certain things to you. But anyway, you’ve been great,” he added, before disappearing into the group of people chanting, “Let Joe stay.”
Standing on your lawn and telling the victims of sexual assault “tough life” doesn’t take a bit of courage, neither does keeping your mouth shut when you know children are in danger.
You what takes courage? Coming forward and taking action against your attacker, like eight of the people Sandusky allegedly assaulted did.
There is another reason people are calling for Joe Paterno’s head, though: We want to believe that, if we were in his shoes, there’s no way we would have stayed silent, that we would have told the police and made sure we protected those kids. But we might not have been able to do that. We might not have made sure we did what was right.
What we would have done isn’t the point, though, because we aren’t the head coach responsible for a major football program or the president of a massive university. Paterno and Spanier were given their jobs because they were supposed to know the difference between right and wrong; because they were trusted to make hard decisions. They violated our trust and the values of our society, of course, but to take a less personal view of it, they also didn’t do their jobs. That’s why they lost them Wednesday night.
“We promise you that we are committed to restoring public trust in our university,” the Penn State Board of Trustees said at the press conference announcing that Spanier and Paterno were through.
One way to do that, as Penn State searches for a new president and head coach, is to find people with real courage—people who know to do more than what’s required, people who know to do what’s right.
E-mail all comments and feedback for Nico to nicosavidge@gmail.com.
