Mid-Day Rant: Penn State Student Protests

Students I get it, you wanted a reason to gather in the masses last night, but was it justified?  Had we had the same situation two years ago in Wisconsin, I could guarantee you I would have been among the crowd on Bascom Hill.  Yet, was there any reason for thousands of you to march on campus last night?  The only reason I could come up with is in twenty years you can say, “Remember when JoePa was fired, I was there, I protested.”

Thousands of students gathered last night to protest
the firing of their beloved coach. 

 However, in twenty years from now, I will hope you will realize that the trustees made the right decision.  Paterno had to go!  Everyone who was involved in this situation had to be accountable for their actions.  Joe Paterno has been steering the ship at Penn State for 46 years and as any good captain would do, he has to go down with the ship. 

I am not solely blaming Joe Paterno either; he took the matter to the proper authorities who failed to act diligently.  At that point, Paterno should have done more and it is easy to say that you or I would have taken those necessary actions. Yet, I was not there; I was not in his shoes.  I tell myself, as does everyone else, that we would have taken the proper steps to prevent this from happening again.  However, nobody but the people involved can truly attest to what actions took place and what was actual said during those days in 2002. Personally, I think we are at the tip of the iceberg and within the coming months, we will hear a lot more details that will make us cringe.

By the end of the night, police were bringing out
the pepper spray to control crowds. 

But all of that is beside the point.  Collectively as a whole, Penn State failed the victims.  There were enough authoritative figures that caught wind of Sandusky’s appalling actions to stop him from committing the crimes over and over.  So as a whole, they failed the children.  Therefore, everyone involved needed be removed from their position of power.  There needs to be no blame game, no “I told him, so I did my job” in this situation.  There is no excuse that should allow any member party to keep a position at Penn State. 

Had Paterno been on the sidelines on Saturday, it would have just added more popcorn to the circus that, in no doubt in my mind, will take place at Beaver Stadium.  Since he is not there, maybe for those brief three hours, the students, fans, and players can enjoy a football game and put Sandusky’s disgraceful acts in the back of their minds.  Yet in the end, it is just football and the situation at hand is much bigger than some legendary coach’s record or a pig skin being thrown around. So students, the trustees made the right call so if there is a next time, think twice before you start throwing rocks and smashing car windshields. 

*Check back later for another article on Joe Paterno’s legacy.