BishopAccountability.org
	At Penn State, Another Institution Too Big Too Fail By Chuck Raasch Newark Advocate November 12, 2011 http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20111112/OPINION02/111120317 Setting aside the anger and sadness, you can boil the Penn State scandal down to this: yet another case where the protectors of an institution believed it was too big to fail. Once again, damn the consequences for the little guy. And sorrowfully, in these allegations of sexual abuse of minors by a former assistant coach in a powerful football program, the victims truly are little guys. You cannot read the 23-page indictment without being heartbroken for boys, some as young as 7 or 8 when they were allegedly assaulted, who will carry lifelong psychological scars. And you cannot read it and come to any other conclusion that, if the allegations are true, everyone in a position of authority, including legendary head coach Joe Paterno, failed to protect them. There is a continuum from the coverups in the Catholic Church over sexual abuse by priests to the meltdown on Wall Street to the shame of Happy Valley. All are symptomatic of a modern public ethos that puts institutions above individuals, self-preservation above all else. It allows churches to transfer abusers rather than punish them. CEOs to land with golden parachutes while leaving layoffs and failure in their wake. Government to bail out big banks while leaving millions of people to fight for survival in the wake of their reckless gambles. And it allows the authority figures at Penn State to leave an alleged predator on the loose for years in what amounts to institutional child abuse. If these allegations are true, at Penn State, the powerful protected the institution. An institution -- the iconic football program and its record-setting coach -- had become too big to fail. And so on Wednesday, the Penn State board of governors dismissed Paterno and University President Graham Spanier to protect the university. Commentators speculated about the future of the Penn State "brand." Students rioted on JoePa's behalf. All of them missed the point. It is about the children. I write this as the father of a Penn State alumnus and a longtime admirer of Paterno. His Penn State program was old school solid down to the plain uniforms. We've become numb to the corruption and self-aggrandizement of big-time college sports, but we counted on Penn State as a throwback holdout, an institution that built men of character to do the right thing even when no one was looking -- especially when no one was looking. The football program's unstated credo was, "We turn boys into righteous men." In a Sports Illustrated article several years ago, Paterno's son, Jay, said his dad once told him: "Every player we have, someone -- maybe a parent, a grandparent, someone -- poured their life and soul into that young man. They are handing that young man off to us. They are giving us their treasure, and it's our job to make sure we give them back that young man intact and ready to face the world." The accused are innocent until proven guilty. Ultimately, JoePa may win a majority verdict in the court of public opinion. He is loved on campus far beyond the football program; he donated millions for education, was a ubiquitous cheerleader for students and a grandfatherly comfort to young people who came to campus seeking a life path. And while the facts laid out in the indictment clear Paterno legally, they do not absolve him morally. When confronted with a moment in which a helpless boy might have received justice and he and other boys might have been protected from an alleged abuser with powerful connections, the great coach appeared to have done the minimum his institution required. He reported it to superiors, and neither he nor the people he reported to took it outside to the police. A football legend who demanded so much more than the minimum from generations of young men appears to have done the minimum when it mattered the most. An on-campus bust of Paterno includes an inscription asking that he be remembered as more than a football coach. In the wake of this scandal, he wrote a competing epitaph: "This is a tragedy," he said in a statement issued hours before his firing. "... With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more." Let's be crystal clear. The victims are the kids, not the university or the football program that Paterno built. Commentary about whether Penn State can rebuild its "brand" or keep next year's football recruits is part of the problem. Great institutions -- those of mercy, humanity and humility -- do the right thing and let others worry about the brand. And ultimately, Penn State has plenty to define it beyond Linebacker U. A few weeks ago, on a blustery Saturday morning, a group of Penn State students in blue-and-white sweatshirts stood outside a suburban Washington, D.C., shopping center, soliciting donations in cans for THON, a charity run by Penn State students that has raised more than $78 million for child cancer research. Hundreds of Penn State kids often travel up and down the Eastern Seaboard on weekends to raise money for THON in a ritual they call "canning." They are Penn State. Chuck Raasch writes from Washington for Gannett. Contact him at craasch@gannett.com , follow him at twitter.com/craasch or join in the conversation at www.facebook.com/raaschcolumn.
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