Penn State Scandal a Crisis of Faith in Happy Valley, by Bruce Arthur, National Post, November 14, 2011

Penn State Scandal a Crisis of Faith in Happy Valley

By Bruce Arthur
National Post
November 14, 2011

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/11/13/penn-state-scandal-a-crisis-of-faith-in-happy-valley/

Toni Frankenfield, from Houtzdale, Pennsylvania, signs a placard at the Joe Paterno statue prior to the NCAA football game between Nebraska and Penn State in State College, Pennsylvania November 12, 2011.

‘We are,” they chant. “Penn State,” they answer. It is an article of the faith here. There are many such articles, because the faith is deep and genuine and until a week ago, it was not really faith at all. It was belief. Faith denotes the absence of evidence, and there was abundant evidence that this place, nicknamed Happy Valley, was a good place. That it was better.

“Everyone has come in and — understandably, and correctly — talked about the danger of lionizing a football coach, and the danger of this sense of a community that’s so insular, and so geographically isolated, of everybody in this thing thinking it’s OK,” says one member of the faculty. “But there wasn’t any widespread reason to think everything wasn’t OK. There just wasn’t.”

***

Almost nobody, not even the truly faithful, will argue on behalf of Jerry Sandusky. At least eight unrelated children have separately testified to a grand jury that the legendary former Penn State defensive co-ordinator sexually abused them. More victims have stepped out into the light. It seems inevitable more will do the same.

But Sandusky did not operate in a vacuum. The grand jury report says that in 2002 then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky raping a child in the athletic department shower; that he told iconic football coach Joe Paterno, who testified he was only told the contact was of “a sexual nature”; that Paterno told athletic director Tim Curley and vice-president Gary Schultz; that Curley and Schultz told university president Graham Spanier. None of them did anything that would stop Sandusky. None of them called the police. A decade went by.

There had been other chances to catch Sandusky; every time, he slipped through the cracks. But this one went all the way to the top of Penn State, and this week the story exploded and turned radioactive. Curley and Schultz have been charged with perjury, and have left their posts. On Wednesday Spanier resigned, and Paterno — the symbol of this university, 84, the most tenured man in America — was fired over the phone by the board of trustees. And as some Penn State students protested and damaged property — “riot” was an overstatement — the world outside Happy Valley wondered how this place could, even in part, defend the indefensible.

Part of the answer is that inside the bubble, this is not a debate; this is a crisis of faith. People are wary of the media, which has descended on this town; many don’t want their names used, or to talk at all. Those not in denial, and there are many, are trying to understand how people they considered good men — in some cases, better than merely good – could commit such unforgivable sins of omission. They cannot understand it.

“These are good people,” says one State College native who grew up with McQueary, along with the sons of Curley and Paterno, and who knows the families well. “Growing up [McQueary] was always a great athlete, so he played with older kids; he got picked on a lot for that, but he was a very straight arrow. He wouldn’t drink when the rest of us would go out and party. He was clean-cut. He was responsible. Tim Curley — he just felt like an authority figure. Like if you had a problem, he’d be the guy you’d go to. Those two people were the straightest arrows I knew.”

The State College native wonders especially about McQueary. “I’m trying to find a reason to do what he did. I can’t. Hearing what he saw, I can’t believe he didn’t punch the guy out in the shower. It’s not like [McQueary’s] a small guy. The only thing I can think of is it was his old coach.”

Joe Paterno

Then there is Paterno. Everyone in town has a JoePa story, just as every restaurant seems to have at least one picture of the great man on the wall. He would walk to his office, or walk the golf course on Saturday mornings, and go unbothered. It was just JoePa.

“People saw him all the time,” says one local. “My wife and I were at the liquor store a few months ago, and he was in line behind us with his bottle of Old Grand-Dad. It was Tuesday, lunchtime. He could have sent an assistant. He went down to the liquor store to get his whisky.”

Growing up it was the same; everyone knew where JoePa lived, and you would ring his doorbell to play football with his son, and Paterno would answer the door and yell for Scott. He is listed in the phone book; apparently, up until this week you could call and there was a good chance his wife Sue would pick up, and chat with you. As the State College native put it, “He had the authority of a king, and he acted like your neighbour.”

Paterno has been here for six decades, and he won two national championships and went undefeated five times without an NCAA violation, and he got his players to graduate. He has donated millions, and raised millions, and been the beating heart that powered the stunning growth of this mammoth university, which counts some 20 campuses and over half a million living alumni and almost 100,000 students, nearly half of whom attend school in State College. More, he helped set a tone that this was a place built on morality and success, at the same time. You can get two Penn State-affiliated credit cards. One has a picture of the lion shrine on it. The other one has a picture of Joe.

So how could Joe not do more? How could Joe commit such a monstrous ethical lapse?

“People who are angry about [Paterno’s firing] aren’t angry because they want to defend a guy who may have covered up for a child molester,” says a university employee. “They’re angry because of this guy they’ve known in many cases their whole lives as this sign and symbol of integrity, and success, and doing things the right way … It’s hard [to understand] from outside.”

They don’t want to believe, in other words, that Joe Paterno is anything but JoePa. They can’t imagine that this could be true.

As the scandal mushroomed this week, the athletic department sent out an email telling athletes they may feel as though they have lost a loved one. It included a checklist of symptoms, and said a counsellor could be provided. One track athlete got a call from his father back in Zimbabwe who said, “What’s going on at your school? Do I need to bring you home?”