When the Rule of Law Falls Beneath the Code of Morals

While we at The National Patriot do not venture off the political stage I am hoping you, our fine readers, will allow something of an exception here.

For more than 40 years, one man has either paced the sidelines or led from the box in Penn State. He has become the most successful coach in college football history. Joe Paterno and his career seem to be finished due to a sex scandal at that school.

Allow me for a moment to add some personal disclosure here. I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, and to this day, I am a true dyed in the wool Husker fan. I was attending the University of Nebraska back in the early 1980s when one of the most contentious games ever played between the Huskers and Penn State took place. Penn State won that game with the assistance of a couple of the worst calls ever seen by the officials.

Decades later, Graham Spanier, the current President of Penn State, was the President of the University of Nebraska.

This weekend, Nebraska, now playing in their 1^st season in the Big 10 Conference has a road game…in Happy Valley against Penn State.

To say I have been looking forward to this game would be an understatement – but now, the game has been overshadowed. While as a Husker, I have always hated losing to Penn State, I have always respected the team and the coach because that’s how Husker fans are. Now, that level of respect is gone…Completely.

Jerry Sandusky turned the Penn State defense around and turned that program into what is widely considered, by football fans and pundits, as “Linebacker U” and for years, the Penn State defense has been a thing to behold. Sandusky was a brilliant assistant coach under Joe Paterno but now we are told the man has a very dark side.

Sandusky, who runs a children’s charity organization, allegedly, is a pedophile. Allegations from those who were violated by Sandusky are coming to light. I say allegedly a pedophile because Sandusky is innocent until proven guilty in court.

That said, it was, reportedly, back in 2002, when another assistant, apparently a grad assistant and now receiver coach at Penn State, in the football program, Mike McQuearey, told Paterno what he witnessed in the football locker room shower between Sandusky and a child the day before. The allegations are not for the faint of heart and will not be repeated here.

Paterno, reportedly took the matter to Athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz have been charged with failing to notify authorities who sent it on to other school officials.

Sandusky, a few months later, had his keys to the facility taken away but he was anything but off the campus and for that matter, was seen on campus just last week and reportedly, the man still had access to the football facilities.

Over the last several days, some 8 young men have now come forward to level these allegations against Sandusky and just a couple days ago, Sandusky and another man were arrested. Allegedly this all took place between 1994 and 2009.

Now, Penn State, is reeling. Spanier, it seems, is within hours of losing his job as Penn State’s President. Other school officials are on the ropes and Joe Paterno, the famed and storied head coach, a man considered by many in his state to be the most powerful man in all of Pennsylvania, has announced that he will retire at the end of this season.

I don’t think he’s going to make it that far. I don’t think he SHOULD make it that far.

Paterno violated no law and there are no charges against him nor any charges pending.

Joe Paterno violated the morals of decent people and for that, he will, I believe, be fired.

Paterno SHOULD have called the police.

Curley and Schultz should have called the police.

Spanier should have called the police.

McQuearey should have called the police too.

None of them called the police and not one of them did anything to protect that young boy.

One wonders how many more boys were subjected to Sandusky since that day in 2002.

Morality in a case such as this, is a standard higher than the law. If the allegations against Sandusky prove to be true, he has violated the law, never had any morals to begin with and left in his wake, torment, pain and ruined lives.

Everybody has an obligation to do what is right. When it comes to the well being of children, I offer doing what is right is more than an obligation. What Paterno and others who knew of the allegations back then didn’t do is now reflecting upon their school and will for years taint the program’s achievements. Forget those achievements and forget the fallout.

Focus on those young boys and their lives. Focus on how they felt then and how it has affected them since and how they will be perceived in the future. Focus on that and tell me that anyone, including Paterno, who was aware of it then, should be there today.

The futures of Paterno and the others who were aware of the incident don’t hinge on whether or not Sandusky is found guilty, that’s not the point. Paterno was the first, as far as we know, to be told of what was seen in that shower and Paterno then passed it up the chain. Had Paterno, McQuearey, Schultz, Curley, Spanier or who knows who else, called the police an investigation would have begun and Sandusky would have been found innocent, or guilty and the right thing would have been done.

Nobody called the police. Nobody.  And Nobody, not even McQuearey who witnessed what he witnessed did one single thing to protect that boy. Not one thing.

What Sandusky is accused of doing is sickening. That others were aware of it and did nothing, I suggest, is just as sickening.

Paterno has released a statement saying, “I am absolutely devastated by the developments in this case I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

Not good enough Joe.

Paterno should be fired from his 1 million dollar per year job and any retirement accrued since 2002 should be negated. There should be no severance package either and the same should be applied to each and every Penn State official who was aware, back in 2002 of what McQuearey witnessed.

To many, what is now happening at Penn State is a football issue or at most, a school issue. That’s not the way I see it.

To me, this is an example of what happens when morality in our society is relegated to the back burner. This is the outcome of a society more interested in an institution than in the individual. All those who knew what happened that day in that shower protected the institution and their own jobs while ignoring the needs of the individual.

To me, what we have here are people who believe they are too big to fail until the entire system crashes down around them and even then they believe they can simply…retire.

Spend a few decades taking God out of the classroom and removing God from the social conscience, mocking morality and values and what do you have?

Penn State University 2012 via the laws of unintended consequences.

Sandusky has to answer alone for what he is accused of doing. Those who knew and did nothing must answer for what they didn’t do.

Firing those who wish they had done more or who knew and did nothing doesn’t make this right but it is the right thing to do.