This will be relatively short. I do agree with the firing of Joe Paterno after the shocking week at Penn State University. In 2002, after he was approached by the graduate assistant who knew of the assistant coach’s gross inappropriate conduct, Joe Pa should have gone NOT to the Athletic Director nor even to the head of the school, he should have gone to THE POLICE! He was morally and (most importantly in this case) legally obligated to do something more. Instead the assistant coach’s actions were covered up. It may be easy to say… “In hindsight….” Well… in my eyes, that does not excuse the suffering of the 25 (I believe) victims of the crime. The 61 year coaching tenure of the most winning and one of the most revered coach’s in college football history ended by scandal. Not a good year for Big 10 football off the field.
I did not know the details about what Paterno knew or didn’t know, so thanks for filling me in. I did think the thousands of students resorting to violent and unruly protests was a dumb way to try to get their voices heard, and it did seem as if they were jumping to conclusions and a too-quick defense of Paterno. Now that I know the details, the protests seem especially ignorant.
An additional note – I was not happy about the comparison being made between this scandal and that of the Catholic church, not comparable and it’s a sad thing altogether that we even have 2 scandals like this to compare.
The news reported that there were some students at the gathering who agreed with the firing but did not want to be filmed for fear of their safety.