↓ Archives ↓

Posts Tagged → Paterno

is Penn State for real?

I know, I know, PSU alum are not supposed to criticize our Mother Ship, Penn State University. But the cold hard facts are material, and it is important to at least raise one’s voice about important things.

For the record, I do not hate Penn State, though I have severed my commitment to PSU football because of the brutally unfair way the PSU board treated my hero and universally admired icon  coach Joe Paterno. No, the opposite is true, I care very much about PSU.  I am grateful for the stellar undergraduate education I received there. In fact, I received as good or better an education at PSU as or than available at supposedly elite Ivy League schools. That is because PSU is so large, has so many facilities and professors, that anyone who really wants to be educated, to talk with their professors, to spend time debating and studying with like-minded students, can spend all their time as a student being educated. If they but want to.

Which is pretty much what I did there. I served on the Student Senate, ran for student body president, engaged in all kinds of political activism, and studied, studied, studied. My professors, notably Art Goldschmidt, Jackson Spielvogel, Jim Eisenstein, and especially Ed Keynes, helped me grow as only a devoted educator can do. I served many of my best professors as a teaching or research assistant. They each studied me, saw my strengths and weaknesses, and challenged me in ways and in areas where I needed to grow the most, and where that growth would matter the most to my eventual debut as an educated adult.

On the other hand, my impression of Ivy League schools is that they are so one-dimensional and politically correct, that one must only gain entry and then spend four years parroting and agreeing with one’s professors to get out with a degree. No growth, no challenge, no self-development at the Ivy league schools, just indoctrination by the staff and parroting back by the students. Where is the value in that?

So what the hell is going on at Penn State with the sky-high tuition? At $38,000 a year IN STATE tuition, PSU ranks right up there with many private schools as well as public universities OUT of state.

Being run now strictly as a profit-loss bottom-line business, as opposed to an educational institution, PSU sets tuition fees that are affordable only to wealthy students, crazy parents, foreign students backed by foreign governments, and  the children of PSU employees.  Ye olde regular American or Pennsylvanian family simply cannot afford the Pennsylvania STATE university.

This situation is exacerbated by a so-called professional caste of elected officials, state representatives and state senators, who tell us all the time that they are professionals and they know what they are doing. What they are doing with PSU is constantly shoveling into its gaping maw more and more taxpayer money, with zero strings attached. No special scholarships for highly qualifying Pennsylvania students. No accountability to the taxpayers, no service to the Pennsylvania public.

And for those who justify this unfair situation because PSU is a big research station, OK, you name the program and let’s look into it. Some are pretty good, and some are worthless. For example, PSU has its own breeder reactor, so we know the PSU students of nuclear physics are probably getting cutting-edge education from nuclear physics researchers there. On the other hand, fake “climate researcher” Michael Mann was just hugely discredited in a court of law, and ordered to pay big legal fees as a result. Mann could not produce in court the data he used to make his name peddling phony science. As we all know, science is totally about reproducability, the ability to reproduce experiments and outcomes that other scientists have claimed. Mann cannot do that. Mann has been a political activist first and foremost, and has besmirched PSU’s good name as a research institution.

Maybe Mann can be now sued by Pennsylvania taxpayers for his fraud, and compelled to create a scholarship fund with his many ill-gotten gains.

We can call it the “Penn State Real Science Scholarship Fund.” And if it has only five bucks in it, it will still be a hell of a lot more than PSU has so far designated to supporting qualified in-state students who want to study real subjects.

 

Penn State Football deserves its wins back

The NCAA over-reached in its punishment of Penn State and its football program.

Some of the punishment has been reversed.

But Penn State still deserves to get their winning record back.  Those wins had zero to do with Jerry Sandusky’s pedophilia.

Many of us PSU almni suspect that the NCAA aimed to hurt Joe Paterno, the Paterno Way, and his football records.  The NCAA seemed disinterested in actual justice.  Poking holes in heroes makes everyone else equal.

NCAA, you owe us our record back.  Give us back our wins.

 

Corbett’s Ten Percent challenge

Looking at the statewide vote results (votes Corbett received compared to votes Jim Cawley received) and at counties where Bob Guzzardi appeared on the ballot opposite governor Tom Corbett, it appears there’s about ten percent of Republican voters who are seriously disaffected with Corbett.

These are the voters who could not bring themselves to vote for Corbett, even while voting for other Republicans, or who actively wrote in alternative names.  York County has a surprisingly high number of about 25%.

Are these the angry Penn Staters, whose murky ghost has been hovering in Corbett’s background since the fictional Louis Freeh report sank the beloved institution known as Joe Paterno, and took down his creation (PSU), too?  Corbett seemed to join in the blaming of Paterno for the predations of Jerry Sandusky, or at least his actions and statements left many Penn Staters wondering if he did. 

Or are these voters associated with some of Corbett’s better known “Oopsy” moments, like personally standing at a lectern, reading glasses and pencil in hand, roll-call strong arming the Republican State Committee into reluctantly endorsing Steve Welch for US Senate. Republican voters later overwhelmingly rejected the very urban, effete Welch, and embraced muddy boots, down to earth coal miner Tom Smith.

Maybe these are voters affiliated with people who were once close to Corbett, but who did not see ‘promises kept’ at the personal level.

It’s impossible now to know exactly who these voters are, and whether or not they can be brought back into the Republican fold in time for November’s general election.  Plenty of polls, voter surveys, and canvassing are going to occur in the coming weeks, in search of the necessary mix of voters to get Corbett into his second term.

One thing is for sure: In Democrat-heavy Pennsylvania, Corbett wins only with a fully unified Republican party behind him. Right now, he’s got real work to do to achieve that.

Penn State Pain

Players names on football jerseys just does not compute. Feeling mucho pain over the NCAA atomic bomb on PSU’s football program, watching games the past couple of years has been tough to do. Am I a loyal PSU alum? Sure. But with superlame trustees, the school has given up on nearly all it stood for over the past five decades. If the trustees don’t care, why should I fight so hard to clear Paterno’s name and values? And why should I be expected to cheer on something a mere shadow of its former self?

The Joe Paterno Empire Strikes Back

The family of late Penn State University football coach, icon, leader, and hero Joe Paterno has struck back at the “investigative” report by former US FBI director Louis Freeh.

Releasing an analysis of Freeh’s report that is similar to one posted on this blog last year (https://joshfirst.com/blog/2012/08/16/the-sandusky-disaster-kids-lose-penn-state-loses-ncaa-loses-theres-still-no-lesson-here/), the Paternos have taken an important step in regaining lost ground.

Lost ground was rapidly created by an uncritical press, willing to serve up maudlin caricatures of what may have happened around convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky, rather than carefully scrutinize the facts and evidence we have in front of us, and then wait for the facts and evidence that we do not have but yet expect to see come out in the upcoming trials of Spanier, Curley, and Shultz.

A rush to judgment has never been so well documented, and then so well defended by a sea of armchair quarterbacks using 20/20 hindsight. Analyzing the comments on internet sites, like Forbes, ESPN, and any other reporting or opinion venue, you’d think that Joe Paterno was the real culprit, and not Sandusky.

Freeh’s report is as bad as a report can get. It is more representative of a Kremlin kangaroo court than the best America has to offer. After a career-start seven-year stint in Washington, DC, spent writing federal policy and law, my take on the Freeh report is that it is outrageously flawed.

Its worst defect is its use of wild conjecture (e.g. relying on hearsay in one email from Tim Curley to Graham Spanier and Gary Shultz about an unnamed “coach”). Nowhere does it say “While key facts are lacking or presently unknown, it is prudent to await casting judgment….” Rather, Freeh’s report is judge, jury, and executioner all at once, and it clearly aimed to destroy one person: Joe Paterno.

Importantly, Freeh’s report exonerated the sitting PSU trustees, most of whom had sat idly by and never challenged Spanier, even when one or two trustees began to ask him hard questions. Were those lazy trustees culpable? Why not?

Most important, Freeh was used by PSU and the NCAA to lower the standards bar, to decrease expectations in college football, rather than to elevate them. By arguing that Joe Paterno was deeply flawed and a hypocrite, Freeh made the classic morally relative argument that we are all pathetic losers, that there are no real heroes, that there are no really good men, and that no one should expect any to show up anytime soon.

Finally, if the PSU trustees fell down on the job and used the Freeh report to cover up their failings, one cannot escape the sense that at least some of the Paterno family members do not grasp the positive way that Joe Paterno is still viewed by many of us Nittany Nation members.

Last year, while communicating with one of the Paterno kids, I was struck by his inability or unwillingness to recognize the breadth of Joe’s legacy. That is, if Joe Paterno left a legacy, then it is beyond the family to solely claim, because it is carried by his believers. Joe’s legacy belongs to all of us, because he was representative of all of our values, hopes, and expectations, and our support is not about the family, but about the symbol that was Joe Paterno.

To that end, wouldn’t it be refreshing to see the family rally the troops, rather than look so deeply inward. Casting the Freeh report as a culture war attack on rare core values, rather than on a person, would more accurately frame this subject.

Unlike the vast majority of people with an opinion on this subject, I have actually read the Freeh report. It sucks. It is unprofessional. It is unworthy of Louis Freeh’s name, and it is unworthy of Penn State University’s name. It is nearly useless in understanding all of what happened with Jerry Sandusky, and how he continued to molest and rape little boys when some adults around him either suspected or had been told he was a pedophile. Shedding light on 33% of an issue raises more questions than it answers. Truth is not what was sought, but it is what is at stake. Bigger truths, like traditional core values that are under attack everywhere, suffer from this.

So, it is my hope that the Paterno family, and former governor and US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, will continue their efforts, and also expand them to encompass the bigger picture. Good luck, folks, we are standing with you.

The Sandusky Disaster: Kids Lose, Penn State Loses, NCAA Loses & There’s Still No Lesson Here

The Sandusky Disaster: Kids Lose, Penn State Loses, NCAA Loses & There’s Still No Lesson Here

By Josh First

August 16, 2012

With the mish-mash medley of legal, leadership, and National Collegiate Athletic Association results spilling out of the Jerry Sandusky child rape conviction, you’d have to believe that justice has been done, lessons learned, and responsible adults have reasserted control over one of the world’s leading academic institutions, Penn State University.

Sadly, you’d be wrong; it’s just not the case.

Instead, the best opportunity in decades to talk about child molesters, sexual abuse, pedophilia, increasingly bizarre social norms, and educational institutions has been missed. Sandusky’s legacy is so painful, so gut-wrenchingly disturbing, that everyone seems to be looking the other way down the street. Scapegoats are in demand, and the PSU football program is serving handily.

After reading the related press reports and the Louis Freeh report, the only person who stands out as a leader is the one un-named Trustee who persistently dogged former PSU president Graham Spanier, demanding information and explanations along the way, even as Spanier sandbagged, obfuscated, lied, and blustered. Louis Freeh’s report is otherwise itself deficient enough to demand another analysis of the facts.

One of the Freeh Report’s biggest deficiencies is its preachy tone and clear aim to discredit Coach Joe Paterno. A real investigation dispassionately uncovers facts, leaving the inferences and judgmental conclusions to decision makers. Diverging from that mode, the now re-corrected Freeh Report uses damning language, and makes recommendations, inferences, and insinuations that aren’t supported by the evidence.

One example is how Freeh uses Paterno’s statement that he “didn’t want to interfere with their weekends” as evidence of Paterno’s supposed reluctance to address Sandusky’s brand-new crimes after Michael McQueary reported one to him at 2:00 AM. As though waiting from 3:00 AM to 9:00 AM Sunday morning is a shockingly long time to wait to tell the most senior school administrators that you’ve been told that a grown adult with the highest standing is really a child rapist. This demonstrates that Freeh either missed the irony in Paterno’s statement, or he deliberately took it out of context in an attempt to smear Paterno by making him seem reluctant to report, and more culpable for Sandusky’s actions. Either way, Sunday morning calls about a Sunday morning child rapist do ruin your weekend, and they were made nonetheless.

But the worst example is Freeh’s reliance upon two emails from former Athletic Director Tim Curley, in which Curley invokes the paraphrase “Coach wants to know” to either pry information from VP Gary Schultz and Spanier or to encourage a decision about Sandusky’s future. In those two emails, Curley represented to Spanier and Schultz that he had communicated with former Coach Joe Paterno about their collectively developing understanding of Sandusky’s crimes, and he hinted that Paterno was apprised of the facts that we all now know after all of the reporting, investigation, and trial.

The problem with drawing damning inferences about what Paterno did nor did not know from just these two opaque emails is that lots of people misrepresent what public figures say and what their bosses say, said, believe, or want. They do it especially when they know that getting that person’s actual opinion will be difficult. I have participated directly in the politics of PSU’s Old Main, both as a PSU student leader and as a professional decades later. Like all educational institutions, that administrative wing is rife with intrigue, lies, posturing, one-upsmanship, deceit, conceit, gigantic egos backed up by zero, undeservedly high salaries, and worse. For Curley to invoke Coach Paterno in the emails without actually consulting him on a personnel issue, as opposed to a recruiting issue, would be par for the course. It would actually make Curley more human.

Those two emails tell us nothing about Paterno’s knowledge of the situation, only what Curley said.

But the Freeh report relies on them almost exclusively to establish that Paterno was not only tracking the Sandusky developments, but then actively quashing any public decision or exposure about them. By mistakenly (falsely?) claiming that Paterno maintained that detailed level of involvement, the entire football program has, by extension, become smeared and then punished.

In its rush to condemn Paterno, and by extension the entire PSU football program, the NCAA has relied on Freeh report’s single most judgmental, problematic word: “Culture.” As in “A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus [sic] community,” surprise, surprise; find me a top college football program that is any different. As in, Freeh’s inference goes, a university-wide culture of lying and cover-up; which is unsupported by the facts.

The problem with Freeh claiming that a culture of cover-up and sacrificing little boys’ bodies and souls on the altar of college football existed at Penn State is that no one outside of four senior people really knew what was going on with Sandusky. And one of those people, Paterno, not only followed protocol and notified his superiors, but also then spoke openly with a reporter and others in a way that indicates he believed he did what was required and regretted not doing more. Not to mention the 1998 police cover-up and Ray Gricar’s failure to prosecute Sandusky and then his mysterious disappearance….

Note to Louis Freeh and the NCAA folks: Three or four people do not make an entire university culture. Rather, The Culture that Joe Built was, and still is, made of millions of adults, nearly any one of whom would have gladly taken a baseball bat to Sandusky, and then notified the police that a pedophile had been discovered and justice had been administered. The great call to arms against Penn State is that, supposedly, the real culture beneath the surface is one of lies and deceit. The open horror within the PSU Alumni community at Sandusky’s crimes and at the cover-up by three leaders there belies Freeh’s insinuation and the NCAA’s grotesque penalty.

The NCAA’s rush to judgment, to be PSU’s judge, jury, and swift executioner without any due process, is clear evidence of a truly deficient culture, the same culture that Freeh decries about Spanier’s own similar leadership style.

The PSU Board of Trustees’ rush to embrace the NCAA’s ridiculous penalty is a shallow mea culpa and self-expiation through supposed self-sacrifice by a bunch of weak people who lacked the strength of character to act when they should have acted decisively, back in 1998, 2001, 2008, and 2010. Any Trustee wishing to now demonstrate his or her agreement with the NCAA’s penalty should immediately resign from the PSU board as a true sign of self-sacrifice. Current PSU president Rodney Erickson is cut from the same pathetic cloth, and he is also tainted by his long, weak-kneed proximity to Spanier: Resign immediately, Mr. Erickson. Get away from us.

And about that un-named Trustee: Whoever you are, I nominate you to be Penn State’s next president. You alone have demonstrated the strength of character and leadership that has been missing from the beginning until the end of this debacle. Please step up, whoever you are.

Follow the discussion at www.joshfirst.com and on our political page on FaceBook

Joe Paterno gets fired, the end of innocence

When Paterno got fired from Penn State, it marked the true end of the innocence that defined much of Happy Valley’s day-to-day existence.

For Paterno to have to leave at the end of the season was a big blow to the whole university-football-alumni-money system.

For Paterno to be summarily fired, by phone and before the end of the season, indicates the depth of the failure and the cost of the coverup now dawning on Penn State’s board of directors.

Such a thing was unimaginable a week ago.

To make such a move is to sacrifice much short-term stability, long-standing tradition, and external confidence in PSU. But the trade-off is that eventually that outside confidence will return, because the board acted decisively and painfully.

Spanier’s firing is a whole other matter.

Spanier was not a fixture of PSU like Paterno had been, and he was not co-identified with the university. Paterno was Penn State, while Spanier was simply working at Penn State. Sure, Spanier was there a long time and he liked to present himself as being as much a fixture as Paterno, but he wasn’t one.

Firing a university president is a sad but important fact of academic life. While it is usually painful, most college presidents (and I have met or worked with at least a dozen in my career) are just as human as you and I, except that they all have gigantic egos for reasons that no one else outside of academia can understand. These folks are no more deserving of adulation than anyone else, and actually probably get fired a lot less than they deserve or  experience. My city’s garbage men perform a more necessary and appreciated service than any college president, so Spanier gets zero sad faces from me on account of his termination.

But Penn State, my shining city on the hill, that is still getting sad faces. And we still do not yet know what happened to get us all to this point. The Sandusky scandal probably goes deep.

Here is an indication of just how broad the scandal is:  A small independent news source in Israel actually wrote a report titled “Football Related Scandal Traumatizes the United States,” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149584#.Tr1TyPL4J6Q.

A quick search of other international news outlets indicates that PSU has a far bigger reputation than I would have ever guessed.  And I’m one to think that the world revolves around Penn State and State College.

Resolution had better be done correctly, or we will end up looking even worse.

Joe Paterno steps down…end of an era

Joe Paterno has just announced that he will step down from his head coach position at the end of this football season.

The Jerry Sandusky scandal has ended Joe’s career on a negative, when it should have ended on a positive. People argue that Joe could not have ended it on a positive no matter what, because he had groomed no successor, seemed unwilling to face his age, and has been disengaged from the actual sideline coaching.

I will miss Joe, for all of the obvious reasons: His leadership, his values, his dedication. I am pained that a bunch of little boys had to be raped by his subordinate in order to bring this change.

It’s not the way that anyone saw anything related to PSU turning out.

Earthquake in State College, Now Here Comes the Tsunami

Earthquake in State College, Now Here Comes the Tsunami
© By Josh First
November 6, 2011

Late this past week an earthquake was felt in State College, and the resulting cascade of day-by-day events signal that a tsunami is following close behind. If you think that an earthquake is bad, wait until the tsunami hits. It’s much worse than the earthquake.

First the earthquake: Jerry Sandusky was a household name in the State College I grew up in, the 1970s through the 1980s, when I graduated from Penn State. Heir apparent to coach Joe Paterno, Sandusky was a household name, a golden name. As the high-performing caretaker of Penn State’s famous “Linebacker U” identity, Sandusky epitomized the toughness, braininess, and determination of one of college football’s all-time greatest programs, the Penn State Nittany Lions.

That golden program’s glow illuminated all that sat in its shadow, and Happy Valley has radiated quiet quality and confident happiness for decades. Sandusky was at the center of an empire built on trust, integrity, and clean living, qualities of which we stodgy, old-fashioned old Penn Staters are tremendously proud. It’s all at risk, now.

Now, according to charges brought against him, Sandusky appears to be heading toward the lowest reputation a man can have, a pedophile. Of course, he is innocent until proven guilty, but the crimes appear to be so numerous, so egregious, that if even just one is eventually proven, it alone would be too much to bear. The whole debacle threatens to drag down Penn State with it.

For the first time in Penn State’s storied football program, and by extension the university’s own administrative reputation, an event so dramatic has occurred that it potentially strikes at the core of the universal happiness. After the earthquake, a stain is seen slowly spreading on the kingdom that Joe built. Guilt by association with the charges against Sandusky is not far behind.

And here’s that tsunami, bearing down on all of Penn State: According to additional charges announced a day later against PSU heavies Tim Curley (Athletic Director) and Gary Schultz (Vice President for Finance and the campus police), a house of cards artificially held Sandusky in place, professionally and socially. Despite rumors and actual eyewitness reports of Sandusky’s crimes being conveyed to Curley and Schultz, neither of them relayed the accusations to the police. Under their protective gaze, Sandusky continued to use his Second Mile charity for at-risk children to put yet more children at risk.

Schultz’s attorney claims that his client is under no obligation to report child abuse allegedly committed by a former employee. Yeah sure, that’ll fly, when Sandusky was allowed to use the same university facilities where some of the alleged assaults occurred because of his former Golden Boy status and tight small town, big program, charitable relationships with Tim Curley and Gary Schultz. It doesn’t matter whether the cops, district attorney, or a jury of their peers eventually agree with that line of thinking.

What matters most is public perception, and the general perception is that these two senior PSU executives demonstrated fatally poor judgment. That public perception is going to quickly become public pressure, and the two men will go into retirement some time in the coming weeks. We know it’s coming.

Adding insult to injury is PSU president Graham Spanier’s lame defense of Curley and Schultz. In what has to be the most public display of Good Old Boy Circle The Wagons defense we’ve seen since the tobacco company executives took their congressional oaths years ago, Spanier actually testified to the good judgment of both men and promised they would be exonerated.

Popularly known as ‘doubling down’, Spanier’s bigger bet on the two men is going to be a loser. Mr. Spanier, you can’t really be president of one of America’s premier academic institutions and defend the indefensible. Spanier is demonstrating the clueless arrogance that goes with all big fishes living in small ponds, and he, too, is about to feel the wrath of public pressure. If Spanier lasts another month as Penn State’s president, it’ll be a miracle.

And if you love Penn State as I do, which is fanatically, then the final outcome of this sordid affair is likely to be bittersweet.

With the Athletic Director spot about to be empty any day now, and with the President spot likely to be empty any week now, our aged hero, head coach Joe Paterno, will find himself all alone at the top of a heap over which he has little control. Change will be in the air in State College in the coming weeks, and it is unlikely that Paterno will survive it. Curley and Spanier both tried to bump Paterno out years ago, and both lost. They are soon to be gone, and new people with no history or loyalty to Joe will fill their seats. The new folks will make it a fast and final decision. Penn State will have a new coach within a year of now.

Like Penn State, the institution known as Coach Joe Paterno has my love, appreciation, admiration, and respect, for all of the obvious and same reasons he inspires that devotion among millions of others. I grew up with his wholesome kids and played in his all-American home, watched him recruit new players and listened to him lecture the young men on the straight-and-narrow Penn State way. He is a moral giant in a field crawling with opportunism and outright cheating. His example and principles are needed now more than ever. But if there is one more indication that Coach Paterno has lost the ability to hold on, it’s that he didn’t blow the whistle on Sandusky with more force.

Right now, Penn State is reeling from the earthquake. But no one can withstand a tsunami. What will be left at University Park after the coming tidal wave passes through will be interesting. Hopefully, what is left will be a return to the simple, humble, noble traditions that made us Nittany Lions great to begin with.

© Josh First, licensed to Rock The Capital, www.rockthecapital.com