Author Archive
Guiding Joe Home—in Silence
College Avenue as the funeral procession made its way through the crowd, as seen by our art director, Carole Otypka.
So quiet. So sad. So respectful.
Usually when College Avenue is packed with thousands of people who are standing in the middle of the street with cell phones, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Not today.
Usually when people have to wait outside, in the cold, for well over an hour, tempers fray. Not today.
Like so many other Penn State fans, alumni, students, and employees, we the magazine staff went outside to pay our respects as Joe Paterno’s funeral procession wound through campus. We stood at the closest spot to our office, at Fraser Street and College Avenue, and waited so long that our fingers and toes froze. None of us would have missed it.
Graphic designer Jessie Knuth snapped this photo of the hearse.
The procession arrived a little before 5. First the hearse, carrying Joe’s coffin. Then the blue bus … with Sue Paterno sitting in the first seat, Joe’s seat for 46 years, one that this year’s team left empty after their coach was fired. His 17 grandchildren waved at the crowd. A few other cars and buses followed.
It was totally silent.
I was following along on Twitter—it’s worth checking out the hashtag #guidejoehome for real-time observations and emotions—so I knew that when the procession reached us, it would get quiet. It had everywhere else. But that didn’t dull the impact … wow.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
A Morning Run, 324, and a Classic Commericial
On my way into the office Wednesday morning, I walked through Paterno Library, where students and fans and alumni are leaving memories of Joe on Post-It notes, some attached to bulletin boards, others stuck to a Stand-Up Joe.
Among the snippets that stood out:
Waved and asked how I was during my morning run.
You’ve made a proud Paterno Fellow out of me.
” … and all you cool cats.” JoePa at Football Eve 2009.
Joe, I love you. 324.
B10 commercial. Come to Penn State.
The last is my favorite, I’ll admit. The Big Ten Network commercial from a couple of years back is hilarious; it’s Joe at his most deranged. Here’s a YouTube version that’s a little fuzzy. Watch to the end. Enjoy.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
A Timely Class in Journalism Ethics
From our intern, Emily Kaplan:
Over the weekend, a friend of mine tweeted: Boy, what I would do to sit in on a journalism ethics class at Penn State this week.
I am fortunate to be enrolled in that course this semester—COMM 409: News Media Ethics, a section taught by Malcolm Moran, a veteran journalist and head of Penn State’s John Curley Center for Sports Journalism.
My friend was right—Tuesday’s lesson was never more relevant. When I walked in, I had pretty good feeling we wouldn’t be discussing the assigned reading on the syllabus. Not after a weekend where dubious reporting and social media gone wild resulted in an announcement that the most recognizable face of this university had died—when in fact, he was still alive.
“There’s nothing more important to be right about than if an important figure is alive or not,” Moran said. “Nothing.”
So who better to be a guest lecturer than Mark Viera ’09? He’s the New York Times reporter who dispelled reports that Joe Paterno had passed away Saturday night by simply asking a family spokesman whether the rumors were true.
The class had a meta feel. Moran asked Viera what lessons from the course he has applied to his reporting—and what lessons couldn’t be taught in the classroom. Moran also pointed out the seat that Viera occupied just a few semesters ago. The girl sitting there now has some big shoes to fill. Viera, 24, has been one of the Times’ lead journalists in Penn State coverage over the past two months because of his familiarity with the school and dogged reporting.
But Tuesday, he stood in front of about 50 of us. Everyone seemed attentive as he spoke. I don’t know whether it was respect for Moran, respect for Viera or simply respect for the subject matter, but I didn’t see one person texting under their desk or day dreaming blankly at the wall. (more…)
Just a Glimpse of Paterno, but It’s Meant So Much
This photo by Sara Platz Brennen '92 shows how Penn State students are honoring and remembering Joe Paterno.
From our intern, Emily Kaplan:
On a cool September Saturday, as Penn State was dismantling an unmemorable FBS opponent, I stood outside the visitors’ locker room at Beaver Stadium late in the fourth quarter. I do this every game. I’m a stringer for The Associated Press, and one of my main football duties is gathering postgame info from the visiting team.
As I waited for the visiting coach’s press conference, gripping my steno notebook in one hand and pen in the other, I heard a rumbling from around the corner. The next thing I knew, Joe Paterno was five feet in front of me in the passenger seat of a golf cart.
Paterno looked at me. Through his Coke-bottle glasses, it appeared, his eyes were fixated on my notebook. As his driver scooted away, Paterno shrugged his shoulders, crocked his head to the side, and smiled as if to say, “Sorry, little girl, I can’t give an autograph right now. I have to go to my press conference.”
It’s funny. As I remember that moment now I can’t help but think: “What if that wasn’t what he meant?” It makes a great story, but what if I made it all up? What if he actually wasn’t staring at my notebook? What if he just shrugged because he had an itch?
Truth is, I didn’t know Paterno. Most current students at Penn State didn’t, either.
Sure, I knew all about him. I’ve read countless features and biographies on the boy from Brooklyn who became a scholar at Brown and legend in State College. I was there for his 400th win. I knocked on his door just minutes after he was fired by the Board of Trustees, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do as a journalist — and a human. (more…)
Finally, A Penn State Win over Iowa Wrestling
Morgan McIntosh tangles with Iowa's Grant Gambrill in this Mark Selders photo.
Three bouts into the wrestling team’s dual meet with Iowa on Sunday afternoon, the Nittany Lions had lost all three bouts, one by pin, and were down 12-0. Surely some of the 6,796 fans—the largest crowd in Rec Hall since its reconfiguration—were having flashbacks to last year’s Iowa dual, in which Penn State lost the first three matches—one by pin—and never recovered from a 12-0 deficit.
So was coach Cael Sanderson worried?
“I know Cunningham was,” Sanderson said, using assistant coach Casey Cunningham as a comic foil, as he often does. “I was doin’ all right.”
Spoken like someone who had seven ranked wrestlers—including two guys at No. 1 and two guys at No. 2—coming up to the mat. But it was the guy ranked No. 12—197-pounder Morgan McIntosh, a true freshman—who clinched a 22-12 victory over the Hawkeyes.
McIntosh, facing Iowa junior Grant Gambrall, who finished third at NCAAs last season, got a takedown with 17 seconds remaining in the one-minute “sudden victory” overtime period for a 5-3 victory that gave Penn State insurmountable 19-12 lead with one bout to go.
The takedown also gave Sanderson his first dual-meet victory—as an Iowa State wrestler, Iowa State coach, or Penn State coach—over the Hawkeyes. And it gave McIntosh a loud, long standing ovation. “Coolest feeling I ever felt,” he said. “I’m not going to forget that for a long time.” (more…)
‘Joe Paterno was a Human Being Like the Rest of Us’
This photo by Annemarie Mountz ’84 of public information shows how many came to remember Joe Paterno on Sunday night.
I’m not going to lie—it felt a little odd. Just over two months after I stood on the Old Main lawn along with thousands of students holding candles to remember the victims of child sexual abuse, there I was again Sunday night. Same place, literally, at the foot of the Old Main steps. Same songs by the Blue Band. Many of the same students, I’m sure.
But this vigil was in honor of Joe Paterno.
There were tears again, yes—football players Mike Wallace and Matt McGloin, in particular, choked up as they remembered their coach, who died Sunday morning of metastatic lung cancer. But there was some laughter, too. And a similar feeling of togetherness as the students linked arms and swayed as they sang the alma mater. I wasn’t surprised this time—as I was at the previous vigil—that all of the students know all of the words. That just wasn’t the case back in my day.
What stood out the most to me were the words of Stefen Wisniewski, a former All-America offensive lineman (and Academic All-America) from one of those storied Penn State families; his father and uncle played for Paterno, too. Now a lineman for the Oakland Raiders, Wisniewski was the vigil’s last speaker. This is what he said:
A lot has been talked about today about Joe Paterno’s legacy, and unfortunately, a lot has been said about how the recent events that have taken place over the last few months might affect that legacy. A lot of supporters of Joe Paterno say that he really didn’t do anything wrong and that it shouldn’t have any effect on his legacy. Others say that all the good he has done and his time at Penn State should overshadow what he may have done wrong.
In my opinion, what happened in the recent events and the firing of Joe Paterno is that this figure who we looked up to as this super-human figure, this super legend, that he was kind of reduced to the level of a human being, like the rest of us. And that’s why we hated to see it. But the reality is, Joe Paterno was a human being like the rest of us. He did make wrong decisions. He did maybe fail to make right decisions. Like the rest of us do. Like the rest of us do, he’s done things in his life that require forgiveness, and he’s done things in his life that require redemption.
But when I think back over Joe Paterno’s legacy, the events that have happened over the last three months won’t even cross my mind. When I think back on Joe Paterno’s legacy, I’m gonna remember sitting at his kitchen table as he recruited me five years ago, eating cookies made by SuePa. And I remember leaving that meeting both excited about the prospect of playing at Penn State for Joe Paterno and simultaneously terrified at what he might do to me if I didn’t go there, the same place where my father and uncle both played.
I’m also going to remember …. Whew, so many memories. I’m also going to remember when Coach, at age 82, got down in an offensive lineman stance and showed me how to snap a football. Because I was terrible at it. I’m better now.
I also remember, as a Penn State student, walking through Paterno Library, a library that exists only because Joe Paterno loved the university enough to donate millions of dollars for it to be created. Because he was committed, not just to Penn State football, but to Penn State as a university. He was committed to education. He loved his place, and all of us who are part of Penn State are better as a result.
I also remember as a player, two years ago, playing against Northwestern, being down three touchdowns, coming back to win JoePa’s 400th victory. Watching players carry him off and seeing that No. 400 up on the screen. A number that is never gonna be touched by any coach ever again because no one has the commitment that Joe Paterno does.
I also remember that Joe Paterno taught us about success with honor and that it wasn’t enough for him just to win football games. He wanted to do it the right way. He wanted to do it with players who were going to graduate and players who would go on to be leaders in their communities and great husbands, great fathers. And he really did care as much about his players’ character as he did about what kind of football players they were going to be. Because he knew that our football careers were very short, but that we’re going to be husbands and fathers and leaders the rest of our lives.
And finally, when I think of Joe Paterno, I’ll remember that after every game he ever coached, whether it be a great loss or a great victory, that Joe Paterno knelt down with his players after the game and prayed the Our Father with us. We love you, Joe. And it’s my prayer that that father God you prayed to after each and every game will grant you rest and let his eternal light shine upon you.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
New Leadership for the Board of Trustees
Karen Peetz took over as chair of the Board of Trustees.
Generally, the January meeting of Penn State’s Board of Trustees is a pretty straightforward affair. There’s a lot of routine business to take care of—choosing meeting dates for the next calendar year, authorizing the president to confer degrees at commencement—and even the more notable items, such as the board electing its officers, tend to be only minimally noteworthy.
Not so Friday, at the board’s first public meeting since the Sandusky scandal.
The meeting was moved from its usual location—the boardroom on the ground floor of the Nittany Lion Inn—to the larger ballroom on the first floor. We in the media got hand-stamped at the door, assuring us entrée into the post-meeting news conference. Milling around outside the inn were alumni with signs supporting “due process for Joe Paterno,” and milling around inside was a larger-than-usual number of police officers.
And although the day started slowly—at one point, the Twitter hashtag #PSUBOT was agog over the revelation that Penn State had purchased 20,000 pounds of peanut butter in anticipation of a rise in peanut prices, interesting but hardly the key news everyone was waiting for—by the end, there was plenty of news to digest:
—Steve Garban ’59 stepped down as the chair of the board, and John Surma ’76—who made the announcement that Paterno and president Graham Spanier were gone—stepped down as the vice chair. (Garban and Surma will remain on the board; they simply gave up leadership positions.)
—The board elected new leaders. The chair is Karen Peetz ’77, vice chairman and CEO of financial markets and treasury services of the Bank of New York Mellon, who was elected by the board as a representative of business and industry in 2010. The vice chair is Keith Masser ’73, chairman and CEO of Sterman Masser Inc., a family farm, and who was elected by agricultural societies in 2008. Each ran unopposed. (more…)
Another Chance for Penn State Wrestling Against Iowa
Quentin Wright hopes the Nittany Lions will be on top during this season's dual meet, not just the NCAA tournament.
Quentin Wright didn’t want to get ahead of himself; he didn’t circle Jan. 22, date of the wrestling team’s dual against Iowa, back when the schedule went out over the summer. (Plenty of other people did, though; individual match tickets sold out 90 minutes after they went on sale in October.)
Recently, though—even as the defending national champions have dominated January, winning the Southern Scuffle tournament and giving up only nine team points, total, against Big Ten foes Michigan State, Northwestern, and Wisconsin—Wright has had the Hawkeyes on his mind.
“I don’t know about their side of the story,” said Wright, the defending NCAA champion at 184 pounds, who’s ranked No. 2 this season. “But definitely, this is one match of the year that we’re fired up for.”
Wright thought the dual might mean more to the Nittany Lions, who have over the years, as he said, “been on the lower end, getting beaten up, most of the time.” But it seems like seems like Iowa is pretty fired up, too. At the Hawkeyes’ postseason banquet last April, it seemed that coach Tom Brands had already forgotten how they had dominated Penn State at Rec Hall in a dual and was focused on how Penn State beat them at the NCAA championships.
“Are you OK with being down a couple of notches? Are you OK with getting whipped? Are you OK with getting whipped by Penn State?” Brands asked. “If you’re not, do you have an imagination to go beyond where you are now and what you think is hard work, and what you think is the right way, and what you think is doing everything you can to really open up the flood gates to realizing your potential?”
All of which is to say that the dual, 2 p.m. Sunday in Rec Hall, is getting a lot of attention. Iowa’s ranked No. 2, Penn State is No. 3, and there will be 14 ranked wrestlers competing. None of the Nittany Lions have ever been on a team that has beaten Iowa in a dual, and the one milestone coach Cael Sanderson hasn’t achieved in his storied career is being part of a team, as an athlete or coach, that’s won a dual meet against the Hawkeyes. (more…)
Back to School—And Back to the Poster Sale
This movie poster adorns a lot of dorm-room walls on campus.
What’s a tell-tale sign that it’s the first week of classes at Penn State? How about the poster sale upstairs at the HUB?
The event is hosted by Beyond the Wall, a Stroudsburg-based company which holds more than 700 poster sales at colleges across the country over six weeks throughout the year.
Penn State’s poster sale is one of the three largest, salesman Matt Reinke said, along with University of Illinois and University of Texas-Austin. Beyond the Wall has been in business with Penn State for over 20 years. Reinke has worked the event for the last 12.
I wandered upstairs last week to check out the sale, which is much smaller in spring than in fall—when most students are first moving in to new dorms or apartment.
“Our fall poster sale is about five times the size of the spring one,” Reinke told me as he worked the cash register.
So what has changed in the 12 years Reinke’s been around?
“Over the years I’ve noticed that our most popular posters have shifted from more art-based posters to pop culture posters,” Reinke said. “I don’t know what that says about people or our society; it’s just what I’ve noticed.”
Recently, movie posters have been the biggest hits. Inception posters are best-sellers in the last year, Reinke said, as well as classics like prints from Boondocks Saints and Goodfellas.
“Guys love the gangster stuff,” Reinke said, with a laugh.
The selection of posters include just about everything: Photographs of the Eiffel Tower, Quotes from Albert Einstein and Bob Marley, a list of beer pong rules and a full cast photo of the Scranton-based TV series The Office.
Some classics never go out of style, Reinke said. Prints of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn have consistently sold well.
Another all-time best-seller is posters from the 1978 comedy Animal House. John Belushi is perfect for a frat house in 1992 or 2012, no?
I remember going to the event my freshman year. I probably spent more than 30 minutes grazing through the aisles, amazed at the selection. For most of the summer, I looked at flea markets and old record shops searching for posters to decorate my East Halls dorm with—without much luck—and here they were all in one place.
I ended up walking away with a huge Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA print—an homage to my Jersey roots—which I got great use out of until I accidentally ripped it during move out of sophomore year.
I also bought an Andy Warhol print of the Brooklyn Bridge, which still hangs in my apartment.
What did you hang on your dorm room or apartment walls at Penn State?
Emily Kaplan, intern
Why Child Sexual Abuse Goes Unreported: A Sociologist Explains
“Everybody likes to think they would be the whistleblower. What I told my class was this: Statistically, you’re full of crap.” —Eric Silver
Of the 28 pages of essays we published in our January/February issue, which we devoted to the Sandusky scandal and its aftermath, none has received more responses than Eric Silver’s. Silver, a professor of sociology and crime, law, and justice, contributed a piece we titled “Bureaucracy, Loyalty, and Truth.”
We introduced the piece like this: “Everyone says they’d report suspected child abuse to the authorities, but most don’t. A Penn State sociologist dissects the powerful forces that prevent us from doing so.”
Silver’s perspective—based largely on his specialty, the sociology of deviance, and a class lecture he gave just days after the charges against Sandusky were filed—really struck a chord with readers. Because of the large response, we’ve decided to make the piece available here. —Lori Shontz, senior editor
I teach a class in the sociology of deviance, and we were covering the topic of adult-child sexual contact when this happened. The students had a homework assignment related to it due the night before all this broke. It was an eerie thing.
I felt like I needed to say something in class—to put the crisis in a sociological context. Two ideas came to me—one is bureaucracy, and the second is loyalty.
Everything in our world is organized by bureaucracies. You go to the grocery store, and your food’s always there, it’s on the shelves—that’s a very complex task, and it’s organized by a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are very good at complex tasks, because they break up those tasks into small pieces that individuals can be responsible for. We’re all familiar with that in our own work lives: If we run into trouble, we tell so-and-so, and that’s it. It’s off our plate, and we continue to do what we’re supposed to do.
In this case, I don’t know the facts any more than anybody else does, but it seems as though there was reporting upward, which most of the time you’re encouraged to do. The big question is: Why didn’t people follow up after they reported upward? In some ways, it’s not a fair question. Our job descriptions aren’t to police our bosses.
I realize that everybody likes to think they would be the whistleblower. They are the ones who would risk their job, their livelihood, their future, their letters of recommendation. This belief fuels our righteous indignation at those involved. What I told my class was this: Statistically, you’re full of crap. For every 1,000 people, you’re lucky if there are two or three whistleblowers. (more…)
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