Posts filed under ‘Campus issues’
Your Letters on the Scandal
As a teenager, I wrote a “Dear Abby” style column for my high-school newspaper. I, the advice guru, would respond to “Stressed Senior” or “Perplexed Prom Date” with a witty, convenient solution to the problem in 300 words or less.
Truth be told, most of the letter writers were my friends, whom I’d convince to detail recent heartbreaks or college-rejection sagas for the student body’s reading pleasure. And my advice was mostly banal—Take a bubble bath! Call a friend!
More interesting, though, was the relief my friends seemed to find in just writing about their feelings. Despite my nagging to do so, expressing their emotions publicly provided a catharsis that even confiding in a best friend during study hall could not.
Today, I’m the letters editor at The Penn Stater. This means I’m responsible for organizing the manageable handful of compliments, criticisms, and occasional corrections we receive for the previous issue, and editing them for print. The methodical process has become an almost-soothing constant in the rushed weeks before deadline.
On Nov. 4, that, like everything else at Penn State, changed. (more…)
A Town Hall Session on the Scandal
Patrick Mansell took this photo for Penn State Live.
The most dramatic moment happened almost an hour into Tuesday night’s Town Hall Forum, in which President Rodney Erickson and seven other top University officials took questions from Penn State students.
Students had never before had such an opportunity—not in “the history of the whole university,” student government president TJ Bard stressed in his introduction—and the ones who came took it seriously. They pressed for assurances that the Sandusky scandal would not affect their internship or job prospects, wondered why no undergraduate students were named to the special investigations task force appointed by the Board of Trustees, and asked whether Penn State’s commitment to transparency would include reassessing its exemption from Pennsylvania’s open-records law.
Then a woman stood up and said she not only had a question, but that she wanted to tell the eight administrators on the stage how she felt: “I don’t know if all of you feel this way, but Jerry Sandusky is part of the Penn State family. And I feel shame.”
The room fell silent, broken by one loud clap of approval. Then the woman added, softly, “What do I do with these feelings?”
More silence. And suddenly, the forum took on a different feel. It wasn’t about who may have done what or how things should have been handled or what the University is doing to recover from this, but about the emotions that Penn Staters have been coping with over the past 27 days.
The officials rallied. Hank Foley ’82g, vice president for research and dean of the graduate school didn’t even wait for the microphone before he said, “Acknowledge them.” Once he got the mic, he added, “We have to acknowledge them, recognize how how you feel. And admittedly, a lot of us feel some of the same feelings. There’s nothing wrong with feeling like that. At all. And there’s nothing wrong with expressing that, either. I think it’s completely understandable.” (more…)
How Can We Support Sex Abuse Victims? A SOC 119 Perspective
Early in the second class he devoted to the Sandusky scandal and its aftermath, Sam Richards asked his SOC 119 students to react to this statement: I am feeling exhausted talking about this issue.
This was Nov. 15, only 12 days after the grand jury presentation was released. Less than a week after Joe Paterno had been fired and Graham Spanier had resigned, and nine days since the national media began to arrive on campus. Almost all of the 700 students, voting anonymously with clickers, chose “strongly agree” or “agree.” Imagine what the percentage would be now, with the TV trucks no longer parked on College Avenue and the football team’s regular season over.
Richards then asked students to pair off and kick around solutions to this question: What would it mean to support the victims of sexual assault and sexual abuse? The most common answers: donating money to organizations that support victims, and listening to anyone who wanted to talk about a similar experience.
And then Richards tied the two questions together: “What would it mean to support the victims? No. 1, it would probably not mean being tired of talking about it. After nine days. What is that? We have done a whole semester on race, and we’re not really tired of talking about race, but we’re tired talking about this issue after nine days.”
The way Richards sees it, (more…)
RAINN Campaign Edges Closer to $500,000
Like everything else in the past two weeks, things at Proud to be a Penn Stater have been moving at warp speed.
Since its launch on Nov. 10, the grassroots group founded by a handful of Penn Staters has raised more than $463,000 for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network—and earned plenty of media coverage in the process.
Co-founder Larena Lettow ’98 appeared on CNN’s American Morning last Thursday, and MSNBC, Huffington Post, Time, and a handful of blogs (including ours) have covered the group’s fundraising efforts. Proud to be a Penn Stater has a goal of raising $500,000 for RAINN by Thanksgiving.
There are some new ways to help: T-shirts with the phrase “[Still] Proud to be a Penn Stater” are available for $18, with proceeds going directly to RAINN, and cell phone users can text PSU4RAINN to 20222 to make an automatic $10 donation.
Funds raised will support RAINN’s Online Hotline, which provides free support for victims of sexual abuse. The hotline has seen a 54 percent increase in calls since news of the Sandusky scandal broke two weeks ago.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
Trustees Tap Former FBI Director Louis Freeh
Former FBI director Louis Freeh will lead an investigation of Penn State’s role in the Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal. Ken Frazier ’75, who is chairing the investigative committee appointed by the Board of Trustees, announced at a news conference this morning that Freeh has been brought in.
The Trustees originally said on Nov. 11 that they would create a special investigation committee to “undertake a full and complete investigation of the circumstances that gave rise to the grand jury report [on alleged sexual assaults committed on children by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky ’66, ’71g].
“The committee will be commissioned to determine what failures occurred, who is responsible and what measures are necessary to ensure that this never happens again,” according to a news release.
But some people have argued that an internal committee of the Trustees can’t be counted on to do a thorough and unflinching investigation of the University. And last Friday, the University Faculty Senate passed a resolution requesting that “there be an independent special committee whose chair and the majority of whose members have never been affiliated with Penn State.”
The decision to hire Freeh (and others in Freeh’s law firm) apparently is an effort to bring in some of the independence and outside perspective that the Faculty Senate and others have asked for. Freeh served as FBI director from 1993–2001; in his career he’s also been a U.S. Attorney, a federal district court judge, and an FBI agent. He has no known Penn State ties.
The members of the trustees’ investigative committee were also announced this morning; they include six trustees, the chair of the Faculty Senate, a doctoral student in higher education (Rodney Hughes, a former student member of the Board of Trustees), and Penn State Distinguished Alumnus and former astronaut Guion Bluford ’64. You can read more about that, as well as the full text of Frazier’s and Freeh’s prepared remarks this morning, in this news release from Penn State.
Tina Hay, editor
David Joyner’s First News Conference
Dave Joyner began his first news conference as Penn State’s acting athletic director with an opening statement that sounded more like a mission statement:
“My mission here has begun,” said Joyner ’72, ’76g. “I’m gonna align our core values in intercollegiate athletics with the rest of the academic units. We have a noble purpose here at the University, and it doesn’t just stop in the classroom. It continues onto the athletic fields, which in my opinion are just another classroom where young people learn to be successful.
“Given that, I consider myself the dean of the ‘College of Intercollegiate Athletics.’”
At that point, he said he’d take questions, which was about the only moment of the morning that was typical.
The news conference was held in cavernous Schwab Auditorium, with ushers checking ID at the door and smooth jazz playing at a high volume before and after Joyner spoke. Field hockey coach Char Morett ’79 H&HD introduced Joyner ’72, ’76g reading his bio and ending by noting that she had known him for 25 years, through their Penn State and Olympic connections. (Joyner, an orthopedic surgeon, has been active in the United States Olympic Committee.) Only a handful of the regulars who cover Penn State football and athletics attended; the rest were on their way to Columbus for Saturday’s football game. (And there was no telephone hookup, so they could not call in to ask questions.)
So most of the questions were asked by national media, many of them investigative reporters. They were not (more…)
A Classy Gesture from Ohio State
Retired Penn State faculty member Lou Prato ’59 passes along this email that was sent by five student leaders at Ohio State to member of the Buckeye student body. I just love the message of sportsmanship here:
It is important to remember that neither the athletes nor students of Penn State played a role in these alleged crimes, and that their university has been just as shocked and horrified by the news as we have — they are a proud community and they love their school just as much as we love ours.
And:
…we will remember the victims first, but also keep in mind that our visitors are not the people to whom we should direct our anger.
Below is the email in its entirety. Click on it to get a larger, more readable version.
Tina Hay, editor
More Sandusky Articles Worth Reading
It’s impossible to keep up with the torrent of news media coverage on the Jerry Sandusky scandal. I’ve been reading some stories online, printing others to read at home in the evening when things are less crazy, and bookmarking still others to read at some imaginary later date when I will have a little time on my hands. (Ha—as if that’s going to happen anytime soon.)
On Monday I posted an annotated list of seven articles that stood out as particularly good coverage of the scandal. Since then the rest of the magazine staff and I have come across at least eight more that we think are also worth reading. In no special order:
1. “This is Penn State.” The new Sports Illustrated is out, with a main story and two sidebars devoted to the events here at Penn State. The one linked here is the main article. Longtime SI baseball writer Tom Verducci ’82 contributes a sidebar called “A Place Apart,” but we haven’t found it online yet.
2. “Inquiry Grew Into Concerns of a Cover-Up.” A New York Times article posted yesterday provides a fascinating look at how the investigation into Jerry Sandusky unfolded—and how, through an Internet forum, “investigators narrowed their list of coaches likely to have seen something to Mike McQueary.”
3. “No Easy Answers for Mike McQueary.” An ESPN.com profile of McQueary ’97 H&HD, the former grad assistant who finds himself in the unexpected role of the whistle-blower.
4. “Let’s All Feel Superior.” New York Times columnist David Brooks is getting a lot of attention for this piece, in which he takes to task (more…)
President Erickson Drops In on SOC 119
No one seemed to notice the man in the suit milling around at the front of the room. There’s a lot of activity in Sam Richards’ classroom before class officially starts, and between the “what do you still want to talk about” feed scrolling down the right-hand side of the big screen, the reminder on the other half of the screen that Quizno’s was donating a percentage of its Tuesday night profits to The Haiti Project, and the reggae music blasting from the speakers, it’s hard to keep track of everything.
And then Richards started his Tuesday SOC 119 class—the second given over to the Sandusky scandal and its ramifications—with a moment of silence “for all that has happened, and in particular for the people whose voices are very often silenced.” Immediately afterward, he introduced a guest—“Dr. Rodney Erickson, who’s going to say a few words …”
That grabbed the students’ attention. And even before (more…)
An Impromptu Rendition of the Alma Mater
Last Friday, after the roughest week Penn State has ever endured, some members of the Penn State Concert Choir decided that people’s spirits needed a lift. So they went over to Old Main, took their places along the balcony overlooking the lobby, and started singing the Alma Mater.
It’s fun to see Old Main staff and administrators stop in their tracks to listen.
You can also see a different version of the video that was shot from different angles and posted to Facebook the other day. That one has some shaky camera work that might put you at risk for a seizure, but it’s a risk worth taking.
For those of you non-Penn Staters who watch this, those are our Land Grant Frescoes on the walls of the Old Main lobby. They were painted by Henry Varnum Poor back in the 1940s.
Tina Hay, editor
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