Posts filed under ‘Controversy’
We Can Tell the Magazine is Out…
…by the calls and emails we’re starting to get from readers.
First of all, no, that’s not a black box you see on the left. It’s the cover of our new January-February issue. There actually is text in there—really! The cover doesn’t render very well on screen, and it looks even worse after the blog software gets done compressing it. If you click on the image at left, you can see a much bigger and more accurate representation.
Even so, it’s definitely a dark cover, and a decidedly unusual one for us, with the masthead letters piled up at the bottom and all that. We realize that you’ll either love it or hate it. And already we’re hearing opinions about it, ranging from “I am impressed by this cover decision. Stunning” to “Seeing the cover … further plummeted me into despair! How is a cover like that moving PSU forward?!”
We might ask our art director, Carole Otypka, to talk more about the cover design in a blog post sometime.
In the meantime, readers are also commenting on what’s inside the issue, and those reactions, too, span the continuum from enthusiastic appreciation (“I already feel better about my beloved Alma Mater. What a wonderful collection of words from people who have been affected by the darkest days”) to passionate disapproval (“I found the latest edition … an ill-conceived idea and equally horrifying to read. Every page made me shake more with anger. How dare you attempt to assuage alumni with pandering articles and quotations”).
To us, the number and variety of reactions is a good thing. It means readers care, and it shows that there’s a wide range of opinions out there. Please keep the comments coming. Feel free to use the “Leave a reply” box after this post, or send us an email at pennstater@psu.edu. Thanks.
Tina Hay, editor
New Issue on the Way
We haven’t seen the finished product ourselves yet, but our printer tells me that the January-February issue of The Penn Stater is in the mail and should be arriving in mailboxes any day now.
We’re always interested in hearing how readers react to the magazine, but that’s especially true this time. We devoted more than 40 pages of the new issue to the Sandusky scandal and related news. You can get a feel for what’s in the new issue by clicking on the image above—that takes you to a larger, more readable version of the table of contents.
We think the coverage is pretty honest and unflinching. We also hope it doesn’t just rehash all the stuff you already know; instead we’ve offered—among other scandal-related stories—22 thoughtful mini-essays, by contributors ranging from Adam Taliaferro ’05 to survivors of child sexual abuse to Penn State’s first Rhodes Scholar, Tess Thompson ’97.
Please let us know what you think, either by posting a note in the Comments section here or by sending us an email at pennstater@psu.edu. We really look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Tina Hay, editor
Nice Work by The Daily Collegian
This video, produced by two staffers at The Daily Collegian, Krista Myers and Katherine Rodriguez, has gotten a lot of play on Twitter recently, and it’s easy to see why. Titled “We Are … Penn State—Students’ Reactions to the Events in Happy Valley,” the video is shot in arresting black and white, and it features Penn State students talking about what the past six weeks have been like and why they are still loyal to their school. It runs for a little over four minutes, and it’s well worth your time.
This seems like a good time, as well, to salute the work that all of the Collegian journalists have done over the past month. I know for a fact that some of them haven’t been to class quite as often since the first week of November, and I truly hope their professors took the circumstances into account. There are some things you can’t learn in a classroom, and covering a story like this is one of them.
These journalists were in the middle of everything—asking questions at the attorney general’s news conference, being pepper-sprayed while covering the riot, summing up Joe Paterno’s 61-year-career at the University with a special section on a day’s notice, publishing the first Sunday edition in the paper’s history. Back when I was all but living in the Collegian office, way back in the pre-Internet era, we stopped publishing during finals week. But these students continued to write stories, shoot video and photos, and tweet during the Thanksgiving week break, and they’re still on the job during this finals week.
They’ve covered the story fairly and accurately and comprehensively: You can find an index of all of their coverage here.
What do they do for an encore? I have no idea. As veteran sports journalist Malcolm Moran, the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society in the College of Communications, noted in this interview, “What do you do if you’re 20 years old and you’re covering the story of your life? One friend of mine said, ‘I’ve been doing this 40 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.’ ”
Lori Shontz, senior editor
More Recommended Reading: Preliminary Hearing
If you’re trying to get a handle on the last-minute announcement that Jerry Sandusky ’66, ’71g would waive his preliminary hearing, you’re not alone. I’ve spent part of the afternoon monitoring Twitter and checking out various news organizations’ coverage, and here’s what’s caught my eye:
Adam Smeltz ’05 of StateCollege.com provides a good synopsis here, and the New York Times, which obviously has a broader audience, does something similar here on its college sports blog, The Quad. This MSNBC video, featuring investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, is also good, although the studio host mangles the pronunciation of Bellefonte.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette talked to a couple of defense lawyers who are baffled by the strategy of Sandusky’s lawyer, Joe Amendola ’70. ESPN’s Lester Munson, a lawyer and journalist, gets into more of the details here, with everything from how the preliminary hearing can benefit the defense to whether the defense will eventually request a trial by judge, not jury. There’s a video of Bob Ley speaking with legal analyst Roger Cossack at the same link.
Dan Wetzel, a columnist for Yahoo Sports who has weighed in early and often on the scandal, has what might be one of the first opinion pieces published; he says that Sandusky’s late decision “put the accusers through the wringer.”
And while I don’t love everything that Deadspin does, this piece on the morning’s events is a really good read.
Please let us know in the comments if you’ve found other worthwhile stories.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
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…)
Sandusky Talks to the New York Times
You can’t help but wonder how Jerry Sandusky sees the world.
Sandusky ’66, ’71g, of course, is the man whose alleged actions have emotionally scarred at least eight boys, ended the careers of Graham Spanier and Joe Paterno, and caused anguish for thousands of Penn Staters and others worldwide. You can’t help but wonder, If it’s true, what was he thinking? And what is he thinking about now, as he sees the damage done and contemplates spending possibly the rest of his life in prison?
The New York Times’ Jo Becker managed to persuade Sandusky to sit down with her to answer some of those questions. Becker spent four hours with Sandusky, in two sessions, at the home of his lawyer, Joe Amendola. You can read the resulting story here.
Also of note are the nine-minute video clip, in which you can listen to and watch Sandusky during the interview, and a collection of 13 audio clips (under “Multimedia”) in which he addresses topics ranging from physical activity with kids to his thoughts on Joe Paterno to his life today.
Tina Hay, editor
Catching Up on My Sandusky Reading
Most of the news media that swarmed all over town in early November are gone—at least for now. I do see a big truck marked “Court TV In Session” parked along College Avenue on my way to work each morning, but for the most part the frenzy seems to have subsided.
(I’m sure the media will descend again as Dec. 13, the date of the preliminary hearing for Jerry Sandusky, approaches. See this story from the Centre Daily Times about the expected influx of reporters and cameras on the 13th.)
Meanwhile, at the magazine offices we’re focused pretty intently on trying to finish the January-February issue, which will be devoted almost entirely to the crisis and its fallout. And we’re also trying to keep up with online coverage of the scandal: Penn State may not be the lead story on the TV news anymore (thank goodness), but there’s still a steady stream of newspaper and magazine coverage on the Web.
I’ve already posted two previous lists of articles that I think are worth reading (here and here). In case you haven’t reached the saturation point yet, here are 10 that I’ve read more recently that I’d also recommend:
1. “My Second Mile: How I Grew Up With The Now-Doomed Organization.” Thomas L. Day ’03, who first wrote about the scandal for the Washington Post, is back with a piece at Deadspin.com about his own experience as a Second Mile kid. It was a good experience and, he says, somehow the news media doesn’t want to hear about those.
2. “Missteps at Every Turn.” In this week’s Sports Illustrated, a harsh look at Penn State’s handling of the events, especially the naming of Ken Frazier ’75 to chair the Trustees’ special investigations task force and Dave Joyner ’72, ’76g as acting athletic director.
3. “Rich in Success, Rooted in Secrecy.” This ran in the New York Times more than a week ago, but I didn’t get a chance to read it until now. It’s a profile of former Penn State President Graham Spanier and the mixed (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…)
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
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