Travel Blog

The folks at Penn State University probably wish they never had anything to do with Jerry Sandusky and that the management team they had running the sports side of the business had better judgement. There has been thousands of words written on this subject and there will be thousands more.This will go on for many years between the legal case against Sandusky and also the civil suits against him. There will be a lot of pain for everyone for some time.

His Own Worst Enemy

Sandusky himself adds fuel to the fire every time he does an interview.  He has to be a lawyers worst nightmare as a client. He continues to speak to the media and get himself into more trouble. But that is not really the point of this post.

Instead, the subject is about the poor state of the moral ethics of this university. Possibly others although we will focus on Penn State for this post. What is really happening here is that the university puts sports and football in particular ahead of the personal rights of individuals. Apparently they thought that if they could hide this thing long enough it would just go away.

Unfortunately for them, in today’s media and the age of the internet and instant communications, these things rarely stay submerged for  very long. It is literally a firestorm of emails, posts, and tweets about the Penn State cover up.

You have to really give credit to the eleven and counting men that have come forward with accusations. They are taking on a behemoth in terms of the university and also the public that just does not want to believe that their football heroes could do this sort of thing. The victims will suffer all kinds of abuse from people they do not even know and they already have. They will have to endure the pain of public scrutiny when this thing finally gets to trial. It is sad but true in our society that people are just not considerate of the victims when one of their misplace heroes does something really bad

So Who Is to Blame in all of this Mess?

Well obviously Jerry Sandusky is to blame if he is found guilty. Even if he did not sexually assault these boys, he is still guilty for putting himself into a situation were someone could blame him or accuse him. Let’s face it , a coach just does not go on the shower with a young boy at any time, let alone when they are alone. If he is innocent, he has incredibly poor judgement to allow himself to be exposed in this situation.

What about the university? did they take the right action? Obviously not. Apparently Joe Paterno escalated the report to his boss and then fired Sandusky. Just like a lot of institutions think. If they fire the guy he will go somewhere else and it will not be their problem.  And just maybe the situation will be forgotten and it will all go away. They made a couple of big mistakes when they did this.

Reporting Status

First they did not report the abuse report to the police and allow an independent investigation of the allegations. This would have resolved a great deal at the time and saved some kids from being abused by Jerry Sandusky , allegedly .

They tried to hush it up and deal with the situation privately. Just the fact that he was let go, tells you that they all know a lot more than they are letting on. Two people from the university management team apparently have been charged. It remains to be seen if they will be convicted.

But what it really comes down to is why would you let something like this go on when you know about it and you know it is wrong ? There are several reasons that we can speculate about, but you will never know because the participants will never admit the truth. It is likely a combination of being afraid to lose their jobs, afraid of the negative publicity associated with the accusation, afraid of the recriminations by the university , but mainly it is being afraid of losing their jobs!

The Crux of the Matter

This is the crux of the matter in our opinion. Whistle blowers are not treated well in our society even if they are right. Sometimes they receive the same negative mental treatment and abuse as the victims or worse. Their jobs are not protected. Once you have been labeled as a whistle blower you cannot get a job easily. When you have a family to support, what are you going to do? This is what is fundamentally wrong in our society. Why more people do not tell about some of the really bad things that go on in our society.

What are your thoughts?  Do you agree, or do you feel that there are other reasons for what is going on?  Leave your comments, we will be glad to post all constructive and informative comments.

Save

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.