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So it’s been an extremely long time since I’ve posted and admittedly I probably should be studying for my Cardiopulmonary midterm on Monday but after today’s developments I feel compelled to write something. In advance I apologize for misspellings, grammatical errors, or incoherent chains of thought. I have done nothing but memorize medicine for 3 months…

As you all know Joe Paterno was dismissed as Penn. State’s coach today following the revelation that his former assistant coach was guilty of molesting and raping young boys. It has been the general public consensus that Paterno did not do enough about this situation after being made aware of it about 9 years ago. As you may expect many people have taken this opportunity to vilify Paterno for his “involvement” in this situation. I’ve had the opportunity to discuss this with many of my friends and no matter what I hear people say I just can’t bring myself to be mad at Paterno. I think it’s unfair he is being blamed for not doing enough and I think its absolute nonsense that he was fired. While I, just like any self-respecting person, wish he had call the cops nearly 10 years ago, I do understand why he did not and do not blame him for that.

So from what we know so far, a graduate student, who is now an assistant coach at PSU, witnessed Sandusky sodomizing a “roughly” ten year old boy in the PSU locker room. After leaving the locker room he returned home and called Paterno to schedule a face-to-face meeting. At this meeting he told Paterno his story, but by all accounts thus far, left out most of the sordid details and simply said that Sandusky was groping and doing something inappropriate with the boy (still a terrible crime). Paterno called his AD the next day and reported what he had heard. He was told that an investigation would occur. Fast forward a few months and Sandusky had his keys to the locker room taken away and he was banned from bringing kids on the premises. Fast forward 9 years and we stand here now knowing most of the truth.

Now I’m sure many people are already outraged that I said I’m not mad at Paterno, but give me a chance to explain. In my opinion, he was a third party witness to the crime. He was given an accusation about a fellow colleague and he did what you are supposed to do in the world of business/institution; he reported it to his boss. Most schools/organizations/companies have protocols for situations like this and in all likelihood he followed it. If I’m going to be mad at anyone it is at the graduate student who witnessed the crime first hand, knew all of the details, and still allowed 10 years to pass before telling the truth.  It’s easy to say Paterno should have done more or that he should have contacted an outside party, but that is not a fair assumption to make. As a large institution you have to, first, handle problems internally, and ensure their validity before reporting it to the proper authorities.  For one moment, imagine what would have happened had Paterno ignored protocol and simply went to the cops on his own. Knowing what we know now, that would have been the “right” thing to do, but what if it turned out not to be true. What if it was all a big lie, misunderstanding, etc. etc. Paterno would likely be dealing with a defamation lawsuit, would have been fired for tarnishing the schools name/violating protocol, he would have lost someone he considered a colleague/friend at the time, and he would have effectively destroyed that person’s life. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’d be awesome if we could act upon it, but we can’t, so we shouldn’t judge someone based upon it. To me the persons most at fault are the school administration (for either not performing a proper investigation or attempting to cover up the truth) and the graduate student who knew the truth of what he saw and did nothing about it.

“MORAL OBLIGATION.” If you read any of the articles about this situation you’ve likely seen these words about 100 times. People have been tossing these words around for the last few days, but I wonder how many of them actually realize what they mean. What exactly is a moral obligation? It certainly not a set of laws and as far I can tell all of us have a different set of them. I saw one comment on an article that I think summarizes the point quite nicely:

“Who gave you the power to set what “moral obligations” are? I think you have a moral obligation to report illegal aliens to the cops. I also think you have a moral responsibility to raise and care for a child you create rather than murdering it for your own expediency. But that does not mean people do it. Moral obligations are simply what YOU THINK, nothing more.”

So do we have the right to hold Joe accountable for a moral obligation? I don’t think so. Next time you see someone speeding on the highway, I implore you to ask yourself if you are morally obligated to call the police and report this person’s license plate number to them. Most of you are already thinking this is absurd, but what if this person ends up crashing, or worse ends up crashing into someone else, killing them. So before he killed someone it was ok that he was speeding but now that he has killed someone he is reckless driver with no regard for those around him. What does that make you? You’re the person who could have stopped him. I’m not saying the two crimes are comparable but it does get you thinking…

From everything I have read or heard about Joe Paterno, I’d like to believe he was a man of high character. He coached in a time of racial in equality, he taught his players to conduct themselves appropriately on and off the field, and he was the sole representation of honor in a league full of corruption. PSU would be nothing without him and its sad to see him go out this way. He didn’t deserve this end and I believe in a few more years, with a little more hindsight, we will all see this.

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”