Revolting
I spend a lot of time around college students. As do all the writers of this blog and an impressive chunk of the readership. I feel like I know the young person’s mind as well any professor can. And, as a graduate of the University of Oregon, I know that undergraduates like a good riot every now and again. But unlike Oregon, where people rioted in order to not have their parties broken up, Penn State University undergraduates like to riot in favor of child rape.
Now, I don’t know if anyone out here is really going to defend Penn St. students rioting in support of Joe Paterno doing nothing when he knew his defensive coordinator was raping children. But if you would, you might say that college football is corrupt and that it brings out the worst in undergraduates. And I would agree with that. I love college football, but I know the institution is rife with hypocrisy and corruption. I lived in Knoxville in the late 90s when the Tennessee Volunteers won their national championship. University of Tennessee administrators were very excited by this because applications for admission skyrocketed the next year. I was outraged–what school would even want students who were attracted to the institution because of its football program (outside of football players)? Tennessee of course. In Pennsylvania, although Penn St. is a very fine institution of higher education, I understand that the kind of kids who want to go to a football school go to Penn St instead of Pittsburgh or Temple.
But even given that these may not be our finest specimen of undergraduate here, who comes out in support of a coach who covered up child rape, even if he is an icon? A lot of people have a lot of soul-searching to do. And if my kid were involved in such a riot for such a reason, I would refuse to pay for their education at that school any longer.
….And of course the police do nothing to stop this riot but a bunch of students protesting at Berkeley, well, that’s a scary threat that needs to be crushed with maximum force!
University of Tennessee administrators were very excited by this because applications for admission skyrocketed the next year. I was outraged–what school would even want students who were attracted to the institution because of its football program (outside of football players)? Tennessee of course.
IIRC the same thing happened when Northwestern went to the Rose Bowl.
My alma mater, the University of Chicago, has certainly contributed to some terrible things (cf the econ department) but killing off its football powerhouse is one of the better things it’s done in its history.
By the time Hutchins killed off the Maroons, they had long-sinced lapsed from being a football powerhouse–despite the efforts of Jay Berwanger
The same thing did happen at Northwestern. I was at the U of C when the Rose Bowl happened, and we went from being consistently ranked above NW in US News rankings to falling below them because their applications boomed, which made them have a higher rejection rate, which made them look more selective. Closest I’ve seen U of C come to rioting!
As someone who chose the University of Michigan over “better” schools because of its football team, was a serious student, and graduated with honors, I couldn’t disagree more. People choose schools for a variety of reasons not having to do with academics (location, how beautiful the campus is, weather). At least in my instance (and my roommate as well, actually), Michigan’s football team allowed it to get a good student it wouldn’t have otherwise.
Yeah. I went to a school that doesn’t have a football team, but I agree that it’s kind of silly to say, “What kind of goofy undergraduate bases a decision on a football team?”
Once you pick the tier and style of school you can/want to attend, you’re still left with a lot of options and generally not that much to distinguish one from other academically, so you go with things like weather, sports, and location.
We’re not talking about graduate students selecting advisors based on rooting affiliation here.
Even if someone isn’t into football at all, they may simply like the sense of identity that comes with a school that’s well-known nationally. Even if they’re an alumnus of your school’s rival, at least they don’t screw up their face when you tell them where you went and say, “And… where is that, exactly?”
Weather was definitely not a factor in your decision to attend Michigan.
who comes out in support of a coach who covered up child rape?
People who just love football that much.
Someone last night posed the conundrum: Suppose college athletics were inherently evil, manipulative, and perverse. How would such a fact reveal itself?
This is why Republicans keep getting elections. Too many people with no or very warped values. Also, big time college athletics are inherently evil, manipulative, and perverse.
who comes out in support of a coach who covered up child rape, even if he is an icon
I’m assuming the question is rhetorical (SEK?), but I’m going to attempt an answer anyway. Because Paterno is an icon, a uge number of people are in denial about his role in the coverup. Either he didn’t know much or anything about it, or what was really happening wasn’t as bad people think it was, etc. Any amount of mental gymnastics needed to let them not admit that they were idolizing a man who covered up for a child rapist to so that he could keep his job past age 75 to 84.
Yeah, it’s not about support for child rape, or even necessarily support for Paterno, so much as it is about the sudden destruction of the screen onto which they projected their fantasies. This causes a traumatic break — short-lived, violent, and temporary, probably — that’s not rational at all.
They’re basically The Birds. The symbology has failed; irrational violence erupts.
Why, yes; I am an amateur Lacanian psychologist, thanks!*
*May not be true.
I’m not ready to leave the amateur psychology to you. Drastic affirmative activities like rioting could perpetuate the denial by leading people to try and justify the rioting.
I’m not saying it’s justified, just trying to understand it.
Right, as some one else mentioned, there is a resemblance to the current Republican Party. The rioting is not only a product of the students’ emotional/psychological investment in the myth, but also represents an increase in the investment.
At any large university, simply because of its size, you’re going to have an observable population of sociopaths and knuckleheads.
The 500-1000 or so students involved are a small percentage of the PSU student body.
I think this is true. If you venture to a Penn State sports blog like Black Shoe Diaries which is generally pretty literate, it was a bunch of comments ranting about how the media was out to get Joe Pa, that he was the only one who’d tried to do anything about this and that people didn’t know the facts.
In other words, varying degrees of crazypants comforting fantasy.
I was outraged–what school would even want students who were attracted to the institution because of its football program (outside of football players)?
I’m not so sure it is that. Applications go up because kids are impressionable and football is advertising. Those kids heard little else but Tennessee’s march to glory.
Of course, a big football program implies lots of parties.
I think they just wanted a riot of their own
Synchronicity! I just finished watching the Joe Strummer biodocumentary “The Future is Unwritten”.
‘The Clash’ is one of the most under-rated great, great bands of all time.
Is The Clash really underrated?
Who underrates The Clash?
I should have known that the crew here doesn’t.
But, when you listen to those lame and insipid “100 Greatest Bands, Songs, Yadayada…” on radio, or read about them somewhere, you rarely hear them mentioned.
London Calling was picked as the 8th greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-19691231/london-calling-the-clash-19691231
Bollocks, it’s not even The Clash’s best album –that would be Give ‘Em Enough Rope or the US version of The Clash– let alone 8th best of all time. Any album that has crap like The Card Cheat or Lovers Rock on it isn’t in the hunt.
kids today that get on my lawn
If you don’t smoke, have you given up using any products invented by smokers?
Jesus Erik, is The Google that hard to use?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-10/riot-police-use-pepper-spray-on-penn-state-students.html
Hardly a case of police doing “nothing.”
Which is not to say that the Berkley incident is OK.
Or that my spelling is good. “Berkeley.” Oops.
No arrrests
Sorry, I was rude to you, that isn’t right. I still think you were over-reaching with that “the police do nothing to stop this” language.
University of Tennessee administrators were very excited by this because applications for admission skyrocketed the next year
I know what you mean. The same thing happened at my daughter’s school the year after she was on college Jeopardy.
Well, sort of the same.
lol
I feel like I know the young person’s mind as well any professor can.
(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
OWS protesters get pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, and arrested, and here the police do NOTHING?
And what are these kids thinking?
I know Joe Pa’s an icon, but he and the administration at the school basically let a child raping monster on their campus, found out what was going on, and turned a blind eye for years.
This behaviour is inexcuseable. Sorry!
Uhm, there’s a hell of a lot of more important things you could be protesting.
When I was a kid I was a big football fan, as was the rest of my family unit. We watched every televised Cowboys game, and every Longhorn game. Tom Landry and Darryl Royal were the greatest football coaches in the world. That’s it they were great football coaches there was no need to extrapolate from that and consider them to be good people. For much of my childhood the Longhorns were undefeated champions or close to it.
Yet, when as an adult, I attended the University of Texas, the team was a bunch of losers, and I was glad. The nights our team lost were quiet. The nights they won were fraternity hell being visited on innocent bystanders. The U.T. fraternities are notorious. What a bunch of assholes. It’s maddening to know that many of them will become judges and CEOS who have an impact on other people’s lives, even though so many of them payed someone to go to their classes for them and cheated like falling off a log. They were the only group of people I had ever hated. If I found out that someone in my class was a member of fraternity, I had to make an effort to be pleasant to him.
Did any of them ever reciprocate, and you find out that particular person is decent and wholesome?
Of course, once. He was a sweet young man, who was embarrassed by his brethren The requisite 2-d and 3-d design classes I took in art school were mostly filled with sorority women because a lot of them were Home Economics are Architecture majors.There were only about 200 art majors in the depart.
In my 2-d classes, I noticed during the second week that the instructor was leaning back with the roll book in his hand and marking women absent whenever they were talked about as if they weren’t there because they weren’t. You know— bitch the one who is absent. I asked him if I could do all my work at home and just show up for the critiques, he said, “Sure.” and flashed me a real understanding smile of appreciation for my work and dedication.
In my 3-d class I was one of several serious students and we had a T.A. I loved that class. One day one of the sorority women looked at what she drew, looked at me and another female art student, then handed us a drawing she did of a ducky and asked us to take care of it. We pinned the ducky to the wall, loaded our brushes with red paint and fired away like a couple of human machine guns. The woman was pleased with the result.
“If they come for the child rapists and I say nothing, and they come for those who cover up child rape and I say nothing, when they come for the date rapists there will be no one left to speak up for me”
–thought balloon of frat boy rioters
I plan to shamelessly plagiarize that
Damn.
“Penn State University undergraduates like to riot in favor of child rape”
Really, that statement might just be a little excessive. Although Joe Paterno did not do as much as he could, he is the only person in this sorry mess who at least did what he was supposed to do.
A 28 year old man, whose first instinct was to run away and call his daddy after witnessing a child being raped, came to Joe a day after he saw the crime. Because the rapist was no longer a member of the coaching staff, Paterno referred the witness to the proper authorities the Athletic Director and the head of the campus police department. The Athletic Director and the head of the police department then proceed to lie to everyone including, presumably, Paterno.
Eight years later, although he is placed on leave, the Athletic Director remains employed and the person who witnessed the crime and did not call the police also remains employed, and the one person who at least did what he was required to do is fired.
Then why are the students raging about the firing of the football coach and NOT out demanding the head of the AD, McQueary, etc? Why are they not out protesting that their university harbored a child rapist for over a decade?
Paterno allowed himself to be the symbol of the institution, he allowed himself to be portrayed as a paragon of virtue and integrity, and he arguably was the most powerful man on campus. He did the absolute bear minimum and as a consequence has lost his job. That more heads deserve to roll does not mean that Paterno’s does not. I’ll just repeat what the VP of the Board of Trustees said:
The past several days have been absolutely terrible for the entire Penn State community. But the outrage that we feel is nothing compared to the physical and psychological suffering that allegedly took place
But Paterno didn’t refer McQueary to the campus police, he referred him to the Senior Vice President for Finance and Business. His department oversees the campus police, but nobody, Paterno included, would mistake a guy with a title like that for a police officer.
Evidence? The Grand Jury found none, where did you get yours?
I thought liberals were supposed to be all about evidence before convicting someone of horrible crimes? Is that just a line we spout about Texas governors?
Eric is an idiot.
He’s the worst lawyer, gun, or money yet.
Good thing you aren’t talking about me, since I’d assume that after being here for 4 months, you’d know how to spell my name.
Are you privy to what evidence the grand jury heard? Do you know what they may yet hear?
I assume most of them don’t know much about what happened. They probably haven’t allowed themselves to know what happened, and actively resisted any attempts at informing them. It’s not a case of supporting what Paterno did, it’s a 3000 person equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and shouting to avoid hearing something disturbing. It isn’t grotesque, it’s stupid. When the truth finally sinks in, less than 300 will admit to having been there.
I’m going to say right now, I’m a student at Penn State, and you really don’t have to try hard at all to be ignorant of the details of the affair. Due to Paterno’s status as a local demigod, most people are in complete denial and ignorance about his role. Paterno was considered to be more moral than normal people, so when headlines mentioned only Paterno and not Spanier, Sandusky, or Mcqueary, students assumed that he was being made a scapegoat due to his fame. Hence the news van being overturned, etc.
Only two days ago was I actually able to figure out what he had done (most local news stories give fractured glimpses, not the whole picture), so because of his reputation of being a nice guy (millions for the library, etc.) I just assumed that he had made an honest mistake and hadn’t really known what was happening.