Penn State University will remove the famed statue of Joe Paterno outside its football stadium, eliminating a key piece of the iconography surrounding the once-sainted football coach accused of burying child sex abuse allegations against a retired assistant.
The university said Sunday that it will take down the larger-than-life monument in the face of an investigative report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh that found the late coach, along with three top Penn State administrators, concealed the abuse claims against Jerry Sandusky more than a decade ago in order to shield the university and its football program from negative publicity.
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Paterno took what he thought was the easy way out and destroyed the lives of at least a dozen children. I wish the NCAA would pull their ability to play sports for at least 5 years, but I'll take this as a start. No doubt, the Paterno family will be crying loudly about how JoePa is being "slandered" by the evil people who don't care about his "legacy". Frankly, they're wrong. I do care about his legacy...and I don't want anyone to think that being a sports god is a free pass to a legacy of abused children.
The university said Sunday that it will take down the larger-than-life monument in the face of an investigative report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh that found the late coach, along with three top Penn State administrators, concealed the abuse claims against Jerry Sandusky more than a decade ago in order to shield the university and its football program from negative publicity.
A spokeswoman for the Paterno family did not immediately return phone and email messages Sunday morning.
Construction vehicles and police arrived shortly after dawn Sunday, barricading the street and sidewalks near the statue, erecting a chain-link fence then concealing the statue with a blue tarp.
A live video feed posted on the website of the Centre Daily Times of State College showed workers in white hard hats draping a plastic sheet over the statue, preparing for its removal.
Penn State President Rod Erickson said he decided to have the statue removed and put into storage because it "has become a source of division and an obstacle to healing."
"I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse," Erickson said in a statement released at 7 a.m. Sunday.
He said Paterno’s name will remain on the campus library because it "symbolizes the substantial and lasting contributions to the academic life and educational excellence that the Paterno family has made to Penn State University."
The bronze sculpture outside Beaver Stadium has been a rallying point for students and alumni outraged over Paterno’s firing four days after Sandusky’s Nov. 5 arrest — and grief-stricken over the Hall of Fame coach’s Jan. 22 death at age 85.
But it turned into a target for critics after the Freeh report’s stunning allegation of a cover-up by Paterno, ousted President Graham Spanier and two Penn State officials, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz. Their failure to report Sandusky to child-welfare authorities in 2001 allowed him to continue molesting boys, the report found.
Paterno’s family, along with attorneys for Spanier, Curley and Schultz, vehemently deny any suggestion they protected a pedophile. Curley and Schultz await trial on charges of failing to report child abuse and lying to a grand jury but maintain their innocence. Spanier hasn’t been charged. Sandusky was convicted last month of 45 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys.
Some newspaper columnists and former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden have said the statue should be taken down, while a small plane pulled a banner over State College reading, "Take the statue down or we will."
But Paterno still has plenty of fans, and Penn State’s decision to remove the monument won’t sit well with them. One student even vowed to "chain myself to that statue" if there was an attempt to remove it.
University officials had called the issue a sensitive one in light of Paterno’s enormous contributions to the school over a 61-year coaching career. The Paterno family is well-known in the community for philanthropic efforts, including the millions of dollars they’ve donated to the university to help build a library and fund endowments and scholarships.
The statue, nearly 7 feet tall and weighing more than 900 pounds, was built in 2001 in honor of Paterno’s record-setting 324th Division 1 coaching victory and his "contributions to the university."
Construction vehicles and police arrived shortly after dawn Sunday, barricading the street and sidewalks near the statue, erecting a chain-link fence then concealing the statue with a blue tarp.
A live video feed posted on the website of the Centre Daily Times of State College showed workers in white hard hats draping a plastic sheet over the statue, preparing for its removal.
Penn State President Rod Erickson said he decided to have the statue removed and put into storage because it "has become a source of division and an obstacle to healing."
"I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse," Erickson said in a statement released at 7 a.m. Sunday.
He said Paterno’s name will remain on the campus library because it "symbolizes the substantial and lasting contributions to the academic life and educational excellence that the Paterno family has made to Penn State University."
The bronze sculpture outside Beaver Stadium has been a rallying point for students and alumni outraged over Paterno’s firing four days after Sandusky’s Nov. 5 arrest — and grief-stricken over the Hall of Fame coach’s Jan. 22 death at age 85.
But it turned into a target for critics after the Freeh report’s stunning allegation of a cover-up by Paterno, ousted President Graham Spanier and two Penn State officials, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz. Their failure to report Sandusky to child-welfare authorities in 2001 allowed him to continue molesting boys, the report found.
Paterno’s family, along with attorneys for Spanier, Curley and Schultz, vehemently deny any suggestion they protected a pedophile. Curley and Schultz await trial on charges of failing to report child abuse and lying to a grand jury but maintain their innocence. Spanier hasn’t been charged. Sandusky was convicted last month of 45 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys.
Some newspaper columnists and former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden have said the statue should be taken down, while a small plane pulled a banner over State College reading, "Take the statue down or we will."
But Paterno still has plenty of fans, and Penn State’s decision to remove the monument won’t sit well with them. One student even vowed to "chain myself to that statue" if there was an attempt to remove it.
University officials had called the issue a sensitive one in light of Paterno’s enormous contributions to the school over a 61-year coaching career. The Paterno family is well-known in the community for philanthropic efforts, including the millions of dollars they’ve donated to the university to help build a library and fund endowments and scholarships.
The statue, nearly 7 feet tall and weighing more than 900 pounds, was built in 2001 in honor of Paterno’s record-setting 324th Division 1 coaching victory and his "contributions to the university."
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[Source]
Paterno took what he thought was the easy way out and destroyed the lives of at least a dozen children. I wish the NCAA would pull their ability to play sports for at least 5 years, but I'll take this as a start. No doubt, the Paterno family will be crying loudly about how JoePa is being "slandered" by the evil people who don't care about his "legacy". Frankly, they're wrong. I do care about his legacy...and I don't want anyone to think that being a sports god is a free pass to a legacy of abused children.
My thoughts...GOOD.
They're protesting that taking the statue down doesn't help victims. The sculptor is also bawwing about it.
His family needs to STFU.
Older Sis: They're taking down the statue.
Me: Statue? Taking down what?
Mom: The Paterno Statue.
Me: Oh well that's okay.
Mom: So what's next, they're going to take away his library too?
Me: ... That is not the same thing. At all.
It seems to be that my family thinks Paterno should be forgiven for his lack of action due to all the good he's done. To which I say SOMEONE SHUT MY FAMILY UP.
Fingers crossed for the death penatly, y/y?
eta: Apparently ESPN has reported that they will NOT get the death penalty. Boo.
Edited at 2012-07-22 04:36 pm (UTC)
He thought the statue should be left up to make people think and remember what their actions did.
It's true. The school and community as a whole failed those kids. They treated sports victories as more important than anything. This shouldn't just be left in the past because of a statue being removed or the school being fined or suspended. These actions don't help prevent such things from happening again.
It's like banning confederate flags and then, claiming that racism doesn't exist.
Racism does exist. Child abuse exists. The important question should be...what are we going to do about that?
In trying to protect what they thought was more important, they ended up ruining it, not to mention the lives of countless victims of Sandusky. Fuck the damned statue. It's now a monument of shame, and rightly so.
Sure, no one wants to see someone they admired for a long time dragged through the mud (seemingly even worse, posthumously), but it was his own actions, in trying to sweep this under the rug in cahoots with the rest of the school, that set the stage for this. If he didn't want to risk all he had worked for, he would have protected the victims, and put them first over the school's reputation (at the time).
A real hero-figure would have protected others that had no means of protecting themselves FIRST.
Sadly, JoePa turned out to not be so heroic.
As for the statue, if there's some other memorial~ done for him after I will drive down to Penn State myself and fuck that shit up. As it is I want to attack the Paterno library with a shit ton of spray paint. Any Pennsylvania _p members wanna help/let me crash on their couch?
Full steam ahead. ^_^
Per Dodd, a person with knowledge of the process said there is a way to impact Penn State's competitive ability in football without applying the so-called “death penalty.” That term could be mere semantics by the time the NCAA sanctions are announced according to a source. Penn State, the source said, may prefer the death penalty.
Current NCAA rules limit the death penalty to colleges already on probation that commit another major violation.
So they may be getting around something they can't do and doing worse. (I have no idea if it's already "on probation," but if it's not, I feel less unhappy about the lack of a "death penalty."
To be honest I found the idea of having a statue of someone who has yet to pass kind of weird and rather narcissistic. and maybe more then a little intimidating to people who reported to him. Best to wait till the end of the book so to speak.
I really don't think the community understands how the rest of the country see them. They keep talking about moving on but you can't move on till it's over and with new information yet to come it's not over. Wanting something to be over does not make it so.
What about the innocent children who did suffer because of the power and arrogance of the people who ran the program and the university? I think sending a message to the PTB who run these programs that this type of cover-up is not acceptable is a lot more important.
edited cause Teddy cat hit the enter key before I was finished.
Edited at 2012-07-22 08:18 pm (UTC)
But Penn State will not receive the so-called "death penalty" that would have suspended the program for at least one year, the source said.
The penalties, however, are considered to be so harsh that the death penalty may have been preferable, the source said.
http://espn.go.com/college-football/sto
"I live in the PSU community of central PA. We, as a community, all feel like victims of this scandal."
JFC, really? YOU feel like victims? Because your sainted football program might have a hard few years? And of course, they go on to defend Paterno. /sigh