LITTLE ROCK — The statue of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno outside Beaver Stadium stirred different emotions in many people.
To one group of people, the statue was a lasting shrine to a coach they grew up idolizing and adoring. They’re the ones who before Nittany Lions games took pictures in front of the statue and placed scarves and ear muffs on the bronze, inanimate object during the chilly State College winters. Countless students and alumni fall in this group.
The other group, which has grown after the release of the damning Freeh Report, believed the statue to be a constant reminder of everything that can go horribly wrong with institutional power and college-coach worship; two things that greatly contributed to Jerry Sandusky’s rein of abuse of young boys.
Most people in this group would volunteer to drive a bulldozer to demolish the statue, and then take pictures while doing it and post them on their Facebook page.
I side with the latter group that wanted to see the statue go.
Penn State had issued a short statement on July 15, denying that a decision had been made about the controversial statue, despite reports that the Board of Trustees had decided that the statue would remain outside Beaver Stadium.
After the 267-page Freeh Report was issued, the board said there was no timeline on a decision about removing Paterno’s name and image from everything on campus.
One trustee said, “It has to stay up. We have to let a number of months pass, and we’ll address it again. But there is no way, no way. It’s just not coming down.”
But come down it did.
Penn State President Rodney Erickson issued a statement Sunday, saying, “Paterno’s statue has become a source of division and an obstacle to healing in our University and beyond. For that reason, I have decided that it is in the best interest of our university and public safety to remove the statue and store it in a secure location.” The campus library named for Paterno, at least for now, will keep its name.
The NCAA weighed in on Monday, handing the university a $60 million fine, barring it from bowl games for four years, and vacating the football team’s wins from 1998 to 2011, essentially dethroning Paterno from his status as winningest major college football coach.
Had the statue not come down, every televised Nittany Lions game would likely have had a shot of the statue; every network would show the thing and then Paterno wou.d be discussed. The commentators might have even talked about Sandusky to fill time.
It might have meant one thing to alumni and board members, but to most people watching around the country, the image of the statue was a constant reminder of horrendous sexual abuse.
The idea of keeping the statue up is a striking example of how awful the leadership is at Penn State. Who is the key group that they thought they were going to offend by taking it down? The boosters?
Child molestation was happening all over the campus for years, and Paterno could’ve ended it before any other boys’ lives were damaged. This was a historic display of coach-worship on a stomach-turning level.
The Joe Paterno statue is a symbol of what’s bad about Penn State and the morally questionable coach who is forever linked with the university.
No college should have held a coach up on such a pedestal that it overlooked a monster—a monster that did his evil and perverse deeds in plain daylight.
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David C. Cutler lives in Rogers and will be attending graduate school in the fall.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 07/25/2012