After the Jerry Sandusky scandal that Joe Paterno did or did not know about depending on who you believe, Paterno’s statue was removed from in front of the football stadium and placed into storage for an undetermined amount of time. Now there is a report out from onwardstate.com that there is a new statue being planned for downtown State College:
“There’s been some level of frustration among Penn Staters with what happened with the statue at the stadium,” Ted Sebastianelli, one of the organizers of the project, said. “We wanted to come up with a way to honor Joe for all that he did for the State College community. It wasn’t just the university he impacted — it was the whole town.”
“There’s a culture of people in State College that clearly appreciates what Joe has done,” Sebastianelli said. “Our alumni always want to know how we will honor him. This is something we can do for State College while getting Penn Staters from around the country involved. This has nothing to do with university. We are doing this on our own.”
There is a reason I have this line in bold in the quote: “It wasn’t just the university he impacted — it was the whole town.” When Mark Emmert handed down the initial punishment for Penn State that he later backed down on like a coward, he basically wanted to tear down the football culture at Penn State. This is exactly what he and others meant about their culture that allowed a man to sexually assault boys.
Now, on the flip side this is a private business using their own money (along with alumni donations as noted above) so they can do what they want. However, when Penn State people get defensive remember that this is what we were all talking about when you punishments were initially handed down. Have they learned anything from this whole scandal or are we back to business as usual?