Universities Gone Wild: Big Money, Big Sports and Scandalous Abuse at Penn State

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http://www.truth-out.org/universities-gone-wild/1325615231


Too many universities are now beholden to big business, big sports and big military contracts. And it is within this new set of contexts that we must read the Penn State scandal. Much media attention has been drawn to the fact that Penn State pulls in tens of millions of dollars in football revenue, but nothing has been said of the fact that it also receives millions from Defense Department contracts and grants, ranking sixth among universities and colleges receiving funds for military research.(1) Or that as a result of considerable influence by corporate interests, the academic mission of the university is now less determined by internal criteria established by faculty researchers with the knowledge expertise and a commitment to the public good than by external market forces concerned with achieving fiscal stability and, if possible, increasing profit margins. The excesses to which such practices have given rise have proven obscene to the point of the pornographic. One has only to look closely at the unfolding tragedy at Penn State University to understand the potentially catastrophic consequences of this decades-long transformation in higher education for universities more generally.

The Penn State crisis may well prove one of the most serious
scandals in the history of college athletics and university administration, while it also reinforces the claim, made by Paul Krugman, "that democratic values are under siege in America.&quot 2) Jerry Sandusky, who coached the Nittany Lions for more than 30 years, allegedly used his position of authority at the university as well as at his Second Mile Foundation, a foster home, to lure vulnerable minors into situations in which he preyed on them sexually, having gained unfettered access to male youths through a range of voluntary roles.(3) Sandusky has been charged with sexually abusing at least a dozen boys, all of whom were twelve years old or younger when they were attacked. On at least three occasions, extending from 1998 to 2002, Sandusky was caught abusing young boys on the Penn State campus. These incidents have been the consistent focus of media attention. In 1998, a distraught mother of a boy who had showered with Sandusky reported the incident to the campus police. A janitor also observed Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy in a Penn State gym in 2000. Finally, according to the grand jury report in the Sandusky case, Mike McQueary, a 28-year-old graduate assistant for the Penn State football team, alleged that in 2002 he saw Sandusky raping a young boy in the shower in the Lasch Football Building on the University Park campus. It has, therefore, taken nine years for the police to investigate and finally arrest Sandusky, who has now been charged with over 50 counts of sexual abuse.

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In the most shameful of ironies, the national response to the story has similarly engaged in a covering up of the violent victimization of children that lay at its core. The young boys who have been sexually abused have been relegated to a footnote in a larger and more glamorous story about the rise and sudden fall of the legendary Paterno, a larger-than-life athletic icon. Their erasure is also evident in the equally sensational narrative about how the university attempted to hide the horrific details of Sandusky's history of sexual abuse by perpetuating a culture of silence in order to protect the privilege and power of the football and academic elite at Penn State. If any attention was paid at all to distraught and disillusioned youth, it was to focus on the Penn State students who rallied around "Joe-Pa," not on the youth who bore the weight into their adulthood of being victims of the egregious crimes of rape, molestation and abuse. As many critics have pointed out, both dominant media narratives fail to register just how deeply this tragedy descends in terms of what it reveals about our nation's priorities about youth and our increasing unwillingness to shoulder the responsibility - as much moral and intellectual as financial - for their care and development as human beings.
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