Our little town and our big university are making national news again, for better and for worse.
Two of the stories drawing national interest in the past week exude the lingering stench of the Sandusky scandal: One concerned the outcome of Mike McQueary’s civil suit against Penn State. The other was about new allegations of university inaction in the face of accusations of sexual misconduct against Nate Parker, the Penn State wrestler turned filmmaker.
On the positive side, a New York Times story listed State College among the better escapes from the more extreme manifestations of climate change in the coming decades.
And a New Yorker photo feature included a Penn State student among 14 people who will vote in a presidential election for the first time next Tuesday.
That’s a lot of ink (or pixels) in one week. Here’s a closer look at these stories:
McQueary – I was surprised that McQueary won and — and at the heftiness of the sum the jury awarded him. The former assistant coach had sought more than $4 million. His claim: The university harmed him when it defended its handling of the Sandusky matter by impugning his account of seeing Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in a locker room.
The jury bestowed more than $7 million, with more to come, potentially, from the presiding judge.
More confounding than the verdict and the monetary award was the way the university defended itself. Penn State’s lawyer said no one ordered McQueary not to tell police about what he saw in the locker room, and that he damaged his own reputation by not doing so.
Doesn’t that line of argumentation acknowledge that calling the cops was an appropriate response to what McQueary had seen? If so, doesn’t it undercut the claims of President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz that the scene McQueary witnessed sounded more like “horseplay” than sexual assault?
As we look ahead to the criminal cases against Spanier, Curley and Schultz, the McQueary trial recalls some troubling questions:
If McQueary had seen innocent horseplay, why did he feel the need to report it to Joe Paterno? Why did Paterno then report it to Curley?
And didn’t an earlier allegation of child sexual abuse against Sandusky oblige the administrators to consider the possibility that Sandusky alone with a kid in the showers was more sinister than horseplay – and then call the police themselves?
Parker – The pending charges of failure to report suspected child abuse against the former Penn State administrators surfaced in the Parker story. Parker, director of “The Birth of a Nation,” was acquitted of raping a fellow Penn State student in 1999. Last week, The New York Times reported that prosecutors preparing for Curley’s trial are looking into another accusation of sexual misconduct against Parker.
In 2000, according to The Times story, a student trainer told Curley and other athletic department personnel that Parker had exposed himself to her. When she decided not to go to the police, the university let the matter drop.
Unnamed sources told The Times that prosecutors might view the incident as part of “a broad pattern of inaction” on complaints of sexual misconduct on the part of the Penn State athletic department.
Parker’s lawyer said his client denies exposing himself. Curley’s lawyer didn’t comment. Times editors put the story on the front page.
Climate – What is little State College doing among New York, Chicago and San Francisco in The Times’ story about places that will be spared the extreme weather expected to accompany continued climate change? Part of the answer is that one of the story’s three sources lives here:
“Our average temperatures, in the summertime, we’ll get maybe a few days above 90 degrees,” David Titley, a Penn State professor of meteorology, told The Times. “Our winter times are mild compared to New York State and New England. We’ll probably be OK with water.”
The Times used a game-day photo of Beaver Stadium as its graphic counterpart to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building.
Voters – In search of a young female Hillary Clinton supporter in Central Pennsylvania, the New Yorker found its way to Johnna Purcell, a Penn State junior majoring in political science.
What was it like to see her words and image in a publication that sells more than a million copies per week?
“You knew it was coming out,” Purcell told me, “but it’s not really real until you see it in the magazine.”
She bought one copy. Her parents, she said, “went to the bookstore and bought every copy they had.”
Also in the New York Times the other day was a roundup of universities’ efforts to curb student drinking. The Times trained its sights on several of our Big Ten compatriots — Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana.
We, for once, were spared.
