Duke Lacrosse versus Penn State's Sandusky

Stu Kurtz weighs in late on the PSU scandal, and accuses me of taking a position similar to Duke 88, in terms of condemning Paterno before he's had a trial. Stu claims there is a strong parallel between the way I treated Paterno and the way in which the Duke 88 group treated the three lacrosse students. What in general could be said to be the difference? I think this provides a lovely case for us all to think about the differences between the two cases. I think of them as night and day. Stu writes:

Looking back at your first comment in the Duke Lacrosse Redux thread, you wrote, 'The crime that I argue that the Group of 88 committed falls under the category of "bearing false witness." But they immediately insisted that the three students who were charged be thrown off campus, and their careers at Duke terminated, without even the benefit of a trial.'

In the case of the Duke 88, they bought into a common narrative that rich white frat boys will take sexual advantage of vulnerable woman. Usually, that vulnerability comes from over-indulgence in alcohol that the frat boys provided, but in the Duke 88 case, the vulnerability was constructed out of race, class, and occupation.

This is exactly what you've done with Paterno and the Penn State football program. You have a general understanding of college athletics as being a distraction from the central mission of academics, and often enough a financial distortion of a University's budget. And so you want to use the Sandusky affair, and in particular the broadest form of the prosecution's case (involving both Paterno and Spanier) to argue for that entire team sport should be discontinued.

Whatever you said about the Duke 88? You're just like them.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 12:10:00 PM EST"

I responded, initially, like this:


Kirby Olson said...
The Duke faculty tried their own students, abusing their authority in the name of race, gender, and class (all three came into play, and since the case seemed to reinforce their bias, they couldn't resist hoping that it made all their fantasies of how the world works into a truth that validated their mindless theories).

I am not a part of the Penn State community, and so have no authority to abuse in terms of my understanding of the Paterno case and have no special weight to offer, and thus have not been quoted in the national press, nor did I push anyone at PEnn State to think one way or another. By the time I weighed in, all the details were settled. Paterno was the resident authority in the matter, that is, since he had been at Penn State since 1950, he was the deepest and most important authority in the matter. By his own admission he should have reported the matter to the police, and "wish that I done more," as he put it.

I see him as part of a hierarchy (the topmost part) and he didn't protect those on the bottom (literally as well as figuratively), but merely reported the matter to his athletic director (who in effect reported to Paterno).

I couldn't follow Stu's ideas here. There's an athletic team, and there are accusations, but beyond that, I don't think he dealt with anything more than superficial similarities.

I am, first and most importantly, coming in after the indictment was sealed, and Sandusky had been arrested (many people in academia would not consider what Sandusky had done to be a crime unless race was involved because unless it was, race and gender were not involved -- if race and gender were not involved, many people in academia could not care less). Class was almost certainly involved, but that is no longer of any concern to most academics.

We will not hear anything from feminists since no girls were involved, and boys deserve whatever they have coming to them. Feminists don't care about boys. As far as they are concerned, boys can ge destroyed as a class, and why would they care, unless, of course, they also happen to be minorities.

If the boys turn out to be black, then we will get the race and gender pundits weighing in with every ounce of force they can muster, but if they are not, we will hear nothing from the Sharpton/McKinnon clique. If they are, we will hear about it for the next hundred years.

As for me, my problem with the Paterno situation is my problem with Catholic hierarchy (Paterno is Catholic) and the problem of not standing up and bearing witness (a problem we see not only in the Catholic abuse problem and its subsequent cover-up but also in Italy itself in which a mafia has extended its power throughout the peninsula bringing the Italian economy toward the brink of collapse). This is not necessarily a matter of Catholicism itself, or Catholics, but has to do with their top-down structure in which they think someone else is responsible for the problem. And one musn't block say anything that conflicts with the party line.

Lutherans have many problems, but reporting and being a witness is not one of them. We do not have a damaged sense of authority and so we generally trust authority (often too much, due to St. Paul's Romans, and the passage about trusting the authorities).

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 3:39:00 PM EST


stu said...
Kirby,

It seems to me that the case against Paterno is substantially more ambiguous than you're presenting it. He was presented with hear-say, and he kicked it up the administrative food-chain as such. There's an eminently ironic phrase for Paterno's (and the prosecutor's) argument that he should have done more, "Monday morning quarterbacking." Note that Paterno would have been held blameless, even admirable, if the AD or VP had simply passed the word along to the police. Any of them could have, and none of them did. If there was collusion, a joint decision to do nothing, that's one thing. But I don't have the sense that that's how it went down.

And here's another part of the puzzle that doesn't get much play. Sandusky was being groomed as Paterno's successor. In 1999, he was awarded Assistant Coach of the Year. Yet, he "retired" the same year, at 55 years old, and despite seeking a coaching job, he didn't get one. Funny thing that. Maybe someone around him was putting out the word that there were problems here. Maybe it's worth thinking about who was putting that word out, as you think about culpability.

Why do you consider these facts of the PSU case to be any more reliably established than the "facts" of the Duke Lacrosse "rape," which was tried in the media by the prosecuter?

It seems to me that the Penn State Board of Trustees should have suspended Paterno, Spanier, et. al., pending the result of a trial, but not fired them outright. It is one thing to act decisively in the event of credible information to protect others. It is another thing to prejudge the case -- and that's exactly what happened with the Duke 88 and with you. You're guilty of exactly the same error.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 4:06:00 PM EST


Kirby Olson said...
Stu, what the Duke 88 did to the students at Duke is what you're doing to me. First off, the students at Duke did nothing. They got the wrong three people, and framed them, and then railroaded them. The stripper pulled a Tawana Brawley. Remember that nothing happened at Duke. And yet everyone rushed to judgement with the exception of one or two administrative officials.

At Penn State, something really did happen. At least eight children were molested, and the perp was caught in the act, and Paterno not only didn't report according to Pennsylvania law, he participated in a cover up and allowed Sandusky to continue to have keys to athletic facilities that allowed kids to continue to be abused in those facilities. The grand jury indicted Sandusky on forty counts of child molesting. That's forty counts, and it includes at least 8 boys.

I'm not sure why I'm like the Duke 88. After all they railroaded the students when nothing at all had ever happened. Now if it turns out that no kids were harmed at all, and that the kids and their moms made all this stuff up, then we would have a situation parallel to Duke. Is Sandusky parallel to the three lacrosse students?

And at that point, I would apologize. But I would not have the responsibility that Duke 88 would have had. I have had no bearing on the case, being an outsider from a remote institution, writing on a blog that doesn't have national attention. Duke 88 were inside the institution and weighed in on their own students. Their names were widely known throughout the nation as wishing to forward the railroading. After the facts were known and it became clear the DA railroaded the kids (for which he lost his license) they still did not apologize, but went on bizarrely to continue to press the case even after the case had been dismissed by everyone else in the nation. They were still certain it had happened although all the facts were otherwise.

Your assertion that I am like Duke 88 is more like Duke 88 than I am, or so I think. Let's see what the others say, and see if Brett or others take your side. Helen Losse might, but she doesn't come here much any longer. In both cases I believed that there was a truth that was suppressed, and I thought it was a symptom of corruption and misplaced priorities.

Your values in this case are hard to fathom!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 10:52:00 PM EST


stu said...
Kirby,

You need to go back and re-read your summary condemnation of the Duke 88. It had everything to do with a rush to judgment before a trial.

Has there been a trial of Sandusky? Has there been a trial of Paterno, or Spanier? I must have missed it.

The Duke 88 erred because accepting the prosecution's version of facts fit their narrative. You're doing the same. There is nothing more to say.

You're not trying. I agree that children need to be protected, and that if the case proves to be as the prosecution alleges, then Paterno (and Spanier and others) should have done more. But I also think that the record will ultimately show that both did considerably more than is currently understood, and that this will moderate judgments that now seem all-but universal. I've already sketched out a reaction by the PSU trustees that I thought met their obligations to both the alleged victims, and the alleged perpetrators: suspension until trial, and final resolution thereafter.

I wonder about your values. You were big on "innocent until proven guilty" in the Duke case. You don't give a damn about it here. Hence, "innocent until proven guilty" is not one of your values, but instead is a tactic that you apply selectively to cases that meet other ideological tests.

Here's the thing that I don't get. Sandusky "retired" in '99. Yet the incident that is at the root of the current allegations occurred in the PSU football showers in '02. What, exactly, was an ex-employee doing there? Why did he still have access? I've not heard this addressed at all.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 11:08:00 PM EST


Kirby Olson said...
Stu, you are in a time warp because of other events that have kept you from getting the latest facts in the Sandusky case. Paterno allowed Sandusky to use the facilities after he was not renewed. This meant that he had keys, and continued to abuse at least eight more children in the PSU facilities, and was caught red-handed at least once more by McQueary -- now in charge of the PSU football team. Read Jerry Sandusky, the Wiki page, and get caught up with the facts of the case. There are many new bits of data, including a missing DA (they can't find the body), the number of victims (not alleged victims who stand to gain something by speaking out, but instead victims whose lives will be further ruined by these crimes), and there are statements by Sandusky himself that have come to light, such as his statement to one of the victims' mothers: ""I wish I were dead," as he put it.

One way in which Paterno might not be as guilty as I have put it here is that he may be of an age in which it wasn't commonly realized that child perps will repeat their crimes if given the opportunity. He may have thought Sandusky was able to control himself having once been scolded. But perps in this category are repeat offenders at a 99% rate. What Sandusky apparently did is to use the facilities and tickets to treat children to presents that he would then get them excited with. Paterno let those gifts continue by not completely severing the relationship of Sandusky and the University facilities.

Paterno may not have realized that this would be the case, and the kind of crime may have been far from his ability to understand. He was, after all, 86. And maybe he had no awareness of anything outside of football. He may have been a kind of idiot savante. If that's the case, then it's possible to forgive his incredible dimwittedness on this matter.

There are new rumors that Sandusky groomed these kids as a child brothel for wealthy donors. A columnist named Michael Madsen made those allegations public. One wonders if the investigation will turn up an entire crime organization founded on the premises of PSU and in which money used to create a competitive team was gotten via this child brothel and translated into successful seasons. Time will tell.

As I see it, the number of personnel of very high standing involved, and the length of time this took to play out (at least a decade, and possibly more) make it quite unlike the Duke case in which a single night was involved, a false claim by a flighty person was believed by 88 faculty members, and in which the DA knowingly railroaded three young men who had nothing to do with the case for political reasons.

So far as PSU we have instead an insider very far up in the hierarchy who is accused of a far more dreadful crime -- raping children inside of campus facilities for a period exceeding ten years, and in which the top coach of the team was aware of the crimes, and barely did anything to stop it. Presidents of colleges can be released for any reason, and do not generally speaking have tenure, as faculty do. They can be released for any reason. It is not a crime to release them. Neither Paterno nor Spanier have been accused of criminal activity and neither one will be tried.

The lacrosse boys were tried in the public and on TV over a period of years, and false witness was knowingly borne against them, including by sports writers and major television figures. They were summarily removed as students from the student body. This was illegal given that they had not yet been found guilty (and ultimately the stripper herself said they had the wrong three men even though in fact noone had ever raped her).

The cases bear a tantalizing but superficial resemblance. The deep parallels aren't there.

Thursday, November 24, 2011 8:48:00 AM EST


Kirby Olson said...
Paterno was, by the way, a lifelong Republican, and a major donor to the Republican party. So I bear him no animus on a political basis.

Thursday, November 24, 2011 8:51:00 AM EST


Kirby Olson said... (Here is some of the data from Wikipedia):
On November 5, 2011, former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was arrested on 40 counts relating to sexual abuse of eight young boys over a 15-year period, including alleged incidents that occurred at Penn State.[28] A 2011 grand jury investigation reported that then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno in 2002 that he had seen Sandusky abusing a 10-year-old boy in Penn State football's shower facilities. The grand jury report would later detail that McQueary saw Sandusky sodomizing the boy. [29]According to the report, Paterno notified Athletic Director Tim Curley the next day about the incident, and later notified Gary Schultz, director of business and finance, who oversaw the University Police.[30]

That's from the Paterno page. 40 counts is fairly serious, and eight boys. We have far less in terms of the Herman Cain problem -- three reports of HARASSMENT, not rape (Clinton was accused of raping Juanita Broaddrick and paid her 850,000 hush money, but Democrats don't care, and would love to have him as president again), but with Cain it was only harassment, and we don't have faces, only allegations, and the crime is not nearly as serious as rape, much less of minors.

Where minors are concerned, the country is understandably alarmed because the very possibility of consent is not there.

Thursday, November 24, 2011 9:00:00 AM EST


Kirby Olson said...
The wiki page on Duke's lacrosse team cites the division of faculty members amongst the 88 Duke faculty who decided that the lacrosse players had been guilty of a hate crime:

"In three departments, more than half of faculty signed the statement. The department with the highest proportion of signatories was African and African-American Studies, with 80%. Just over 72% of the Women's Studies faculty signed the statement, Cultural Anthropology 60%, Romance studies 44.8%, Literature 41.7%, English 32.2%, Art & Art History 30.7%, and History 25%. No faculty members from the Pratt School of Engineering or full-time law professors signed the document. Departments that had no faculty members sign the document include Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Genetics, Germanic Languages/Literature, Psychology and Neuroscience, Religion, and Slavic and Eurasian Studies."