The Shock At Penn State Blog Post # 3

Penn State has the entire nation in shock.The recent scandal involving Assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky has been the prime discussion in the NCAA. Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 of the 48 counts of sexual assault against children. Who would imagine the founder of “The Second Mile” childrens charity would commit such a heinous crime.  According to “NBC News’ Michael Isikoff, Sandusky faces a minimum sentence of 60 years under Pennsylvania sentencing guidelines — at his age, effectively a life sentence”.  It has been announced that Graham Spanier, Tim Curley ,Gary Schultz, and the late coach Joe Paterno all had a general idea of what was occurring to these boys, but all of them kept it amongst themselves.Personally, I believe that each individual involved in this act should be held accountable for their actions. All of these men are supposed to be examples for the youth in their community but instead were otherwise.

 It appears that the way the NCAA is dealing with this crime is by penalizing the current football team. Since this crime has been publicly revealed the NCAA has banned Penn State's football team from postseason play for the next four years, they also were issued a 60 million dollar sanction, and all wins dating back to 1998 were removed.

The question many ask is why is it fair to take away funding and scholarships from student athletes who had nothing to do with this.

What is the NCAA thinking, why would they revoke funding from the university and its students who had nothing to do with it, when the ones who need to be punished are the ones with involvement. I agree with Penn State assistant coach receiving the maximum jail sentence. He should receive the fullest charge as with the others who had involvement. Other states have taken a lesson from this vicious scandal and have began implementing new laws to help prevent this from happening again. California's Governor Jerry Brown responds to Penn State's scandal with his new law in addition to the one already in place requiring reporting by teachers, teacher aides, doctors and others who supervise children. His new law states “ California's K-12 schools, and all higher education employees, will be required to report suspected child sexual abuse”. In my opinion ,it should not have to be a law but human nature to help a young child who is being victimized by a much older man. It seems unethical for a standard interview to be one of the only forms of security protecting children against predators.  

  This sequence of unfortunate events should be a “eye opener” for society. Not everyone is who they appear to be , and if one takes on the responsibility of being a coach,teacher,counselor etc .The intentions of that individual should be examined thoroughly ,so an event like this never occurs again. All in all , this scandal should not diminish the universities integrity and facade as long as they progress to a honest better and brighter future.

                                               Photo Credit

Picture 1:

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            Picture#2
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Picture #3

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