In 1999, Paterno defended linebacker LaVar Arrington after he assaulted a defenseless Pitt punter in the middle of a game. Then in 2000 he allowed quarterback Rashard Casey to start every game despite being charged with assaulting a cop. In subsequent years according to Chris Korman, “Players were constantly getting into violent altercations with other students…. There were fights at the ice skating rink, the union building at the center of campus, frats, apartments, houses.” Former Ravens cornerback Anwar Phillips was accused of sexual assault, yet was allowed to “play in a bowl game before serving his two-semester suspension”. Korman looked into “probably a half-dozen others [sexual assault cases] that never went to trial. Women were fearful they’d never get a fair trial in State College. Victims of beatings knew the scales of justice were already tilted against them. ESPN actually compiled numbers to show just how rambunctious it got in Happy Valley, reporting that from 2002 to 2008 there were 46 players charged with 163 counts.” In 2006, LaVon Chisley, a defensive end who spent three years in the program, killed a fellow student by stabbing him 93 times. This was after he took loans from sports agents and became academically ineligible to play football. However, he was allowed to participate in Penn State’s Pro Day. Paterno even went so far as to say Tony Johnson, a wide receiver arrested for DUI “didn’t do anything to anyone.” Sports Illustrated in 2011 declared Penn State as one of the worst schools in college football for players with police records with 16 players charged.
oh, look. turns out that when you’re trying to cover up a child prostitution ring, you don’t much care when your players stab somebody 90 times or rape/beat multiple women.
as far as I’m concerned, fuck firing people, they need to shut down the entire fucking dept, if not the school (the rest of the school, mostly just to perform oversight and examine how money from the football program/athletic dept has made it into the rest of the depts,)—and do some *serious* institutional reorganizing. no more police chief serving the football coach, no more sponserships and donations to keep the program running, no more men only programs/departments/teams/etc (not saying that other genders present will stop rape, but that it’s *acceptability* of the “men only” space that makes it ok to determine under what conditions “outsiders” (i.e. children, women, fellow students, etc) will be allowed into the space—and it’s NOT ok for men to decide how others will be a part of their community)
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That’s why, when kid I went to high school with were like “Why don’t you go to a school with a sports program, or a greek society or whatever, I was lik e”Uhhhh, no. No no no no.”
Not all programs are this bad, and certainly they get worse the higher up in the rankings you go, but when this is considered normal behavior for sports programs, when the notion that The Team can get away with just about anything, that’s not a space I want to be a part of.
I mean, I went to school not that far from UMass, and I remember there being more than a few large scale events there in the wake of sports wins or losses, just because everyone knew that as long as it was in the name of The Team they could kinda get away with it.
I just…and it’s such a damned shame, because there are quite a few folks who need these sports programs (which brings up a whole different, but overlapping, set of issues with higher education and it’s financial priorities) in order to afford some of the top universities in the country.
(via note-a-bear)
(via bad-dominicana)
