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Basic Christian
certainly more important than actually educating students
At all times, it's the reputation that must be safe-guarded. To use a specific, incredibly mild and harmless example,
take the school I went to: the Medill School at Northwestern. It's been riding on its reputation since my mom
attended back in the late sixties/early seventies. The classes are easy to pass without much effort and the instructors
are generally fairly average. It has the reputation of being the hardest school at Northwestern. In reality, it's the
easiest. The best part about Medill is the quarter you leave campus and intern at a news station/paper/magazine. It
taught me I wanted nothing to do with the world of news. This program is called Journalism Residency. A friend of
mine is on hers now and she texted me asking if she'd get in trouble for complaining publicly on Twitter that Medill
offers absolutely nothing in the way of sports journalism education. Almost none of the JR sites are specific to
sports and there are no classes to be found. I was confused. Why would she get in trouble for voicing a complaint?
Well it turns out that before she left on JR, she and everyone else had been told in no uncertain terms to "watch
what they tweet" because the school didn't want anything in the public sphere that would make the Journalism
Residency program look bad.
This should be the end of Paterno State - It's a tragedy, but it's not a
coincidence that abuses occur when football program is allowed free
rein - As university presidents throughout the country view the
steaming pile of rubble that was once college football's greatest coach
and its most admired program, they should understand one thing -
None of this is a coincidence
It is no coincidence that an alleged child molester was allowed to roam the Penn State University grounds
unchecked for nearly a decade with the knowledge of everyone from the school president to the football coach. It is
no coincidence that an alleged sexual assault of a 10-year-old boy in the showers of the school's football locker
room was never reported to police by anyone at Penn State University. It is no coincidence, because for 46 years it
was not really Penn State University, it was Paterno State University. It was a school that sold its soul to football
coach Joe Paterno for the sake of riches and recognition, a school that found its identity in his plain uniforms and
lived its life by his corny pep talks. Paterno was allowed to play God, and so his longtime assistant coach Jerry
Sandusky was allowed to do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, even if it included alleged sexual abuse of
eight boys over a 15-year period. Penn State created Joe Paterno, worshiped Joe Paterno, and stunningly required
four long days to finally throw the phony out into the street Wednesday when public furor forced the school's board
of trustees to fire him for not reporting Sandusky to police. What took them so long? It was the same sick fear of
Paterno's power that created this nightmare in the first place. Penn State and Paterno got everything they deserved
for failing to live up to the words uttered by board vice chairman John Surma, a truth acknowledged 46 years too
late. "'The university is much larger than its athletic teams,'' said Surma, as if that was something that actually
needed to be said.
Paterno failed Penn State more than any coach has ever failed a
school, and that's not the worst of it - Joe Paterno didn't do the right
thing then, and he wasn't going to do the right thing now - He was
going to do it his way - He was going to please himself, and to hell
with anyone who thought he should do it otherwise - In the end, he
seemingly couldn't understand how he failed the school he professed
to love so much - He just didn't understand that he could not coach
another game, that he could not stay at Penn State another hour
http://www.basicchristian.org/blog_History_Study_Complete.rss[1/16/2012 7:38:03 AM]