Last weekend, I drove
out to State College, Penn., to see a close male relative (whom I won’t name
for fear of embarrassing him in front of the entire blogosphere, especially when
I write that he graduated magna cum laude)
at his commencement exercises at Penn State University. I had heard a number of things about the school in
innumerable college football telecasts over the years; more during my relative’s
four years at the school; and still more, unfortunately, with the shocking
arrest on child-molestation charges of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, and the fall and death
of legendary head coach Joe Paterno.
I won’t rehash my
complicated thoughts on the case here (if you insist on knowing them, see my prior post on the subject). In any
case, with Sandusky’s upcoming trial, it might all be a moot point. Legal
proceedings hardly settle everything, but often they answer enough questions
that, with the perspective of time, we’ll have enough to judge a human being in
as close to entirety as possible in this life.
More than anything, as
I took in the sights and sounds of this sprawling (more than 8,500 acres) campus, I couldn’t help but
feel that the institution was an immensely lengthened shadow of a man. The
minute or so that my family and I had to take pictures (including the one of
myself accompanying this post) at the bronze Paterno statue outside Beaver
Stadium was unusual. The afternoon before graduation, it was increasingly crowded
with visitors who could care less that the man depicted died with
a shadow cast over his life’s work—and on the day of commencement itself, the
lines for photos were almost as ridiculously long as in front of the beloved
Nittany Lion itself.
It was the same inside Berkey Creamery, the largest university
dairy in the nation, where the “Peachy Paterno” can still be found on the menu.
(Sandusky’s name, I’m told, was removed from the list of thick and rich
ice-cream concoctions.) Nor was that end of the coach’s imprint on the
university. Many of its most visible features—a library, sports museum,
spiritual center—derive overwhelmingly from Paterno’s support and even direct
dollar contributions. That impact calls to mind the quote associated with
Christopher Wren, the architect responsible for rebuilding London after its
devastating fire in 1666: “If you seek a monument, look around.”
Whatever Paterno’s sins
of omission, the board of trustees has probably taken a greater hit in public
esteem than the late coach. On Commencement Day, The Wall Street Journal reported the results of the latest board election. Three new trustees gained seats in an election with an unusually high level of interest (37,000 alumni—three
times the prior year’s total—voted), with at least one on record as having said
Paterno’s firing “outraged and inspired me.”
Veteran journalist Stephen Smith, in a commencement address at the School of Communications, told the new
graduates that since last autumn, “In effect, you audited a real-life seminar
in communications that cut across every discipline in this College.” Indeed:
events were reported by journalists, with images shaped by film and video
professionals, and shaped and responded to by specialists in advertising and
public relations.
More generally, though,
the Penn State imbroglio involved a vivid revelation of adult life
that the new graduates will encounter again and again from here on:
misunderstanding, miscommunication, loss of faith in a person or institution, destruction
of all they regarded as immutable in virtually no time flat—and, if the
graduates are lucky, the ability to rise to their feet again as they await the
next blow from life. It might take a long time to recur, perhaps years, but misfortune will strike again.
Maybe resilience in the
face of discord and tragedy might be the best lesson learned by my young male
relative and his fellow graduates these past four years in Happy Valley. In the lyrics of Bob Seger, especially prominent as I entered college: "Every time you keep control when you're cut off at the knees/Every time you take a punch and still stand at ease/Little victories."
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