The outrage on campus is definitely not focused on what happened to the children, it is focused (according to CNN's reporting, at least) on the fact that Paterno was fired. I feel bad for these students because they are going to regret acting like this in defense of people who covered up molestation as they get older. I understand that some people say this was a rush to judgment and so are probably protesting on that basis more than on blind faith but I don't really agree. I think the acknowledged facts are bad enough for Paterno and the administration to justify a housecleaning immediately. Paterno may have fulfilled his legal obligation but he really should have cared enough to try to protect Sandusky's victims and he apparently didn't.

That's not my argument at all. Friendship has nothing to do with it. None of us know exactly what Paterno said to Curley when he reported the incident to him. But, the only explanation for not following up at least once by asking Curley, "hey, why is that guy who raped a 10 year old boy not in jail and still allowed on campus?" is that Paterno and others had created a culture that did not want to know about things that could reflect poorly on the program. There is no other explanation that I can think of. Think of how traumatic this kind of thing is for everybody involved (victims, witnesses, people who trusted the molester, etc.). Then think of how unnatural it is for it to never be brought up again, while the perpetrator continues to have unfettered access to the scene of the crime and continues to run his charity that is devoted to young boys. Paterno did not sit on the information, but he did turn a blind eye to it.

And that all ignores that Paterno only had supervisors to the extent that he allowed them to supervise him. There's a well known story about how the administration tried to fire him in 2004 and he just said, "no, that's not going to happen". Paterno was by far the most powerful person in the athletic department, if not the entire university.

And lastly, if Sandusky was forced out in 1999 because of previous allegations, Paterno didn't just deserve to be fired, he deserves to be in prison, along with Spanier, Curley and Schultz. Because that would mean that, contrary to what he told the grand jury, Paterno would have been aware of a pattern of abuse and enabled a child molester by allowing him to hang around the program with his cadre of young boys. Actually, now that I say that, I think Paterno deserves to be in jail anyway because of the 2002 incident. He allowed a known child molester to have access to facilities where it was known he had raped a young boy. That is unacceptable to me. Maybe it's not to you but I don't get why it wouldn't be. I worked with kids for several years and even we low-paid peons understood that job one was to not let kids get raped. That's the minimum standard. Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz failed miserably in that and it is awful and unforgivable. What makes it worse is that they were probably the highest paid state employees in Pennsylvania and at least Paterno, Curley and Spanier were looked up to and admired by many people for their "leadership" and "integrity". It's enough to make me want to vomit.

Sandusky's privileges weren't revoked. He was still at the facility all the time until as recently as last week and was even allowed to hold overnight football camps at Penn State satellite campuses. Sandusky was not banned from campus until last weekend, which is months after the fact that he was being investigated by a grand jury for child molestation became known.

And think about the perversity of the culture at Penn State. This is a campus where at least 10 adults witnessed or were told directly by eyewitnesses about Sandusky raping children on campus (McQueary, McQueary's father, Paterno, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, the janitor who witnessed Sandusky orally raping a kid in 2000, the at least 2 co-workers he told, and at least 1 supervisor he told). Not one of those 10 people called the police. Not one. I think most adults feel at least a vague imperative to protect children but all 10 of these guys overcame or ignored that imperative because of the culture of the institution they were involved with. It's sickening, just sickening that an organization could allow itself to become what Penn State became. The adults didn't even try find out who the kids were so they could tell their parents that the trusted man who was mentoring their kids was actually raping them! It's unconscionable.

Reporting child rape to the police is a higher standard than we hold anyone else to? Since when? Are morality and ethics at such a low ebb in this country that simply calling the police about a child molester would be seen as some sort of superhuman feat that only a paragon of virtue could perform? How can that be? This whole thing is perverse in the extreme. I'm coming around to the idea that college athletics are an inherently venal activity if this kind of behavior can be enabled for a decade and then, even after it is exposed, the enabling can be defended by legions of fans. This behavior is indefensible. There is literally no defense that is good enough to excuse the fact that not one of at least 10 adults called the police about 2 rapes that Sandusky was witnessed committing on Penn State's campus, and that at least 9 of those people saw Sandusky around the program on a regular basis and still did nothing to curtail his access to the hundreds of children he was involved with on campus and off.