Yeah, I don't understand this at all. Not even that it should make any difference, but McQueary is a hulking brute of a guy -- it seems absolutely implausible that he could have been in any physical way afraid to intervene.
I cut him some slack in an an earlier thread only because I find backing off so inconceivable as a decision, that involuntarily-frozen-with-horror seemed more plausible somehow.
I pre-emptively endorse any and all views expressed by flippanter in this thread. I'm living dangerously.
I think a great number of people would freeze up and walk out, due not to past trauma but to it being so horrific / unexpected / challenging. Fight-or-flight, kind of. Even without such a powerful figure involved.
For every person who reported Sandusky, I bet there's at least one other who tried to forget they ever saw it.
I think often shouting "hey, stop raping that 10-year-old!" would be enough.
I think often shouting "hey, stop raping that 10-year-old!" would be enough.
I yell that constantly. Every thirty, forty seconds.
2 - McQueary was a childhood friend of Sandusky's son, so he was walking in on (at the very least) a figure from his childhood, not his former boss. There's a whole horrible psychohistory here waiting to be unpacked.
Comment 6 brought to you by the utter failure of comment 5's author to correctly close tags.
The only conceivable defense is that he got raped by the same guy as a kid and just backed out in frozen horror.
That is certainly the explanation I have been wondering about, myself.
4: Walk away from a ten-year-old getting raped (or anyone, really)? I can imagine a possible frozen-in-horror reaction, but I can't see it as plausibly an ordinary or common reaction. (Well, I could see a surprisingly long freeze before action while processing what you were actually seeing being fairly likely, but I'm talking 15-30 seconds, not a day.)
7: Oh, fuck. Um, geez, the 'raped by the same guy' explanation sounds a lot more probable all of a sudden.
People in other threads here and elsewhere have been positing that shock & mental paralysis might explain McQueary's non-actions.
It's possible. What irrevocably damns McQueary is that he didn't just have one Lord Jim moment where he failed to act decently in a critical instance. He continued to make the same cowardly decision over and over again. For years.
And yet Mike McQueary remains an assistant football coach at Pennsylvania State University. I wonder if he'll last.
It's likely that this is ~enormously~ off base, but I've been wondering what role, if any, the intense meatheaded homophobia of many organized male sports played here. That his response was conditioned on some kind of fucked up shameful OMGOMGSQUICK rather than the rage most of us would feel?
(That he was also one of Sandusky's victims seems possible, too.)
12: Absolutely. Going to Paterno the next day rather than stopping it instantly could be some sort of shock reaction. Never going to the cops makes him despicable, regardless of any possible past trauma. I assume he'll have to be fired as well.
I've never understood why everyone thinks bad or cowardly behavior is so surprising or implausible. Seriously? People do the wrong thing every damn day! People are usually cowards!
And I love that everyone assumes that if it were them they would have automatically done the right thing. How do you know? How often have you walked in on a sexual assault involving a respected authority figure?
I have stopped a would-be rapist, mid-event. So yeah, wtf?! It's not a hard decision process.
Actually, I kind of think 14 is on to something. Penn State in particular is a very fratty homophobic culture.
16: I don't suppose anyone does know. But you'd kind of think that 9 years is a lot of time for reflection.
17
Hey, that's seriously fantastic. I just think that it's not the default reaction for everyone.
19
Oh, absolutely. As others have said, even if he froze in the moment, the fact that he didn't go to the cops later is the really damning thing.
4: Walk away from a ten-year-old getting raped (or anyone, really)? I can imagine a possible frozen-in-horror reaction, but I can't see it as plausibly an ordinary or common reaction. (Well, I could see a surprisingly long freeze before action while processing what you were actually seeing being fairly likely, but I'm talking 15-30 seconds, not a day.)
Yes, I do see it as plausibly frequent. 16 gets it right: how do you know?
There's also no moral obligation to stop an assault or rape, regardless of how physically imposing you may be. Your moral/social obligation is to report it, and that's completely consistent with walking away.
Also, didn't McQueary quickly go to his dad to help process it and decide what to do?
People do the wrong thing every damn day!
If we were a more just society, everybody would get weekends off and at least four weeks a year.
Do we know that Sandusky didn't stop when McQueary walked in? It seems to me that you don't actually have to say or do anything to stop someone from raping a 10-year old, as they're going to stop if they think someone knows, right?
16: There's physical cowardice, which is one thing. I have no idea what I'd do in any situation where physical courage was required to do the right thing, because I've never been in one, so I'm not going to brag about it.
But jesus, I've faced down authority figures over minor, picayune ethical issues -- it doesn't come up all that often, but I've done it. (Yesterday afternoon, actually). Covering up for an authority figure raping a child isn't normal, ordinary cowardice, it's an extraordinarily evil thing to do. Most people would do the right thing, if you define the right thing as "Report it to the cops with no physical risk to themselves."
There's also no moral obligation to stop an assault or rape, regardless of how physically imposing you may be.
What the fuck? There's no legal obligation, but if you think there's no moral obligation at all, I disapprove of your morals.
I yell that constantly. Every thirty, forty seconds.
You need to move to a better neighbourhood.
There's also no moral obligation to stop an assault or rape, regardless of how physically imposing you may be.
There's no legal obligation, but I would say there was precisely a moral obligation to do so, if you can (i.e. if you're not 85 and on two sticks, or five foot nothing and weight 90 lb, and the rapist isn't waving a machete.)
There's also no moral obligation to stop an assault or rape, regardless of how physically imposing you may be. Your moral/social obligation is to report it, and that's completely consistent with walking away.
Are you sure you didn't mean "legal" instead of "moral"? If you're sure, WTF?
Do we know that Sandusky didn't stop when McQueary walked in? It seems to me that you don't actually have to say or do anything to stop someone from raping a 10-year old, as they're going to stop if they think someone knows, right?
Well, he left without getting the kid to safety (or even attempting to). So, regardless of what actually transpired after he left, I'd say that counts as "not stopping it".
Most people would do the right thing, if you define the right thing as "Report it to the cops with no physical risk to themselves.
It's definitely monstrous and/or craven to fail to properly report something for years, I don't disagree there. However, I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that most people would do that, given the several other cases in the grand jury report where mothers and other eyewitnesses did exactly the same thing as McQueary, and all the other examples of longtime widespread complicity like with the Catholic Church.
There is some level of personal physical risk at which point you don't have the obligation to intervene. But if you're capable of intervening with a very small physical risk to yourself, then surely you have a moral obligation to intervene. When you're talking about an unarmed 58 year old man and a 20-something former quarterback, then it seems that the physical risk here is quite low.
OK, I'm not sure what the moral obligation is. But I think everyone has a right to think of their own safety in intervening, which is not determined by weight differential alone, and the right even to overemphasize the risk to themselves.
But I think everyone has a right to think of their own safety in intervening, which is not determined by weight differential alone
More and more people are concluding that they should carry umbrellas with hidden swords whenever they are in Pennsylvania.
Which may not affect the moral calculus but does affect "what you can reasonably expect of a person."
To be clear, 28 notwithstanding, even though I think McQueary should have done something to intervene, I'd probably be willing to exonerate him completely if he'd followed up adequately with the police.
Not to overpsychoanalyze the situation, but I actually wonder if a nagging "why didn't I do something?" might have been part of what kept from following up adequately in the succeeding eight years. "If it comes to light, I'll look bad for not having done anything to help."
given the several other cases in the grand jury report where mothers and other eyewitnesses did exactly the same thing as McQueary,
For several other eyewitnesses, I count one, the janitor in 2000. I don't know which mother you're talking about, if not the one who went to the police in 1998.
IME (I wish I didn't have this experience) most people engaged in common assault or aggravated harassment will stop if you just shout "Oi, stop that!", unless they're very drunk. I've never had to intervene to stop a rape, but I imagine it would be similar.
In general I agree that people have the right to overemphasize the risk to themselves, but that's in the sense of "there's no reason to break your own arm to save someone else's" not "there's no reason to break your own arm in order to stop someone else from being raped."
When people use size in this context, they don't just mean weight. We're talking about a 6 foot tall man who knows how to carry his body and has spent much of his life training for one of the most violent activities we allow in our society.
re: 32
Yeah, sure, there are times when it's really dangerous or stupid to intervene. But this really doesn't sound like one of those times. Also, the circumstances themselves change the moral calculus a lot.
Someone robbing someone? Maybe err on the side of caution.
Someone raping a kid? Maybe err on the side of not being too fucking cautious.
And I love that everyone assumes that if it were them they would have automatically done the right thing.
The more that people tell themselves that they would do the right thing (even if this is as self-deluding as you suggest), the more likely they are to actually do the right thing if the time comes, because of the need to live up to their own self-image, and because even a mental rehearsal is better than no preparation.
37: Okay, I'm going to be slower with the keyboard for a while.
And saying someone has a moral obligation to intervene where they could without unreasonable risk to themselves doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to call them names if I disagree about the risk calculus -- it's a judgment call. But just because I'm not entitled to judge whether someone lived up to their moral obligation without knowing literally everything about the situation doesn't make the obligation go away.
More and more people are concluding that they should carry umbrellas Scotsmen with hidden swords brandishing knives whenever they are in Pennsylvania.
41: Exactly. Bragging, "Of course I would have done the right thing, no matter how hard or dangerous," makes you an ass. But saying that "This is the right thing to do, and anyone who doesn't do it is acting wrongly" sets standards that define a society that's worth living in.
41 is right. Also, sometimes risking yourself is the right thing to do.
As I said above, most people (sensibly) wouldn't step in when, say, a bunch of teenagers are vandalising a car. You're likely to get your head kicked in, for nothing. But this isn't one of those situations.
The text I've read says that Sandusky and the boy saw McQueary as well, so that particular episode most likely stopped right then.
I once stopped a bunch of teenages from writing who exactly it was that Derek loves in some wet cement. I just yelled "hey" and they ran away.
41
I can see that, though I'd replace "themselves" with "others" and "self-image" with "public image". People are great at deluding themselves, so I don't think self-image would really have too much of an influence. But if you have to live up to a public persona, it would have a much larger effect.
45
But this post is all about the former and not the latter.
51: That seems like a shitty reading of a post that includes"I think often shouting "hey, stop raping that 10-year-old!" would be enough. I don't like to imagine I'd be all Schindler in Nazi Germany, but come the fuck on here....There's 911 in the world too, you know?"
I think Al's clearly not claiming any extraordinary physical courage, just that she'd do the right thing within reasonable limits. And I honestly don't think that's much of a brag in this case; accounting for physical fear, doing the right thing in terms of stopping a kid from being raped isn't a big brag, it's claiming not to be contemptible.
Sorry, that was uncharitable of me. I apologize.
I can see saying "he did the wrong thing". I can see moving on to "Why did he do the wrong thing?". That's an interesting thing to discuss and maybe we'll learn something about how to encourage people to do the right thing in the future. But it's the step to "How could he have done the wrong thing?" that irks me. There are a billion easy answers for that ranging from cowardice to evil.
McQueary's behavior is completely inexcusable and completely commonplace. Steven Colbert has talked about the abusive priest at his high school, and how everyone knew and no one did anything, and no one could explain why they didn't do anything. There is serious, awful collective guilt for the people there. If we are prone to doubt ourselves, we might sympathize with those who did nothing, and then try to say it was ok as a way of assuaging our vicarious shame.
I think a more productive attitude would be to simply admit that ways in which most people are prone to fuck up big time, and to respond by publicizing the idea that this is a situation you might find yourself in and this is what you should do. A collective rehearsal of the right action in a bad situation is an effective public health measure.
I'd observe that despite the solid moral obligation to act (on which, comity), I still think quite a lot of people, though probably not a majority, would have acted as McQueary did in the same situation (over 9 years, not just 15 minutes). There's fear for your job, there's conflating morality with patriarchy, there's the fact that his action would be perceived as going against the group, and then all that family history stuff.
The janitor who observed Victim 8 told both a co-worker and his immediate supervisor, and neither of them reported it either. Also in that case, Sandusky appears to have deliberately tried to intimidate those who knew about it.
Every time there's a shooting spree in the news, a bunch of blowhard right wing couch potatoes start bellowing about how they totally would have gone all Rambo on the shooter's ass if they had been there.
A desire not to imitate that behavior is understandable. But I think it's possible to say "here's how a decent person would behave in such and such a situation" and even "here's how I hope I would behave in such and such a situation" without falling into swaggering second hand bravado.
The more I find out about this story, the more upsetting it is.
Can we all, the participants in this thread, at least agree to solemnly swear that if any of us ever walk in on some guy raping a ten-year old, we'll remember this comment thread and shout, "Hey, stop raping that kid"?
I don't think it would even take all that much physical courage in this day and age. Just quietly pull out a cell phone and dial 911.
Disbelief and cover-up are the norms around sexual abuse. While there are always individuals to blame, simply blaming them doesn't prevent future abuse. You need to look at institutional arrangements that reinforce people's moral failings and institutional arrangements that don't. Personally, I think changes in macho, fawning, hierarchical institutions like college football and the Catholic Church are the place to look if you actually want to help things in the future.
56: See, for psychological plausibility, I think there's a big difference between an eyewitness and someone who heard about it secondhand. What the janitor's supervisor, and Paterno, and everyone else heard reports did is contemptible and evil, but not surprising to me; "Maybe it wasn't so bad, maybe everyone's getting overexcited about nothing much, anyway it's not my problem." But seeing it for yourself, I think most people would do the right thing.
To avoid this sort of dilemma, I always carry a walking stick with bells on it, like I'm in bear country.
macho, fawning, hierarchical institutions like college football
This weird culture is something that I hadn't realized before. How is it possible that the 28 year-old GA calls his dad, rather than the police, and his dad advises him to talk to the coach, rather than the police. It's just such an insular perspective.
Just by the way: I think it's worth noting that we're mere moments away from someone (a high-profile blogger or sportswriters, I mean, not someone here) writing a potentially illuminating but almost certainly infuriating grand analogy of the cultures of the Catholic Church and the Penn State football program. Be advised. And be vigilant.
See, for psychological plausibility, I think there's a big difference between an eyewitness and someone who heard about it secondhand.
Sure! I'm not trying to condemn them. But it seems to me you're estimating the average person's predisposition to stop/report in a sterile hypothetical environment devoid of context, and context is most of what's in the way (55, 56.1).
I don't think it would even take all that much physical courage in this day and age. Just quietly pull out a cell phone and dial 911.
Believe you me, people find it in themselves to report fucking everything from reckless drivers to hobo fights to the crazy guy pointing his cell phone like a gun at passing cars. I personally get dispatched to hundreds of calls a month. I've heard multiple instances on the radio of "crazy hobo just dropped his pants and pooped right in front of me" this week alone ffs.
67: Context is exactly what I'm talking about. Steven Colbert saying "Everyone knew" about the abusive priest doesn't mean "Lots of people were eyewitnesses." Gossip gets around, people sort of believe it but feel as if they're entitled to not do anything because they're not absolutely sure, and things get covered up out in the open. It's awful, but doesn't surprise me.
Seeing something with your own eyes seems to me to be a completely different situation psychologically. Not necessarily morally, but inactivity from an eyewitness surprises me where inactivity from someone who just heard reports doesn't.
Gswift makes SLC sound so attractive.
69: But there had to have been eyewitnesses, hundreds or thousands of them, plus parents who found out, over the multiple decades and multiple countries of Catholic Church (and other church) -based abuse? Would it have stayed covered-up for so long if the majority of eyewitnesses had acted correctly by instinct?
"Everyone knew"
This is what my dad says about the priests in the Yukon, apparently the sort of punishment assignment the church gave to real fuck-ups. "Everyone knew" not to be alone with the priests, but I'm sure that "everyone" didn't always count the native kids or the kids with shitty parents.
It seems like the Milgram experiments are relevant here. I bet it'd be different/easier to react in a morally appropriate way if no authority figure were involved, and that the presence of the authority figure made it more surprising and harder to think clearly.
It also seems like having lots of explicit discussion about what the right thing to do would be, and how what McQueary did was wrong, is a necessary step for future incidents to turn out differently. I guess there's some holier-than-thou blaming in that, but "oh well I probably would have done the same thing because it's easy to be cowardly and hard to be brave" doesn't seem very constructive to me.
The Catholic Church isn't a football program, no matter how neat the analogy might appear at first glance. Priests are, unless I'm mistaken, taken literally to be God's representatives on earth. Jerry Sandusky taught young men to tackle other young men. Which is gayer? That's not for me to say.
69: I don't know the specifics of Colbert's case, but it is good that there is a big difference between "everyone knew" and "I actually saw this." I've never been in a setting where sexual abuse was widely considered to be happening but not reported, but I have been in plenty of situations where "everyone knew" that two people were sleeping together. My guess is that "everyone" gets it right about 85% of the time unless they are talking about somebody unpopular in which case it drops to 45%.
But there had to have been eyewitnesses, hundreds or thousands of them,
Over whatever time period, sure, hundreds or thousands. But raping children is something that even priests tend to seek out privacy for, so I'd guess that there is actually quite a small percentage of eyewitnesses compared to the amount of abuse that went on.
And what the church often did when abuse was reported was move priests away and assure the reporters that they had taken care of it -- someone who saw abuse, and reported it to the church, and then saw the offender removed from contact with children that they were aware of is someone who I think tried to do the right thing, so long as they weren't aware of the church's reputation for covering things up and allowing abuse to continue. Reporters like that may have been ineffective in stopping abuse, but if you report something to a trusted authority and see what you believe to be appropriate action taking place (which cuts out McQueary and Paterno, who saw Sandusky continuing to have access to kids), I think you're morally in the clear. The church just abused its status as a trusted authority to enable abuse despite the actions of people who reported it.
Anyway, I guess I'd like to see some set of rules where gossip is less likely to drive police investigations. Having actual witnesses call the police solves this problem.
"oh well I probably would have done the same thing because it's easy to be cowardly and hard to be brave" doesn't seem very constructive to me.
I sorta agree, but "omg, I would totally have done the right thing and it's inconceivable that any person with an iota of decency would not have" is equally non-constructive. If fact, I'd argue that the ability to mentally put oneself in the situation and imagine why it would be difficult to do the right thing is, in fact, crucial to having future events turn out differently.
I like a lot of what rob is saying here.
"omg, I would totally have done the right thing and it's inconceivable that any person with an iota of decency would not have" is equally non-constructive
I disagree. At the very least it sets a higher standard for behavior, to which we can all aspire.
Not that this is what I said, or what I think anyone else has been saying. But it's not just as bad.
Gswift makes SLC sound so attractive.
Ha, you should go on a ride along sometime. I recall someone around here going on one in the San Fran area and being a bit shocked at the seedy underbelly of their favorite haunts. The pooping calls are the same guy every time. Alex doesn't victimize anyone and doesn't have any substance abuse issues but he's totally nuts and in a better country would be institutionalized.
If fact, I'd argue that the ability to mentally put oneself in the situation and imagine why it would be difficult to do the right thing is, in fact, crucial to having future events turn out differently.
Can you spell out why you think it would be difficult to do the right thing (intervene immediately, report to proper authorities) if you saw a child be raped? I got physical fear, and I'll cut anyone slack for not taking immediate action if they were afraid (I think it's possible to act wrongly out of cowardice, but I'm not going to claim that I wouldn't be a physical coward). Freezing in some sort of emotional shock reaction? Possible, I don't think it's likely to be very common. Both of those apply to not acting immediately, neither to not reporting to the authorities.
Fear for one's job? That was the janitors in 2000, probably also McQueary. I understand it, but I think for anyone not in dire economic straits, that's a pretty contemptible motive for not helping a rape victim.
What am I missing that hasn't been acknowledged?
There's also a shock value to witnessing something like that. When someone sees something unthinkable, it can take a while convince themselves that what they thought they saw was actually what they saw.
As someone who tends to be slow on the uptake, I can excuse the immediate delay based on that. It doesn't excuse years of silence, though, or going to the coach rather than the police.
68: people find it in themselves to report fucking everything
Just this week I reported a traffic signal that had gotten bumped so that it was pointing the wrong way.
I guess from my perspective, yes, McQueary's actions were wrong, harmful, immoral and unethical. Unfortunately, as has been pointed out, they're also not that uncommon. What are the reasons that someone would take the course of action that he did? Fear, obviously, on a number of levels. Confusion of loyalties. Shame and guilt. Rationalizing.
When I was in HS, as I've mentioned before, everyone knew one of the teachers was way too friendly with young men. I didn't say anything about it. Neither did the vast majority of people who were aware of it. Finally, in my senior year, he got suspended. This was much more on the level of letting his hand rest on someone's shoulder too long, and that kind of thing, rather than actual rape, so there differences of degree and kind. But still.
81: I guess, I really want to push back against the idea that "Hey, there's a guy raping a kid over there. Should I do something about it?" should be recognized as a hard decision. That really should be a pretty easy call.
I think it isn't a hard decision, unless you know the guy. I have no idea what it'd be like if you knew/trusted/respected/etc the guy.
I mean, it might not be a hard decision then either. I don't know. But I think it'd be different.
It might be hard to convince yourself it was a kid, depending on the angle you had.
Personally, I think changes in macho, fawning, hierarchical institutions like college football and the Catholic Church are the place to look if you actually want to help things in the future.
Maybe. Certainly cultures of total extra-legal hierarchy and extraordinary power set up structures in which abusers can flourish for a long time. But the only guy I know personally who was an abuser was the totally cool drama teacher at my high school, who was a magnet for the drama kids/[mostly] closeted gay boys and girls. People who are sick in this particular way gravitate towards institutions where they can get access to victims, whether or not those institutions are macho or hierarchical.
This is a horrible thing to say, and yet I have been thinking ever since the story broke that the best explanation I can think of is that the child being raped was nonwhite.
IME it's much easier for people not to act if they don't have a mental "That could have been me" or "That could have been my child or nephew" response, and in our society, race is a huge "othering" tool.
Can we all, the participants in this thread, at least agree to solemnly swear that... we'll remember this comment thread and shout, "Hey, stop raping that kid"?
In all seriousness, I've read some persuasive pieces that suggest that metnally practicing how you would act in a difficult situation makes you better equipped to actually do it. A friend whose yoga-ish teacher had them practice saying the phrase "No. Stop. Not in my house" reported that it came out of her mouth in a difficult circumstance much more easily because of that.
That said, one of the most difficult things I've ever been witness to was a guy on the street clearly yelling abusively at the woman he was with. I really was not confident that yelling at them or calling the police would help in anyway, so I loitered near them and made eye contact with the woman until he stopped and I said "Is everything OK here?" After that he subsided, but I don't know if I made things worse or not.
Maybe we can all agree I'm going to hell for laughing out loud at this pic.
85: Yeah, that's something I hadn't adequately accounted for.
I think it isn't a hard decision, unless you know the guy.
I suspect that the immediate effect of "Hey, shithead, stop that!", and "Hey, Fred, what the heck are you doing!?" will be the same. The guy will stop. First objective achieved. Now if Fred is an old friend and mentor, it's very possibly hard to carry on doing what needs to be done in such a serious case. But at least you've made him stop.
It might be hard to convince yourself it was a kid, depending on the angle you had.
He testified he estimated the boy's age as 10.
94: I know that is not applicable in this case.
However, I was thinking that if I walked into a public shower and saw two people having sex my very first thought would be to walk out of the shower.
anyway s/b any way
And to LB's question: I said this at Lawyers Guns and Money, but I think there are a couple of other potential factors:
1. Fear that the offender will lie and say you were wrong, and he will be believed.
2. Self-protective unconscious mental editing (the kid was really a young adult, the behavior was consensual)
3. Fear of being blamed for being a whistleblower.
The last one is really overwhelming, I think. It's not an unrealistic fear. People are not usually hailed as heroes for bringing up something like this, and quite often are financially and emotionally battered for it.
I go back to that essay we discussed a few months ago, by the person who resisted in the Milgram experiment. It's a lot easier to be the outlier rule-enforcer if that's an identity you are already comfortable with.
The second one, I do give a lot of credence to. People talk themselves out of believing things they don't want to believe. It just doesn't seem applicable at all to McQueary here.
The essay linked in 90 is good.
I'm also irrationally enraged by the number of news articles reporting this as "having sex with." A friend of mine claims that when the victim is a 10-year-old, "having sex with" is an equally appalling and inflammatory phrase to him as "raping" or sexually assaulting," but I don't feel that way. It feels to me like the media is scared of getting sued and therefore using euphemisms.
96 seems to get things right. I think that what McQueary did is a little more understandable -- not excusable, but understandable -- when you realize that Sandusky was an enormously respected authority figure and total pillar of the community where McQueary had grown up.
To put into terms that are (perhaps) understandable here, and also to get banned, it seems to me that it would be a little bit like walking in as a graduate student and finding the pillar of your department, a Professor who is not only one of the most powerful people in your discipline but generally beloved by everyone you know, raping a boy in the shower. You can see the basis for the hesitation.
On the other hand, I'd still like to think that for most of us the OMG you are raping someone reaction would set in immediately.
I think that rob and F are making some good points. Milgram is all over this in his experiments--the assistant coach and Paterno were totally cowards and morally deficient in that they did not follow up adequately on what was happening. Because it is hard to step outside a chain of command or see oneself as a responsible agent. The assistant coach reported it to what I am sure he thinks would be the ultimate authority (Joe Pa), Paterno reported it to his superior (the AD). I think it says something about the culture of college football (which is insanely hierarchical) but also the culture of colleges themselves.
This would be very similar to what often (horribly) happens when some woman gets raped at a frat house--she reports it to someone, who then probably sends her to a Dean or Assistant Dean of Something, or her report gets taken to the campus police (not the real police), nothing happens, often the woman is brushed off (or transfers or gets ignored in some basic way) and everything continues on its merry way. Big colleges and Universities are used to acting as their own little world and protecting that status quo. It's horrible, but not surprising that when the cultures of football and a large university reinforce each other in not encouraging individuals to see themselves as responsible agents able to make decisions but rather as parts of a chain of command. People responded within the chain, but they did not think of going to the police (outside it). No one also seems to have felt responsible for what happened to the boy or any others (this is a deep moral failing, and it is one that Milgram also explains).
I definitely agree with most people here that the adults in this situation all committed deep moral errors; however, everything we know about people and human nature suggests that many people (I believe Milgram cites the number 60%) would probably make the same error. If you asked these guys 2 years ago about what they thought of themselves, I am sure that they would say they were good moral people. Good people can make huge moral errors. The problem is in the structure of the culture and the institutional response--those are places where one can really hope for change.
97: you mean I take it that you don't give a lot of credence to it?
I guess, I really want to push back against the idea that "Hey, there's a guy raping a kid over there. Should I do something about it?" should be recognized as a hard decision. That really should be a pretty easy call.
This is what I mean when I say you're stripping out context. It should be an easy call, but per Milgram, authority does really fucked-up things to the average person that aren't in our mental model of how we tick, but are nonetheless real.
You can see the basis for the hesitation.
No, I fucking well can't. It's child rape. It's not graft or petty corruption. It's not a property crime or an ethical lapse. Again, it's the rape of a small child: a violent crime with an obvious victim. Everyone, everyone, everyone knows that's deeply and unequivocally wrong. Or if not everyone -- fine, Andrew Sullivan, I get that some authority figures within your Church have issues -- then enough people that as soon as you move outside the circle of deep depravity, you're going to run into someone who knows that it's wrong. And that person, because they know that this act is almost unspeakably wrong, should be counted on to think of something beyond his or her own interests or the interests of the organization with which he or she is affiliated. Honestly, I'd like to think that everyone here would put her or himself in harm's way in order to stop a child from being raped. I really would.
101: No, I mean in a lot of situations, I believe people talk themselves into thinking they're not sure enough to take action. It just doesn't apply to this situation.
I'd like to agree with you, VW. But I also agree with Minivet that authority does really fucked-up things to the average person that aren't in our mental model of how we tick. There are a lot of things that you can do to work on having authority fuck up your inner compass, but the difficulty is real.
Or what 100 says.
Two things I haven't seen yet, but would like to:
1. An explicit request from the Penn State trustees that if anyone is aware of any sexual assaults committed on or near campus, by any offender at any time, please come forward and report them.
There is a tendency when something like this happens for people to focus on the one offender and his potential victims, but IMO that just reinforces the idea that this is something horrible that only an extreme predator would do, rather than something that a campus as big as Penn State could harbor more than one of.
2. An interview with psychologists or other experts discussing what kind of treatment is available for people who know they have an illness but have not yet offended (or not yet been caught up in the criminal justice system). I don't have the sense that if somebody went to a friend and confessed to terrible urges, the general public would have the least little clue how to handle it or what kind of help the person could be eligible to get if he hadn't yet committed a crime.
I think there's definitely a difference between eyewitness and what "everyone knows". Hearsay isn't admissible in court for a reason. Police can take anonymous tips, but you never how they'll handle it. And so on. It's true that there's a certain bystander effect or whatever it's called, but I think a person's obligation and ability to act on hearsay, even hearsay they don't doubt at all, are both objectively lower than on something they personally witness.
But hearsay has nothing to do with McQueary, who obviously either deeply screwed up his reaction to this, or is deeply screwed up personally, as was discussed above.
Sports culture in this country is sick. (Or the insular aspect of college culture, maybe, as pointed out by 100?) Obviously, overgeneralizing, bad cases make bad law, etc. But still, 96.3 is probably a big part of the problem. Look at all the support Paterno is getting. With the church, sure, their handling response to the issue was horrible, but at least that's a thousand-years-old institution that hundreds of millions of people believe have supreme spiritual blah blah blah. How the hell did a college sports team get that much power? I don't understand people.
I think at the heart of this thread is that it's a very difficult balancing act between "people are capable of consistent moral conduct and we shouldn't blinker ourselves to that by hand-waving about 'realism'" and "people, not just psychopaths, are capable of horrible, incomprehensible things and we should be aware of this possibility in others and in ourselves." Both are completely true.
How the hell did a college sports team get that much power?
It's really all about how many yards you can get from the rush.
103
No, I fucking well can't.
Really? That's a powerful lack of imagination.
Honestly, I'd like to think that everyone here would put her or himself in harm's way in order to stop a child from being raped. I really would.
So would I, but centuries of human experience argue otherwise, as Miranda described very well above.
In addition to Milgram, there's the simple fact that most people don't really react to crisis situations as well as they'd like to think they would. They panic; they freeze; they do stupid nonsensical things. People who are ubercompetent in everyday life become utter morons in crisis situations, and vice-versa.
Yes, 108 gets it right.
I also bristle a bit at the (implied, not quite made explicit) suggestion that this is a problem somehow confined to Catholic priests or football players. All different kinds of authority can do fucked up things to people, and all kinds of folks make morally horrific choices. Which isn't to excuse them or to say we shouldn't be working to change the culture generally.
Way back to 15: I assume he'll have to be fired as well.
You'd think, but:
Mike McQueary, one of the central figures in the burgeoning child sex abuse scandal at Penn State, will remain receivers coach Saturday when the Nittany Lions play their final home game of the season.
Defensive coordinator Tom Bradley, who was appointed Penn State interim coach in the wake of a shakeup that has claimed the jobs of Joe Paterno and other university leaders, said Thursday it will be a "game-time decision" whether McQueary will coach from the sideline or the press box against No. 19 Nebraska.
108 gets it exacty right.
To 111, I wouldn't say it's a problem confined to certain segments of society, but I am 100% certain that some segments of society are more explicitly set up to normalize antisocial actions than others. I spent the better part of six years training people to call 911, get themselves safe, and then call me if violence started, because I knew they were working within a system that would prioritize not bringing in "outsiders" like police rather than actually keeping people safe.
I am 100% certain that some segments of society are more explicitly set up to normalize antisocial actions than others.
Yes, I absolutely agree with this.
113: Yes! Just because gswift fields hundreds of amazingly picayune call-ins doesn't mean there aren't hundreds more events that should and could be called in but aren't.
112: I don't understand firing Paterno and letting McQueary keep his job at all. Paterno's disgusting, but McQueary is at the least exactly as bad. Unless maybe there's some horror story about PSU threatening or pressuring him to cover it up?
I just decided I don't like Omelas. Cheap and easy.
The more common cost-benefit calculation most of us have to make is between lesser evils, between millions of people starving and suffering under capitalism for generations and a couple innocents dying in the disorder of Revolution, for instance. I am told I am a monster for imagining intentionally sacrificing those innocents.
Should the Greek people suffer disproportionately, be sacrificed, so that the European economy may prosper?
Psychological and economic harm has been done to many thousands connected the PS football program by these revelations. If the program is shut down, many will lose jobs, houses, marriages may fail, some not implicated in depravity may become alcoholics or commit suicide.
Would the program have survived if McQuearey had immediately called 911? I don't know, the baby rapist was a big fucking deal, amd McQ could not be sure how much else would come out?
Do we destroy entire societies, make thousands suffer and die, to save the one child in Omelas? This is a better formulation of the question.
I probably would.
116: The longer he isn't fired, the more likely the idea that PSU threatened or pressured him seems.
I assume that's all about institutional "we refuse to make any response to outside pressure until we're about to implode from it."
117: You know, I never really thought to balance the simple joys and thousands of lives saved by the Nittany Lions against this scandal. Thanks, Bob.
It is about time for the very righteous and very certain around here to acknowledge that not just the depraved and indifferent but that many innocents will suffer from these revelations and to own that suffering.
Or blame the depraved and indifferent for everything and evade responsibility.
McQueary has a family.
Fear for one's job? That was the janitors in 2000, probably also McQueary. I understand it, but I think for anyone not in dire economic straits, that's a pretty contemptible motive for not helping a rape victim.
I think this understates the level of pressure on McQueary. He was devoted to a career in football - it was no doubt a lifelong dream - and he and his father intuited quite correctly that he'd be jeopardizing that career if he came forward. Had he gone to the cops - especially after Paterno and the school administration blew it off - he'd be ending his career and ruining his professional reputation.
How many Catholic Church whistleblowers are held in as high regard by that organization as Bernard Law?
If McQueary's only concern had been his career, he wouldn't have told Paterno.
Bob could serve as the intellectual behind the Penn State rioters. Bob, your revolution has come! It will be lead by a 19 year old Sigma Chi Econ major from Wilkes-Barre!
Had he gone to the cops - especially after Paterno and the school administration blew it off - he'd be ending his career and ruining his professional reputation.
He'd be risking his career, he might have still been able to work in football. And whatever happened he'd still be a healthy middleclass guy with a graduate degree. I understand that career advancement is a powerful motivation, but it's a contemptible one.
105: I'm not saying that it would have been easy for McQueary. I'm saying that good people regularly must make difficult decisions. Moreover, I'm saying that as difficult choices go -- even acknowledging that pf is 100% right in 123 -- this one wasn't especially difficult. Again, we're not talking about a so-called victimless crime. We're not talking about cheating, or graft, or even corruption at a grand scale. McQueary witnessed someone raping a small child.
And by the way, I don't think best research practices, even at Yale in the early 60s, allowed Professor Milgram to study that sort of situation.
McQueary has a family, maybe, a ten year old daughter.
Thinking about her doesn't mean I would act differently than you. It just means I wouldn't be quite so self-congratulatory and gleeful about stomping McQ and destroying his life.
I do intervene in violent events on my corner, and I do that explicitly because I do not want to spend the rest of my life knowing that I didn't act when I heard a woman scream. I get scared to do it, and I literally have to say "Kitty Genovese, Kitty Genovese" (yes, I know the story probably didn't happen the way the popular fable says, but I use the example of the fable to motivate me) under my breath as I throw on clothes and go outside.
That's what I wonder. Who does McQueary think he is now? How does he live, daily, with the knowledge that he is a person that left a kid to be raped revealed to him?
I loitered near them and made eye contact with the woman until he stopped and I said "Is everything OK here?"
I've had almost the exact same experience, ttiW, down to the doubt as to whether I actually accomplished anything. The guy attempted to intimidate me, threatening to call a cop on me if I didn't mind my own business, which, possibly not the most effective threat he could have made. I said that was fine by me and pulled out my cell phone and he de-escalated.
And by the way, I don't think best research practices, even at Yale in the early 60s, allowed Professor Milgram to study that sort of situation.
Stupid IRB messed things up before they even existed.
Paterno's disgusting, but McQueary is at the least exactly as bad.
Paterno is indisputably worse, because Paterno is (was) in charge. Not only in charge, but the by far the most powerful man in the university. I don't even see how they're comparable.
I do that explicitly because I do not want to spend the rest of my life knowing that I didn't act when I heard a woman scream.
My sister did that. It seems to have worked well for everybody involved (except the assaulter) but I don't think it was entirely unrelated to her decision to move.
127: maybe, a ten year old daughter
So it would be a good thing for her to grow up thinking that McQueary's course of action was the correct one?
I agree that what McQueary did is horrible and contemptible. In the light of day, you're right, the right choice was obvious and not particularly difficult as these things go. So, the question is, why didn't McQueary act? The answer, I really do think, has something to do with the structures of authority that most ordinary humans -- not just football players or moral monsters -- can be subject to with just a little socialization.
That doesn't excuse anything, nor does it excuse McQueary still having a job.
41 and 58 are awesome, and I do so solemnly swear.
Also, Scalzi's piece matches my reaction to reading the Grand Jury findings closely, only in clear language where I was incoherently WTFing.
106: Two things I haven't seen yet, but would like to: [...] 2. An interview with psychologists or other experts discussing what kind of treatment is available for people who know they have an illness but have not yet offended
God yes. That the focus in all of this has been so much on PSU and football, and who knew what when, and whether they'd discharged their reporting duties properly, has been intensely irritating to me; yes, I get that the context matters in understanding how this continued to go on, and that is a discussion that must be had, but for crying out loud, you'd think the impact on the college football world is the most important aspect of the matter.
I haven't read much of this thread, and I doubt this is a new thought. Sorry; kids are raped and molested every day, and the public discussion needs to be a little more about that, and how to try to stop it, and a little less about Joe Paterno.
131: Both had knowledge, reported to their (org chart) superiors, had direct knowledge nothing was done, and didn't go to the police, so they're fundamentally pretty much the same. McQueary was worse because he had first-hand direct knowledge, whereas Paterno only had a hearsay report. Paterno was worse, I guess, in that he was more personally powerful and so less vulnerable to retaliation for whistleblowing, but I don't know how to weigh McQueary's fears for his career against Paterno's fears about what would happen to his football program -- I think they're both contemptible for giving those fears any weight at all.
128 makes realize that this is my bottom line: there are all manner of explanations for Paterno's and McQueary's behavior -- obeisance to authority, careerism, loyalty to a friend, a sense that the victim was better off in Sandusky's clutches than otherwise, etc. -- but none of these explanations allow even the slightest bit of room for the argument that Paterno or McQueary did the right thing or that their behavior should be excused in any way at all. And, further, none of these explanations mitigates the harm that they did. Finally, it seems to me that in the end, a good person would have acted differently than they did, and that they should be punished -- with loss of job and, in Paterno's case, shunning -- for their actions.
I don't think anyone disagrees with you on 139. Explanation is not excuse.
Halford, I wrote 139 before seeing your 134. Comity.
public discussion needs to be a little more about that, and how to try to stop it, and a little less about Joe Paterno
You're right, let's move the focus away from Paterno, and to the current players on the Penn St. football team, who after all are the real victims of this scandal. (Other than the raped children.)
"Kitty Genovese, Kitty Genovese" (yes, I know the story probably didn't happen the way the popular fable says, but I use the example of the fable to motivate me)
Even if it didn't, it led psychologists to identify a whole range of situations that do play out the way the popular fable says. I generally use the more abstract mantra "I will not fall victim to the bystander effect." By all accounts, rehearsing intervention phrases helps a lot, too.
140: again, comity. I understand that people do wrong all the time for all sorts of reasons. I know from personal experience that I do wrong all the time for all sorts of reasons. I also believe that people's actions should be placed in context and that they often should be forgiven for doing wrong. But a) that doesn't mean that doing wrong is right* b) this case strikes me as different, because the nature of the wrongdoing falls nowhere near the shades of grey around which wrong is often done c) no matter how explicable, some forms of wrongdoing are so horrible that they can't and shouldn't be forgiven.
* I know you never said otherwise.
At my [actually famous for suicides!] college, there was a girl who stood on top of a bridge for about an hour on a cold December day, while students were passing by, looking forlorn and more or less obviously about to jump. At least 500 students would have had to walk by her, until someone I knew stopped and talked her down. By happenstance, I wasn't one of the 500, but I very easily could have been just one of the many people walking by without doing anything.*
*This is not an analogy to child rape or to McQueary. Just an anecdote about the bystander effect.
142: We should also consider the players and fans of the next team that has to play Penn State. If they win, people will assume PSU couldn't play well because of distractions. If they lose, they can't even beat PSU on its worst day.
You mean the college whose rape-covering-up head coach went on to become a US Congressman?
But a) that doesn't mean that doing wrong is right* b) this case strikes me as different, because the nature of the wrongdoing falls nowhere near the shades of grey around which wrong is often done c) no matter how explicable, some forms of wrongdoing are so horrible that they can't and shouldn't be forgiven.
* I know you never said otherwise.
Nothing wrong with checking, this is something very often forgotten in the world at large.
Scalzi:
There's a part of me who looks at the actions of each of non-raping grown men in the [scandal] and can understand why those men could rationalize [their behavior]. But here's the thing: that part of me? The part that understands these actions? That part of me is a fucking coward. And so by their actions -- and by their inactions -- were these men.
That's a really hard activation energy to summon, stepping out of bystander and into intervenor. (I mean, all my examples are relatively trivial, but I've done it a few times.) I usually have a terrible sinking feeling of, "Fuck, I've got to act like a better person would right now. Fuck."
147: That wasn't a cover-up in the sense of keeping it from being reported. It was already reported and the issue was trying to mitigate the punishment of the players.
I usually have a terrible sinking feeling of, "Fuck, I've got to act like a better person would right now. Fuck."
Yup.
Hey Megan I've tried to email you a couple times- what's your preferred address these days?
Huh, I just googled "Kitty Genovese" because I realized I had no idea when she was murdered, and it turns out the guy who killed her was just today denied parole for the manieth time.
@112
Ever since I heard about that it's boggled my mind.
How on Earth could you face standing on the sidelines in full view of ~80,000 people every one of which knows that you personally saw a child being raped and did nothing?
Unbelievable.
Reading the findings, I was struck by how at each stage of the reporting, the offense was minimized and downgraded via euphemism. Anal rape turned into "sexual assault" turned into "sexual contact" turned into "inappropriate contact" turned into "horseplay in the shower".
Some of this seems to have been done as deliberate cover-up, but some out of a desire not to overstate something people didn't have eyewitness knowledge of and some out of discomfort talking about the subject entirely. I wonder if there's anything to be done about that.
ttiW, I just wanted to thank you for all the work that you do. I'm inspired every time you talk about it. Now I'll go back to lurking for the time being, but it seemed particularly obvious here.
How on Earth could you face standing on the sidelines in full view of ~80,000 people every one of which knows that you personally saw a child being raped and did nothing?
At the very least, I hope we get some creative in-game crowds signs from Penn St.'s remaining opponents.
I think we have total comity that everyone involved did something horribly morally wrong and should be punished to the full extent possible. There's also comity on the basic things to do insure that you yourself will do the right thing in the future.
The only differences come from the different painful emotions this whole story raises in each of us. Personally, I'm just somaticizing everything into chest pain.
156: Yeah, that seems to have been a pattern. Makes me wonder if Paterno "remembers" that McQueary said Sandusky was merely showering with a kid because McQueary was bargained down to asserting that alone.
In case anyone was wondering where Père Flippanter stood on this ugly wretchedness, he just called Penn State's rioters and defenders "idolators."
For Penn Staters who wish to do something to counteract recent events.
161: I like it. I've been thinking "cult members", but pretty much the same.
Will no one consider the possibility that this 10-year old was asking for it?
163: I replied that idolators get the idols they deserve.
Being a Penn State receivers coach doesn't seem a very rich reward for what McQueary must know now, or suspect, he traded for it.
Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?
Flippanter is morphing into Jonathan Edwards before our very eyes.
I want to push back against all the excuses levelled above. Yes, people can be cowards for various reasons -- I can think of several occasions where I've been a cowardly fuck, myself -- and it's good to look for explanations for failures to behave properly (viz preventing them in future), but fuck's sake. People being in authority doesn't make them fucking Godzilla. Being overly respectful of authority is itself a moral failing, one that goes right alongside the cowardice.
In other words, what Von W said in 103.
Also, I just want to second what LB said here:
I understand that career advancement is a powerful motivation, but it's a contemptible one.
149: I'm discounting about 99.9% of the "I would have seen the evil and stopped it" responses. If the real frequency were anywhere near that high we would have achieved an earthly paradise long, long ago.
How did the Kitty Genovese story end up in the popular consciousness the way it did? Is it just a combination of the initial reporting and the fact that people are willing to assume the worst of New Yorkers?
I can say with moral certainty that I would have screamed holy hell -- it's my involuntary response to the shocking/scary/not-even-scary surprising. It's unimaginable to me that I wouldn't call 911. Would I (wee slip of a girl) have rushed into the shower the fight the raper guy off the kid? This I do not know.
169
My point is that these are explanations, not excuses. They are meant to have explanatory, not exculpatory power. It's funny, because liberals are usually very good at trying to understand why people make bad choices.
I worry about what my pacifism means for me in a situation like McQueary's, whether I'd use violence to protect Mara and that sort of thing. I doubt it, but I don't know.
I do suspect I'd have intervened somehow and feel safe putting myself in the reporter camp because I've had to report several times on things that people disclosed to me, which is better than things I had to witness myself but doesn't even feel particularly rewarding, just sad.
171:Word
172:Fictionalizations
An American Playhouse or something. Harlan Ellison's famous "Whimper of Whipped Dogs" and many articles. Several movies. Wiki doesn't come close to a complete catalog.
re: 174
Which would be why I wrote: it's good to look for explanations for failures to behave properly (viz preventing them in future).
But people are attributing way too much power to authority, and a lot of these explanations aren't, to me, convincing ones. Or at least they leave the moral dimension of the situation unchanged.
F, for the fourth or fifth time, there are gradations of bad choices. When I see someone speeding, I don't call the cops. When I watch a kid nick an apple in the grocery store, I don't alert the manager. Heck, I'm even willing to allow, though I'm ashamed to do so, that if I were a graduate assistant under Joe Paterno, and I learned that the great man was engaging in recruiting violations or even, perhaps, skimming a bit off the top of the athletic department till, I well might, thinking of my future prospects, keep my mouth shut. But child rape? About that, I'll say again, I have no earthly idea what the fuck you're talking about. Yes, there are people who keep silent about witnessing such crimes. We call these people moral monsters.
179 gets it right.
And having been in various situations, and having had to act in various ways, at various times in my life, I'm pretty sure I'd not be deluding myself if I were to claim I'd have acted differently. And I expect the vast majority of the people on this thread, even the ones taking a less condemnatory line, would also have acted differently.
168: Sons of the 413 [thumps chest] don't hesitate to go Biblical when the occasion calls for it.
174: The thing is, plausible whys are pretty easy to come up with -- it's not hard to figure what could have motivated McQueary not to intervene. I still think that allowing fear of authority, worry about his career prospects, and so on, if that's what happened, to alter his decision not to provide any assistance to a child he saw being raped, makes him unusual. I honestly think that's a test most people would have passed easily (counting flee and immediately report as a pass in the case of physical fear. I'd have given McQ a pass for fleeing, under the assumption he had some sort of panic reaction, reporting to Joe Pa, and then going to the cops when it became apparent that the school wasn't going to. A low pass, but a pass.)
I'm uncomfortable with slipping from "I can understand why someone might not intervene" (which of course I can. I can understand rapists and murderers on some level) to "Not intervening is a perfectly ordinary response, and anyone claiming they would have intervened is just bragging." The second claim seems to me to be setting norms of ordinary behavior really low -- if I didn't think 99 out of 100 random people on the street would intervene on behalf of my kids under similar circumstances, I'd be terrified for them all the time.
Yes, there are people who keep silent about witnessing such crimes. We call these people moral monsters.
If I'm understanding F's point correctly, calling them moral monsters if fine as long as you realize that you're probably calling an uncomfortably large portion of the human population moral monsters. Which, hey, I won't argue with that, we are, by some measures.
Alternatively, if you'd prefer to reserve terminology like 'moral monster' for people who behave in atypically morally monstrous ways, then maybe you should use different terminology to describe the behavior of someone like McQueary.
I don't know which side of this fight I'm on, btw. My gut is with you, but it really does seem to be a common and predictable sort of behavior pattern--far from universal, but far from atypical. And I've never been in the situation myself, so it's hard to be sure how I'd act. I do things I regret from time to time.
My gut is with you, but it really does seem to be a common and predictable sort of behavior pattern--far from universal, but far from atypical.
I keep on coming back to this, but what Joe Pa and the rest of the administration did isn't unusual. Horrible and disgusting, but not unusual. "We didn't see it, maybe it wasn't that bad, it's not our problem, we have to think of the good of the institution." That's grotesquely evil, but not, I think, very unusual.
Walking away from a kid you personally witnessed being raped? That makes you not just morally in the wrong, but I think a genuinely unusual person. (It may be that the structure of authority in college football creates people who are unusual like that; that McQ was an unusually authority-fearing and careerist person, but not unusual for a junior coach. But I think he's an unusual person.)
if I didn't think 99 out of 100 random people on the street would intervene on behalf of my kids under similar circumstances, I'd be terrified for them all the time.
I'm obviously speaking out of my ass here, but I would guess this is a test that most people would pass, but nowhere near 99%. I'd be shocked if it were 70%.
maybe you should use different terminology to describe the behavior of someone like McQueary
No, I shouldn't. As I've said above, the shoe fits.
I honestly don't understand how 186 is helpful to this discusssion in any way. But maybe it wasn't meant to be.
Yeah, urple is summarizing my point adequately. And I agree that I would bet heavily against 99 out of 100 people yelling "stop" in that situation. 75 maybe?
I'd be shocked if it were 70%.
This was supposed to include "much above". I'd be shocked if it were much above 70%.
There are worse fates than being called a moral monster.
LB is right in 184. Not having to face a situation directly, and having plausible grounds for thinking you've done the bare minimum of what might be acceptable, are decent explanations of why people might ignore wrong-doing by others that they aren't directly confronted with. Sometimes those explanations leave the person's behave morally condemnable, and sometimes they don't -- none of us is morally perfect, and we've all allowed others to get away with shit when, if we were being honest with ourselves, we probably shouldn't have. The shower situation just isn't like that.
Darn, how did all those lynchings and Verdun and the Third Reich and Iraq happen anyway, with all us most excellent people putting ourselves in harm's way to fight injustice?
Penn State is an easy case with which to reassure ourselves.
Very good people, like that darn Casterbridge guy, do do unspeakable horrific acts of commission and omission. My own opinion is that we all carry such sins.
This, not the old homeless guy or the matchstick girl, is the challenge of compassion, the meaning of "There but for the Grace of God Go I"
"There But For the Grace of God Go I"
Own it.
182: "...anyone claiming they would have intervened is just bragging."
I'm sure lots of people would have either intervened right there or taken it right to the police soon after. I'm also sure, despite every other person on the internet being a fully trained member of an elite military unit, the current public firestorm is more hot air than true predictors of action.
I also suspect there would be a considerable difference in response rates if there was screaming/struggling detectable vs. not.
"There But For the Grace of God Go I"
Own it.
Bollocks. Because it's not true.
Yes, I agree with F and Urple here.
if I didn't think 99 out of 100 random people on the street would intervene on behalf of my kids under similar circumstances, I'd be terrified for them all the time.
I'm obviously speaking out of my ass here, but I would guess this is a test that most people would pass, but nowhere near 99%. I'd be shocked if it were 70%.
70% sounds about right to me, but "under similar circumstances" is difficult to figure out. McQueary grew up in State College as a high school football player, played for Penn State, and then was employed by people he'd grown up his entire life worshipping (and living in a community who worshipped them). It's not just careerism -- the psychological connections to all of these people probably ran deep. That doesn't make his actions any less monstrous, but it does help explain why the reporting didn't happen, and it makes me wonder about the certainty that 99% of people would have acted differently "under similar circumstances."
When I watch a kid nick an apple in the grocery store, I don't alert the manager.
Look, Dutch Cookie, just because Ttam agrees with you doesn't mean you should renounce your American citizenship.
188 is what makes me an optimist. The glass is not half empty; it's only a quarter empty.
195.3: Really? I can see it making a difference to the form of the immediate response, but at the point when you've fled the locker room, gathered your composure, and you're thinking about calling the cops, it seems like it might occur to you that a ten year old can't give meaningful consent.
Walking away from a kid you personally witnessed being raped?
But it's not like he just saw some guy raping a kid in the park. This was Sandusky! Paterno's long-time right-hand man.
I bet McQueary probably hoped Paterno would raise hell about it when he was informed. McQueary would probably happily have talked to the police, and been thrilled to see Sanducky thrown in jail where he belonged. But, that's not how it played out. He talked to the coach about it, and the coach decided what the consequences would be. Sanducky can have no more children on campus. It's all been properly reported with the school administration, and the decisions have been made. And we're not otherwise going to make an issue of the incident, okay? And McQueary decided that JoePa probably knows best, and he should just let it go.
I didn't get the sense that McQueary and Sanducky were exactly buddies after this incident.
I honestly think that's a test most people would have passed easily
I agree with this.
But I also think that to understand what's going on, you have to understand the corrupt nature of the system that McQueary is a part of, and the widespread public admiration for that system even though it's well-understood how corrupt it is. Regular folks were rioting over Paterno's exit.
The Catholic Church analogy is obvious.
Had McQueary been able to pass this test, it's likely he never would have gotten as far as he did when he was tested. (There's an awful lot of competition for rinky-dink football jobs at prestigious football schools.)
And it's dead certain that McQueary's future career prospects would be much brighter if he had been even more of a coward than he was.
I also suspect there would be a considerable difference in response rates if there was screaming/struggling detectable vs. not.
I suspect this is also right. He reported that he entered the locker room and heard sounds that he believed to be sexual intercourse coming from the showers. If he'd heard scream or cries for help, I suspect his reaction might have been rather different.
I had hoped we were moving away from the question of whether his actions were moral, as there was a great deal of comity (once I was straightened out) on "hell no."
Or, 139 to 178.last.
199: I bet if you asked most people out there about "Meaningful Consent" they would want to know when their next CD is coming out.
A casual stroll across the news channels will show you example after example of people who didn't see or do anything about obvious wrongs committed in front of them. And once they decide to do nothing at first, cognitive dissonance will quickly make that a perfectly justifiable decision.
And McQueary decided that JoePa probably knows best, and he should just let it go.
That is the most plausible, and depressing, thing I've read about McQueary's negotiations with himself.
I agree with 200. McQueary reported the incident to Paterno and it went up to the AD. Would he even have known if it was reported to the police? Targeting McQueary for this whole ritual of public outrage and denunciation and this sort of lynch mob publicity culture we have seems off to me. He reported it up the chain in a corrupted hierarchy and then the hierarchy did not act. There is still a moral duty on McQueary but it is not correct to say that he has not taken any action at all.
We also don't know what exactly McQueary saw. Was it a crying child being penetrated, or was it was some variant of a grown naked man with his hands touching a naked child's genitals in the shower, that Sandusky could have tried to explain away with some far-fetched excuse? (Even typing this is upsetting).
Would he even have known if it was reported to the police?
Yes, because he was an eyewitness to the rape of a ten year old, and the police never contacted him to ask about it. Honestly.
We also don't know what exactly McQueary saw.
What he told the grand jury was that he saw a child with his hands up against the wall being subjected to anal intercourse. His testimony wasn't ambiguous.
He reported it up the chain in a corrupted hierarchy and then the hierarchy did not act.
McQueary knew that hierarchy well, we can presume, and even if he didn't know that much he must have observed that Sandusky went unarrested and unindicted after the initial report. He could have asked somebody. He could have leaked to a journalist -- college football programs are surrounded by them, and he probably could have found his way to somebody at the NY Times or ESPN who would not have been blinded by Penn State's tinsel halo.
Targeting McQueary for this whole ritual of public outrage and denunciation and this sort of lynch mob publicity culture we have seems off to me.
I'll bet Brett Ratner is feeling a little lucky.
196:Was it the "God" part? I can do it Buddha or Kant.
You are wrong.
And McQueary decided that JoePa probably knows best, and he should just let it go.
This NY Times profile of McQueary suggests that this is indeed the most plausible explanation.
Which makes his actions beyond horrible. But I'm still with Urple that if you want to use the "moral monster" language (and his actions are certainly monstrous), you are describing something that a lot of people are capable of, not the extreme actions of an unusual 1%.
211: Most people aren't cult members. I think the explanation is that Penn State football was something like a cult: so tight knit and authoritarian that turning all moral decisions over to Joe Pa felt normal. McQueary might not have been this sort of morally irresponsible dirtbag if he hadn't been indoctrinated into the PSU football system, and maybe a lot of PSU football people would have acted similarly, turning over all of their moral decisions that might affect football to Joe Pa.
But that's not a normal situation. Most people aren't in organizations that own their souls like that, and I really don't think anyone should be. If that's the explanation, PSU football should be shut down for long enough to break any kind of tradition.
"Fuck, I've got to act like a better person would I'm on the clock right now. Fuck."
Yes, because he was an eyewitness to the rape of a ten year old, and the police never contacted him to ask about it. Honestly.
Word. Come on PGD, what sane adult wouldn't have some idea that the cops would have to talk to him as someone directly witnessing an aggravated felony?
Most people aren't cult members.
If by "cult" you mean extreme submission of moral judgment to authority, I think most people could be, pretty easily, given the right circumstances. Perhaps not to quite this level of extremity.
That, I won't disagree with. If history says anything, it's that people indoctrinated into authoritarian systems will largely do anything they're told, no matter how horrible. Covering up the rape of a child isn't unusual by that standard.
But most people in the US today aren't subject to an authority that they'd accept as sufficient to authorize conniving at child rape. If that's a normal level of authoritarianism for a college football team, they're very scary.
212: I think you're underestimating the extent to which many people in standard hierarchical organizations--not necessarily cults-- are willing to absolve themselves of independant decisionmaking and will just accept the decisions of the heirarchy, even if those decisions are highly morally questionable.
209.1 - "Rehearsals are for fags" certainly may help explain why Bryan Singer made a really good X-Men movie and Ratner made an incredibly shitty one.
If that's a normal level of authoritarianism for a college football team
A number of my co-workers played college football and they all seem pretty apalled so I'm thinking it's not.
But most people in the US today aren't subject to an authority that they'd accept as sufficient to authorize conniving at child rape.
Are you sure about that?
(I mean, this gets back to the odds bandied about upthread. I'd agree this is true about "most people", but I'd bet it's nothing like 99%.)
In the 211/212 exchange, Halford said (paraphrasing) "a lot of people, not an unusual 1%" and you replied "not normal, not most people." These positions are not irreconcilable.
I don't even think it's necessarily anything unusally authoritarian about football culture that's to blame. I honestly wonder, if a typical worker in a highly-desirable (and mostly irreplaceable) job saw, say, his boss's brother raping a child, and talked to the boss about it, and the boss assured the worker that all the appropriate authorities had been contacted and measures had been taken to prevent recurrence, and seemed otherwise interested in dropping the issue, how many would go directly to the police?
Again, I bet it's a majority, probably even a solid majority. But I really strongly doubt it's an overwhelming majority.
I wonder what happens after you do scream and the guy stops raping the kid, who then runs off crying and you don't know who it was, and you report it to the police as well as to the people in a position to fire the guy, and still nothing visible to you comes of it. You quit, I guess, but that's not much of a help. If you start your own campaign to discredit the guy, does it do anything useful? The world is horrible.
highly morally questionable
This is just it (urple and F and maybe Halford): there's no question about it. Raping young children is not morally ambiguous in any way. Given that, if your point is that the PSU football program was a totalizing system*, a cult of anal-raping monsters**, a group that had normalized the rape of children***, make that point. But you both (and maybe others as well) seem to be trying to make a point about society writ large. And I believe that the overwhelming majority of non monstrous people, when confronted with the image of their superior raping a young child, would do something about it.
* I would buy this.
** I doubt it. But who knows.
*** I really don't think so. Even McQueary knew that what he saw was wrong.
221, 222: There's no real point in arguing about percentages when no one has any data. I think 'very unusual (on the order of 1%) for people who aren't in a quasi-cult, and ordinary hierarchies don't count' but we're not going to get anywhere with the disagreement other than 'is not, is so'.
226
But you both (and maybe others as well) seem to be trying to make a point about society writ large.
Yep. And human nature.
And I believe that the overwhelming majority of non monstrous people, when confronted with the image of their superior raping a young child, would do something about it.
If, by overwhelming majority, you mean 99%, then we'll just have to agree to disagree. If you mean 70-80%, then I'll probably agree with that.
There's no real point in arguing about percentages when no one has any data
What! What nonsense is this?!?
Raping young children is not morally ambiguous in any way.
Is this deliberately tendentious? No one was condoning raping children. Paterno didn't tell McQueary: "yes, that's what we do here, it's no big deal." The highly morally questionable decision to which I was referring was not "is it okay to rape children?", it's "should we deal with this matter through internal university protocol or should we go to the police?" And that's the question for which McQueary deferred to the organization's judgment. (Which, to say again, HE WAS WRONG TO DO. No one is disputing that.)
that the overwhelming majority of non monstrous people, when confronted with the image of their superior raping a young child, would do something about it.
In a highly authoritarian culture, a lot of people would report what happened to (the person they regard as) the higher authority. And then feel that the decision was taken out of their hands. That's what happened here -- McQueary reported to JoePa and to the head of campus police, who told him that things had been taken care of. I think it's pretty plausible* in a lot of other cases as well. I'd like to hope that most people would not have acted as McQueary did, even given the culture and his background, but I am really honestly not sure.
*OK, I'm really not sure how far I want to run with the following point (maybe not far at all), but at some level almost everyone does something like "I will report this to the authorities and then wash my hands of it." Our ordinary response is "report it to the cops and DA and let them handle it"; if the cops and DA don't do their job, we don't blame the reporter of a crime for not doing more, even if it's possible to do so.
185 is right. Stories regularly emerge from cases of underaged prostitution and human trafficking in which the offender was seen in full public view at a gas station hauling a 12-year-old girl out of the boot of his car, and none of the observers did anything or reported anything. People will very often engage in extremes of willful blindness to not get involved.
Some variants of public reticence about Getting Involved make sense, or at least a kind of sense. I completely understand people who don't want to jump into a random fight on the street or into someone else's domestic quarrel; as widespread as fantasies of being the ass-whooping vigilante may be, charging into situations like that without knowing anything can lead to disaster. I can also understand (with much less sympathy) people who see horrible abuse happening and don't confront the perp or say something in the moment; I think it's far less excusable and more like straight-up cowardice, granted, but at least it's comprehensible.
What I don't understand is people who won't at least pick up a phone and call the cops when they see public abuse like that. It doesn't involve personal risk. Could it have any worse consequences than living with the knowledge that you saw something like that and did nothing? It's possible that the sight is so weird and surreal that they somehow can't process it, that picking up a phone and reporting it would someone make this horrible thing real in a way they can't cope with. But what I suspect is more the case is that it's simple apathy: they have their own problems to deal with, and they simply assume that The Authorities are out there and will take care of it at some point. I think this specific kind of apathy is just as much a part of an authoritarian mindset as submitting to orders, and is much more widespread than we like to think.
No one was condoning raping children.
Man, I look up 'condone' in the dictionary, and I see a picture of someone not going to the police after witnessing the rape of a child. 'Condone' doesn't mean 'endorse', it means 'allow to continue without opposition'. They condoned the fuck out of that child rape.
231: But McQueary had direct knowledge that no one had reported the crime to the actual police, because no one ever asked him about it. If the police had made contact with him, and then nothing had happened, that would be somewhat different. But he knew, at a level beyond mere suspicion, that the college had sat on the report.
233: my dictionary says "To overlook, forgive, or disregard (an offense) without protest or censure." But whatever. Replace "condone" with "endorse" in 230 if that makes it easier for you to read. That change doesn't affect my point at all.
232.last nails the thing that pisses me off the most (besides the existence of guys like Sandusky, of course). It's all either Paterno or McQueary had to do to go from morally wrong to morally okay. Just call the police. Once. And neither of them could do it.
234 -- I'm not denying any of that. I'm just saying it's a common human response, when you see something horrible, to report it up the chain to what you view as the trusted authority, and accept the authority's response to the situation and avoid further action even if the institution's response seems fundamentally horrible.
Now, part of what's so crazy about the situation -- and makes McQueary's conduct in fact inexcusable -- is that it's absolutely insane to think that a football coach would be the right authority figure to handle a situation like this. Or even a university administrator/head of a university police force. Or for McQueary to think for one second that there was nothing else that he could do. But I think that the general proposition that authority figures can create these kinds of situations -- for lots of people -- is not at all unthinkable.
But what I suspect is more the case is that it's simple apathy: they have their own problems to deal with, and they simply assume that The Authorities are out there and will take care of it at some point. I think this specific kind of apathy is just as much a part of an authoritarian mindset as submitting to orders, and is much more widespread than we like to think.
Totally agree, that's a better statement of what I was trying to get at in 237.
Some facts to ponder as we consider bigtime college sports and moral responsibility:
1. Penn State has long been regarded as a paragon of bigtime college football.
2. At Penn State, we know of six people who were aware of Sandusky's behavior: McQueary, McQueary's father, Paterno, AD Curley, VP Schultz and President Spanier.
3. Of those six, every single one thought McQueary's response was at least adequate.
4. Once everything went public, students felt the need to publicly express their outrage over Paterno's dismissal..
It's a shitty world, folks. Someone with statistical chops could probably give us some intelligent discussion of the odds of a given person doing the right thing in a context where the first six confronted with this dilemma unanimously endorsed McQueary's conduct. In any event - again, in the context of Penn State football and administration - 99% seems a lot closer to the number of people who would condone McQueary's actions than would find them insufficient.
in which the offender was seen in full public view at a gas station hauling a 12-year-old girl out of the boot of his car, and none of the observers did anything or reported anything.
OTOH, I've seen first hand how even straight up hardcore criminals will go to the cops on stuff involving a kid. Recently around here a white supremacist ex con and his wife offed their 16 year old babysitter. The friends they called to help them afterwards ratted them out, giving up the location of the body, etc. saying basically, "I can't believe he killed a little girl". McQueary had less of a moral code than a godamn felon.
A point I'm unclear on:
I read somewhere that the Penn State campus police aren't rent-a-cops, they're full fledged police officers. Is this true? If so, sweeping an eye witness report of child rape under the rug on a university official's say so is astonishing.
I've also seen people let us check their house when we're canvassing for a missing kid when they damn well know they've got a grow or some other felony in there, and we've looked the other way but they had no way of knowing if we'd keep our word on that. The were facing the possibility of going to prison and helped because it was a kid. McQueary was facing what, loss of a job? Fuck a bunch of fucking McQueary and I hope those rioters get broken up as brutally as possible.
Perhaps this explains 241:
"When acting within the scope of the authority of this section, campus police are at all times employees of the college or university."
I read somewhere that the Penn State campus police aren't rent-a-cops, they're full fledged police officers. Is this true? If so, sweeping an eye witness report of child rape under the rug on a university official's say so is astonishing.
I haven't seen anything indicating McQueary's account made it to the police. Campus police are often technically full police officers but out here the city PD would be the ones to take something like a murder. We have a similar agreement with the transit cops.
241 -- according to their website, the Penn State campus police has all of the powers of any municipal police force in Pennsylvania. And McQueary reported the incident to the head of the campus police. I hadn't really focused on this before, but it seems important.
I linked this in the other thread, but I'll again invite everyone again to mull Abar Rouse and Dave Bliss.
Coach Bliss had paid money to a player, in violation of NCAA rules. The player was murdered. Bliss hatched a plot to tar the victim as a drug dealer, apparently in order to explain the victim's possession of the money.
Bliss discussed this plot with Assistant Coach Rouse - and, one assumes, others - with the expectation that he wouldn't be turned in. Rouse turned him in, earning notice from some of the game's luminaries:
Many coaches, including Hall of Famers Jim Boeheim and Mike Krzyzewski, have said that Rouse had crossed the line. "If one of my assistants would tape every one of my conversations with me not knowing it, there's no way he would be on my staff," Krzyzewski told "Outside the Lines" in 2003. The rank and file has fallen in step.
And Rouse, of course, is no longer employed in the field to which he had been so devoted.
This is how organizations like this work. Not only are they crooked, but they are self-righteous about their crookedness.
Paterno is a notable Catholic, and perhaps even his most extreme supporters wouldn't argue that he is the moral equal of the Pope. But they'd be wrong.
@243
Thanks.
It's just that I keep reading the phrase "informed the campus police" in various places and it seems like this couldn't be right. Maybe "informed the university administrator who is nominally in charge of campus security"?
gswift, am I right in understanding that a (US municipal) police force doesn't have any particular legal obligation to, well, fight crime?
And McQueary reported the incident to the head of the campus police.
Wait, did he? I know he went to Paterno and I know that mom contacted police in '98 but I thought McQueary hadn't gone to anyone but JP.
Well, he informed the guy who was in charge of the (actual, real deal) police force for the campus. Who apparently had the full power to investigate crimes, but didn't investigate this one.
It's actually a bit misleading. The report was made to Gary Schultz, senior vice president of Finance and Business. Finance and Business is the division of the University that contains the police department. The chief of campus police reports to the vice president. So it's possible that no one actually in the campus police department was actually consulted.
Buzz Bissenger. (Who, truth be told, I haven't been able to like since he was mean to poor Will L/e/itch.)
243 comes from here: http://www.police.psu.edu/statestatutes/
Looks like they have full police powers from the state and their jurisdiction is the campus plus a skosh (and anything that comes from agreements with local municipalities).
In both the institutions I've attended, there was a real police force for the university, completely separate from that of the surrounding town. Not glorified security guards, and including investigators, but of course their independence in matters affecting the administration would be questionable.
To make it more clear, it appears that the sequence was McQueary to Paterno to AD Curley to VP Schultz (who was in charge of campus police on the org chart but isn't a campus police officer).
Oh, huh, and ThinkProgress just tweeted (did I really just type that?) that Paterno has hired criminal defense. I suppose one would, really.
251. So reported to Quimby who might have told Wiggum.
And McQueary reported the incident to the head of the campus police.
This doesn't seem correct. From the grand jury report:
The graduate assistant was never questioned by University Police and no other entity conducted an investigation until he testified in Grand Jury.
255: Here are the post-telling Paterno parts of the Grand Jury report concerning McQueary.
Approximately one and a half weeks later, the graduate assistant was called to a meeting with Penn State Athletic Director Curley and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz ("Schultz"). The graduate assistant reported to Curley and Schultz that he had witnessed what he believed to be Sandusky having anal sex with a boy in the Lasch Building showers. Curley and Schultz assured the graduate assistant that they would look into it and determine what further action they would take. Paterno was not present for this meeting.
The graduate assistant heard back from Curley a couple of weeks later. He was told that Sandusky's keys to the locker room were taken away and that the incident had been reported to The Second Mile. The graduate assistant was never questioned by University Police and no other entity conducted an investigation until he testified in Grand Jury in December, 2010. The Grand Jury finds the graduate assistant's testimony to be extremely credible.So he did not go to the police or administrative head of police but was summoned to a meeting with the latter.
gswift, am I right in understanding that a (US municipal) police force doesn't have any particular legal obligation to, well, fight crime?
IIRC I think courts have held there's a duty to uphold laws but the govt. doesn't have an obligation to provide police protection to any particular citizen. Basically we have to pursue and apprehend criminals but if you call and say you think your ex might come over this week and kill you we can't be sued if we don't set up 24 hour guard duty on your house and you do in fact get killed.
I thought that McQueary had reported the incident to Schultz, who was administratively responsible (the "head" though not an officer) for the campus police. That might be wrong and perhaps McQueary didn't speak directly to Schultz. But news of the incident went to the guy in charge of the campus police, though not the police themselves, and there was no investigation.
261 before seeing 259, which describes what actually happened.
Shorter outcomes of 246: One black basketball player dead, one black basketball player in jail for the killing, one former black basketball player and assistant coach who blew the whistle unable to find work in his field, one old white coach who was recorded saying, "Our whole thing right now, we can get out of this. Reasonable doubt is there's nobody right now that can say we paid Pat Dennehy because he's dead. So what we need to do is create reasonable doubt." back in basketball (although not NCAA basketball).
Oh, and Ken Starr now president of that university--a godly place in Texas.
After I graduated from highschool there were a couple of big house parties where parents served alcohol. There was one at this guy's house in Greenwich (which actually had a guard) to take everyone's keys in a house with maybe 10 or 11 bedrooms.
There was a girl who said that her friend was passed out and X boy was assaulting her friend, but she was too drunk to do anything about it herself. She said, "BG, you have to go in there and stop it." I did nothing. I doubt it was reported to the police. The two left very early the next morning.
I was the 95lb weakling, and I was in total shock that they weren't recruiting other, more experienced people to help or that the people next to me weren't offering to go in with me. It didn't seem real, and this was the first young person party I'd been to with alcohol.
I still feel really guilty about it. Would I report sodomy to the police? Sure, but I froze then.
260: But if a police department is informed that an adult is anally raping a 10-year-old, they do have a legal obligation to, what, attempt to get a perp's name to the DA's office? Assuming they have resources that aren't busy with something more serious, of course.
the offender was seen in full public view at a gas station hauling a 12-year-old girl out of the boot of his car, and none of the observers did anything or reported anything
Yet, when I saw a grown man struggling with a screaming girl, the driver and I stopped our car in the middle of the street to witness and try to act. We weren't the first; a large circle of neighbors came out to help her. The man saw us, stopped trying to explain and just shouted to the crowd to call the cops. At least ten people stayed until they arrived. She was his daughter. Doesn't mean he was in the right, but no one left until it looked like the cops had it sorted.
(Sorry, Will. This must be a fear of yours.)
That's the bystander effect, right? If nobody reacts immediately, that's negative feedback against anyone who might be considering it. If one starts, many quickly follow.
As long as we are speculating about the mental state of Mr. McQueary during the 2002 incident, I would place significant odds that one aspect of it was that it served to confirm speculations and/or rumors about Sandusky that McQueary was aware of. And I would further guess that that was part of McQueary's discussion with his father. Read Victim 4's testimony for some details (as a young teen accompanied Sandusky to team events while McQueary was a player).
If anything it makes the moral questions worse, although maybe his behavior is more "comprehensible".
I watched a woman abducted and taken into an alley in bad-neighborhood D.C. by an enormous guy - big enough to chase her down fling her over his shoulder and run away.
I hesitated to follow, but a few seconds later, a little guy, also a witness and much smaller than me, came chasing after them and the two of us ran down the alley. We couldn't find them, and we reported the incident to police. (Other witnesses at the police station said she had been stuffed into a car with a getaway driver a block away.) I never heard from the cops again.
I don't think there's anything I could have done - I wasn't close enough and was 20 years older and significantly smaller than the perpetrator - but I certainly hesitated in the key moment.
A few months later, I was in front of a strip mall. I saw a guy - a much smaller guy than the previous perp - eyeing a girl oddly. She wasn't really paying attention, and he made a sudden move running toward her, reaching for the arm that held her purse.
I grabbed the guy by the front of his shirt, lifted him up on tip-toes, and screamed something into his face. To my surprise, he didn't resist at all. Then he explained that he was the girl's boyfriend, and had been playing a little joke on her. She confirmed this.
Can you imagine how mortified I was? No, you cannot; not until I tell you that he was black and she was white. Now you know how mortified I was.
He was very gracious about it - to the point of telling me that I did the right thing. She didn't seem the least bit impressed with my chivalry.
Can you imagine how mortified I was? No, you cannot; not until I tell you that he was black and she was white. Now you know how mortified I was.
I don't understand this, unless you're saying you don't think you'd have reacted the same if he hadn't been black or she hadn't been white.
I suppose it's possible you were mortified because you think they didn't think you'd have reacted the same if he hadn't been black or she hadn't been white, but your description of their reaction doesn't really seem to reflect this.
But if a police department is informed that an adult is anally raping a 10-year-old, they do have a legal obligation to, what, attempt to get a perp's name to the DA's office?
I know I could get fired for not investigating but I'm not actually sure what the strict legal obligation is off the top of my head.
I suppose it's possible you were mortified because you think they didn't think you'd have reacted the same
Urp, I told the first part of that story to explain my mind-set during the second incident. I was pretty disturbed about my slow reaction to the abduction, and gave a lot of thought to what I'd have done differently if I had a chance to do it over. Gareth Rees in 41 made a very astute point about the value of rehearsing a crisis in your mind.
But there's no way that I'd expect the folks in the second incident to understand this. For one thing, the second incident took place in a substantially better neighborhood, and (upon reflection) it would have been nuts for a purse snatcher to try to make a grab with me that close.
As I mentioned, I noticed the guy before he ever made a move. Can I tell you for sure that race played no part in my alertness? I cannot.
I have a high opinion of my own motives. In those days I was hypersensitive about street crime and I don't think race played a part in that alertness. But still ...
264 is an awful thing in so many ways.
||
Yglesias moving to Slate starting November 21.
|>
People are congratulating him on twitter, but … slate?
Everybody has to make some compromises in this economy.
274: Moneybox has traditionally been one of Slate's non-reprehensible features. If memory serves, Suroweiki and Gross are both former Moneybox guys. Gross was genuinely insightful and Suroweiki was always at least interesting. Yglesias certainly has the ability and intelligence to also do a good job.
But you have to figure that Slate is hiring Yglesias because they admire his worst contrarian tendencies. It'll be interesting to see what happens to him there.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to him there.
No, it won't.
yay, I was asleep all night and didn't get into a fight with anyone! my preemptive endorsement of père flippanter's opinions stand, and I would like to join with gswift for some crazy, buddy-comedy bonding over hoping to have the campus police crack some motherfucking people's skulls open. fucking dirty-hippie, ass-raping, dudebro cocksuckers.
Wait, who are the dirty hippies here?
And I did not mean to write just "sodomy" in 264 but "sodomizing a young boy."
"someone sodomizing a young boy."
280: I think the idea there is that the police could theoretically, with blessing, treat the people who rioted on behalf of the beloved JoePa to some of the baton and rubber-bullet action generally reserved for protesters of a progressive bent.
Oh. Convoluted string about the cocksuckers in question, but, er, I don't really get it, but okay.
274: Oh good, I came over expressly to complain about this development.
But you have to figure that Slate is hiring Yglesias because they admire his worst contrarian tendencies.
It's worse than this. His writings on economics-related matters are incredibly, tendentiously, idiotic. He absolutely refuses to learn when he makes gross errors (historic preservation≠aesthetic police; interior design≠interior decoration). His Schmibertarian Pals Who Shall Not Be Named are extremely effective at distracting him with shiny bits of Econ 101 into patently stupid and naive positions (barber licensing steals money from the poor! health and safety regulations are about guilds, not, uh, health and safety). And, for whatever reason, he seems far more committed to his economic asininity than he is to any of his (substantively correct) liberal positions on quasi-economic issues.
It's possible that I'll keep reading him at Slate, but very, very unlikely. Cripes. Does this mean I have to start reading Drum?
285: I don't understand why anyone reads either of those jackasses, TBH.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ycn-10407023
Does this mean I have to start reading Drum?
I didn't used to. I do now. He's not generally a lot of fun to read, what with the stolid prose and all, but he's very, very good on issues that I know a bit about (probably good on the other stuff, too, but I can never tell).
Maybe you could form a Drum circle.
Drum's not that bad. Under no circumstances do I put him in the same camp as Yglesias.
Drum I've never read, so I have no idea. Yglesias pumps out a lot of content in a pithy style that I find very readable. His repetitive wrongnesses are irritating, of course, but they're balanced (for me) by his fearless broadsides against various rightwingers, whether pols or bloggers. Up til now, at least, he's never let his high profile and occasional TV appearances turn him into a milquetoast. I suspect that Slate will let him keep doing that insofar as he makes sure to attack the occasional liberal (esp. union-related ones) in the same way. And I suspect he'll oblige. His clumsy eagerness to use police vs. OWS as a club against labor liberals is incredibly telling; posts on the subject have been among the dumbest things he's ever written ('opposing police brutality is exactly like supporting standardized testing as the sole basis for judging teacher quality').
On Topic: Twitter says McQueary isn't fired but isn't coaching on Saturday.
Twitter says put your hands on your knees.
I hate my students. Just this one class.
288: he's just so fucking dull. I've never once read his entire front page, not even when he was solo. "Stolid" gets it exactly right. Ideological correctness is no excuse for stylistic failings.
So, Pittsburgh guys, should one pay any attention at all the guy featured in the story linked in 287?
Drum I've never read, so I have no idea
JRoth, you know I love you, and it's terrific when you stop by here (please do it more often! I miss your voice!), but you said something deprecatory at 285.last, so you have to admit a reader could assume that you'd read him. Sheesh.
I like Drum. He strikes me as simpatico to me. On the other hand, I basically don't read any political blogs any more (angry up the blood) so why would you even listen to me?
287: Can I just say, as a now 21-year resident of this state, that I've never begun to fathom the whole Penn State phenomenon? I know a professional, management-type woman who has a life-size cutout of JoePa in her office. WTF is that?
I get that big state colleges are like this. How and why, I don't know, but they are. But I don't understand why Penn State is that way to this extent. This isn't the Midwest. We have more in our lives than cornfields and State U. vs. U. of State.
But seeing those stupid, fucking kids rioting over this just brought home exactly how fucked up it all is, and how I really shouldn't trust anyone I know who's from there. I don't believe in the Mother Church either, but at least it makes more sense to devote yourself to that than to a stupid fucking football team with a teaching staff.
He is stylistically dull, but what you want - he's a not-so-closeted wonk. I don't agree with every last position he takes, and he's not my type, if you will, but he brings interesting, non-stupid thoughts to the table most of the time.
300: I've read him enough to know that I fall asleep by the end of a 350 word post.
I understand that he's ideologically right on. But I find his prose duller than... well, anything that I choose to read on a regular basis.
I don't believe in the Mother Church either, but at least it makes more sense to devote yourself to that than to a stupid fucking football team with a teaching staff.
Right on, brother.
299: As I said earlier in this thread, or maybe win another thread, the guy is a huge jackass who's not afraid to make bold, 100% incorrect assertions. He has a lot in common with Limbaugh, in terms of bluster and arrogance and piggishness.
OTOH, unlike Limbaugh, he needs to say things congruent to reality most of the time to retain credibility (if he said that the Steelers were terrible and would go 2-14 during a season when they won the Super Bowl, he'd be in trouble), so I don't think he can be wholly dismissed. The specific accusation may be crap, but there's likely a kernel of truth in there.
Also, I've begun to feel like somebody working in a lab cooked up this Penn State story expressly to irritate me. That sort of creeping narcissism (on my part, I mean) is usually a clue that it's time to put the internet down for awhile.
288: Drum is not quite as annoying as Yglesias. But as far as "public intellectual" cred goes, anyone who was a pro-war liberal on Iraq went straight in the dustbin for me shortly after the commencement of that conflict, a decision I've never regretted. The really cowardly ones who went pro-war at basically the last minute, then made various mealy-mouthed attempts afterward to walk it back, were the worst: cf. Drum and Yglesias.
306: Yes, per the story, he was pretty accurate on this stuff back in the spring (the part that is now out, not this rumor). His main radio style is to goad and insult.
Another prediction (maybe an easy one)--this never comes within a country mile of a trial. Unless I misjudge the cards that Jerry Sandusky's lawyer is probably holding.
309: How did this ever get before a grand jury in the first place?
||
Nobody here will get it, but this is cracking my shit up, and I don't know who else to tell.
|>
308: Huh? I thought Yggles followed the same path as our Departed Host: Pro-war until the last few weeks of buildup, then major backpedaling. One reason I have (some) respect for Yglesias is that he was very blunt about how stupid his mistake was, from early on. He didn't wait for the war to go bad to say that he should never have supported it.
BTW, thanks for the kind words in 300, Parsi.
299: I won't add to JRoth's comment. I can't stand listening to Madden.
307: The Penn State thing just gets more and more horrible, it's true. If the rumoured Second Mile disclosures turn out to be true, then they're in territory that would've made the Borgia Popes squirm.
312: Yggles backed out after the invasion had happened. He was blunt-ish about his mistake in the sense that he rather lamely said something along the lines of "if I'd been paying better attention I might've reacted differently," but not in any sense (that I ever saw) that he understood its real implications for his credibility.
Drum's been much better since the onset of the financial crisis, which he acknowledges pushed him to the left.
When someone's undergone an acknowledged shift in political outlook, I'm not sure it's fair to hold prior views against them any longer.
Thinking he's boring is something else, obviously.
I misread and thought 306 was referring to Yglesias.
Yglesias was what, a college senior during the Iraq invasion?
I mean, there are plenty of things to not like about the current Yglesias, like his inability to conceive of any notion of a progressive future other than people producing stuff ever-more efficiently, while consuming ever-more of it and living ever-more densely.
This isn't the Midwest. We have more in our lives than cornfields and State U. vs. U. of State.
This may be the funniest thing ever written in this comments section.
I know a professional, management-type woman who has a life-size cutout of JoePa in her office. WTF is that?
Idolatry.
I mean, not hooray for being offended. Hooray for Sifu Found A Kindred Spirit: The Game!
326: "All Mixed Up" was OK, in a '90s sort of way.
318.1: Basically it goes beyond what political positions he held at which moment. It was one of those rare moments in history where the answer is so thuddingly obvious from so many different places on the political spectrum that it works as a litmus test of one's basic competence to be a public intellectual. Someone who was fooled by it, or outsmarted themselves into being fooled by it, could fall for just about anything.
320.1: And has remained every bit as lightweight ever since, FWICT. (It's unavoidable to get heaping helping of second-hand Yggles in the liberal blogosphere even if you're not a reader.)
324/25: I have to admit I didn't recognize the guy in the image off the top of my head, but I knew enough to know he was part of the joke.
I know the guy in the picture is neither Kevin Mitnick nor Linus Torvalds. But... I don't get it.
330: The guy is this man, and the quote is from this.
I've only read this thread up to 170 or so, and didn't have time to say this before getting on a plane, but ttaM's
169 People being in authority doesn't make them fucking Godzilla. Being overly respectful of authority is itself a moral failing, one that goes right alongside the cowardice.
is very good.
Fucking internet traditions. How do they work?
334: imagine millions of under-employed Sheldon Coopers out there, fingers poised over keyboards, waiting to catch a mistake. That's an Irresistible target rich environment, no?
I think the situation in 246 is rather different. Breaking NCAA rules and lying about NCAA rule violations are a critical part of the job of being a big money NCAA coach. Yes Bliss's behavior is well beyond the pale of normal cheating required for the job, but it makes a lot of sense that there's a strong reaction to an assistant coach turning in a head coach for something related to NCAA violations.
But I think child rape is in a wildly different category. You wouldn't hear a coach like Krzyzewski saying that any assistant coach who turned in a child molestor would be fired. The fact that they say that in the Bliss/Rouse case shows that it's very different than what we're talking about here.
under-employed Sheldon Coopers
Or as they're known in the real world, Lu/bos Mot/ls.
I don't like the term moral monster, because "monster" claims absolute difference from the offensive person.
I know I'm a weak person; I can easily call to mind moments when I've lacked moral courage. I wouldn't say I know for sure how I would act if I were in McQueary's place.
I can say this for sure: If I were to do what he did, I would be a despicable person, a contemptible coward.
I feel contempt for McQueary. I don't think he's a monster. I judge him because he is human like me, because I want to keep myself from being like him. Because no one should do what he did. No matter how many other people would have done the same, it would still be an awful thing to do.
That said, Paterno and the rest of the PSU hierarchy acted worse. McQueary betrayed the kid he saw raped because he trusted his institution. PSU betrayed the kid, they betrayed McQueary, and they betrayed anybody who every bought into their claims to be about more than just winning football games.
302:
I've never been to State College, but I have been to the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg. Most of the state is Pennsyltucky, and Kentucky is the liminal state between the Midwest and the South. Of course there's nothing more to life there than football.
I went to public school in PA, so many of my classmates wound up at Penn State -- although I've been surprised to realize how few of the people I keep in touch with, from a pretty deep bench Facebook-wise, are among them.
I can report from personal experience that having an adult whom you trust ratify your getting abused in this way is really shattering and makes you think you're right to shut the fuck up because grownups think it's OK anyway. this is why I didn't want to participate in the thread, because I knew I would just trip out about something.
news in narnia not so good, just feeling really disassociative and suicidal, so my doctor is seeing me for an emergency appointment tomorrow and putting me on anti-psychotics. I was really afraid just now I was going to just walk like a robot to the freight elevator and jump off the breezeway on the 18th story (counted as 9th because we're a double-height factory.) I had a good 2 minutes of just staring into the legs of a singer sewing machine I restored recently and topped with glass, gripping the edges of the counter, willing myself not to walk anywhere. I went and beat my head against the wall and prayed about it, in a desperate way, and took 15mg of valium which seemed like a good idea at the time. and then I told my friend, and she said 'fuck call your psychiatrist.' which I did and I'm fine so. but part of my brain wants to kill me and I want it to SHUT THE FUCK UP. I hate anti-psychotics. I hate everything.
it's going to be OK, I'll get through this fine, I'm not going to to anything stupid. I wish my brain would stop offering so many stupid suggestions though. nobody asked you for fucking advice, brain! I'm going to sleep with my children tonight, touching them is soothing to me. I'm not cruel and horrible and selfish! I would suffer physical pain if it were necessary to keep my children from misery, so there's no reason I shouldn't be able to tolerate psychological pain and stay alive for them. it just feels like I have a sucking chest wound and blood is everywhere, smelling like sweaty copper pennies you clutched too long waiting for the bus. everywhere nothing but metallic, curdling blood.
anyway, as you probably know I have an unbreakable agreement with my siblings that if one of us goes we all go. M.A.D.: mutually assured destruction. henry kissinger personally told me it was an awesome suicide pact and would totally work great. it's like dominoes that are all propping each other up with the threat of horrific violence! what could go wrong?! I would never take my brother and sister out like that so it's all good.
my psychiatrist didn't think it was as awesome an idea as I do.
al, you take care of yourself. You have a good friend there.
she's great. she's one of my two sponsees; I feel like kind of an asshole sponsor for losing it like this, but what are you going to do.
345. Chill, she probably owes you one anyway, but who the hell's counting.
Also, I would like to place it on the record that when I logged on this morning (11/11/11) my computer clock registered 11:11. And this was in no way planned.
Your shrink will take care of you. And remember it's been this bad in the past, and you've gotten through it and out the other side.
Just hold on, and do what the shrink says, and you will feel better.
This may or may not be relevant. I help at a Christian boys' group on a Friday night. (I'm not a Christian, and won't be anything more than an official helper because of that, but I like the adults and kids involved.) I had to do a bit of traiing for it,and when tidying up just now, I found a card I'd received - "A code of good practice for adults working in The Boys' Brigade". There are some musts and must nots, and then some instructions on what to do if you suspect abuse, or a child tells you about abuse. Of which the important bits are:
1. Tell your Captain, Minister or other church official and inform BB HQ so that advice may be given.
2. Record any *facts* which support your suspicions/the allegations.
Obviously it doesn't say anything about actually witnessing anything, but the summary of "you *must* refer; you *must not* investigate" seems quite clear - pass it on to those who (should. Might?) know better. Which having read all this about McQueary makes me feel really quite uneasy.
alameida - thinking of you. Wish any of us were near enough to help out more.
it's annoying when people tell you "this too shall pass", but, yeah. it's my sister's 30th birthday too. when she was 12 or 13 she decided she was going to off herself today. that's why M.A.D. is so great! she saw her shrink yesterday, so charmingly named "dr. book." I'm sad I'm missing it, I promised I would be there but I couldn't go back to that house right now and my brother and his gf are using, and stealing my sister's morphine, it's just a clusterfuck.
thanks for the good wishes all, I do appreciate them.
God, alameida, that all sounds miserable. I'm sorry.
Sending my best wishes and vibes, too, alameida. The fact that it scares you is, I think, a positive sign.
Sorry to hear about your brother, al. I wonder if you can call your sister to wish her a happy birthday without talking to him. That might be bearable. I don't know; I'm not in your shoes. Then, you'd have done something for her birthday and connected in some way without putting yourself in harm's way.
Take care of yourself and be safe.
Jesus, al, I wish I had something better to offer than lame shit like "hang in there" and "don't do it." But please do hang in there and don't do it. We need you 'round here.
. I wish my brain would stop offering so many stupid suggestions though.
If you're like me, which is a big if, the anti-psychotics will take care of a lot of that for you. I hope that'll be the case, or that they'll numb you enough that you won't care or do whatever you need to get you swaddled and through this. I'm so glad you're getting help and realizing you need it. I'm totally serious in saying your girls have a great role model in you.
alameida: Sending good thoughts. Thinking of you.
If I understand the Penn State news this morning, Mike McQueary, who shouldn't be a coach at Penn State, will not be coaching the football team, which shouldn't exist, in its game this weekend, which shouldn't take place. This is in marked contrast to ESPN's reporting about the team's "intensity" and "emotionality" and McQueary's "attentiveness" and "focus" in yesterday's practice.
If I understand the Penn State news this morning, Mike McQueary, who shouldn't be a coach at Penn State, will not be coaching the football team, which shouldn't exist, in its game this weekend, which shouldn't take place.
Fucking weekends.
309: 309: How did this ever get before a grand jury in the first place?
Turns out there are some interesting elements to that story. There is a a pretty decent article in the NYT* this AM which includes some of that background.
The nub of it was that it came in through a high school and landed on Tom Corbett's desk as attorney general and he ran with it (and of course as governor he now has another active role in it)
Clinton County high school officials had reported charges to the local district attorney that Mr. Sandusky had molested a boy there, but, citing a conflict of interest, the prosecutor passed it on to the attorney general's office to investigate.One of Corbett's "claims to fame" was his record on child abuse. Also:
A Roman Catholic, he was struck early on in the Penn State investigation by the similarities between the university's failure to report allegations of sexual abuse involving Mr. Sandusky and the church's failure to report pedophile priests, according to several people who work with him.*The article is worth a read. At one level it is a political fluff job for Corbett, but on the other hand it includes the basic behind-the-scenes reporting that is the Times at its best, and which the local papers here have not really gotten around to. Corbett is an ass politically, but given JoePa's prominent Republicanism don't think his pursuit had its roots mired in partisan politics.
Good luck, al. We're pulling for you.
Snuggling with my kids is good tonic for me, too. As a follow-up to The Hobbit, my 6-year-old daughter has demanded to be read the trilogy. She struggles to follow the story, but it's really not about the story.
361:
How does Corbett's involvement in the grand jury not disqualify him from participating in the Penn State Board of Trustees decision?
I like the result, but that seems odd.
Switch it around: If Paterno's lawyer in the grand jury proceedings was also on the Board of Trustees deciding how to act in this mattter...
alameida, be well. Toughing it out can make things worse, remember.
I feel compelled to ask, is your M.A.D. agreement really still in effect? It sounds as good an idea as M.A.D. Classic.
There's no football of consequence this weekend -- the important game is next weekend -- so everyone can just take a general strike from the sport.
363: Is the problem conflict-of-interest guidelines/expectations in the Board of Trustees, or in the judicial proceedings? The former might not exist.
361: That is interesting. I had been holding out hope that McQueary tipped them somehow. Guess not.
367: I'm not Jack Hanna, but I would be inclined to bet on the grizzly bear in a 1-on-1 contest with a bobcat.
Now I wonder how many bobcats it would take to bring down a grizzly. Or a polar bear.
363: I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't that work a bit differently for elected officials. There would be no way to move from one office to another with that kind of standard.
364: quite a fluff job, indeed.
The paradox of the Times. As far a I can tell the Corbett angle has only been briefly mentioned in any article or coverage here in the state, in Corbett's hometown. So the Times at least "gets it" at some level as to an important element that is at least worth writing about and contains interesting information, but then they gift wrap it with a ribbon for Corbett.
370 -- Madness. Cats won last year, and they're going to win this year.
in the state, in Corbett's hometown.
He's from the other side of the river so that doesn't really count.
There is a blogger who is convinced that Corbett is a mixture of Stalin and Hitler but worse than either. I finally stopped reading him (her?, them?) because their reaction to the PSU scandal revealed they have no ability to put a political grudge in perspective for even 15 minutes.
Alameida, so sorry to hear that.
I wish I knew what to say. I've been thinking about you a lot lately, hoping you start feeling better soon.
336: Upetgi, my 246 was an attempt to explain my 239.
Paterno was famous for his high standards of ethical conduct. Given that well-known fact, how is it that McQueary and McQueary's father knew that the cops shouldn't be called - that the boy shouldn't be rescued, or even identified? They knew because they've been steeped in the meaning of ethics as defined by big-time college sports.
"Integrity" in big-time college sports means lying a lot to preserve the reputation of your program and, especially at Penn State, it means being sanctimonious while lying a lot. Everybody who is paying attention understands this. You understand this. Boeheim and Krzyzewski, as you acknowledge, are willing to go on the record pretty much saying it straight out.
Why shouldn't that definition of integrity apply to child-rape?
When confronted with child-rape, McQueary was confused. This was not a simple situation. On the one hand, there was a victim who needed help, but on the other hand, supplying that help would violate well-established principles of professional integrity and loyalty. His dad understood the difficult nature of this dilemma, too, and rightly advised that they weren't the right people to make this decision, given the implications for the program. This needed to be brought to JoePa.
And Paterno et al unanimously ratified the McQuearys' judgment. It's not some kind of weird coincidence that men this grossly unethical controlled this famously upstanding football program. It's a job requirement.
You're right that Bliss/Baylor and Sandusky/PSU are significantly different situations. Given that difference, how did the McQuearys know what the system was demanding of them? They knew because the NCAA system is built on a foundation of sanctimonious dishonesty, as the Bliss/Baylor situation demonstrates.
Paterno was famous for his high standards of ethical conduct.
Has he ever actually engaged in high standards of ethical conduct? Or does he just talk about it?
ie: What has he ever done?
Or does not getting caught cheating or not taking responsibility for your players's actions count as a high standard of ethical conduct?
Thinking good thoughts and holding you in the Light, alameida.
A unusually high percentage of Paterno's athletes got college degrees. And for a long time, he had the whole no-assistants-caught-raping-children thing going for him.
I think little of McQ, and am not sorry that his moral cowardice will follow him the rest of his life. This will episode be in his obit.
That said, I don't think it's fair to draw the inference that he'd know the thing was being swept under the rug by lack of followup specifically with him. He would know that the state police didn't come to him, but for all he knows, Sandusky has confessed to them, and the authorities have already taken whatever action they deem appropriate. He wouldn't know if the guy was getting counselling, or whatever, nor would he know if the victim and his family had convinced the police not to do anything more.
The guy reported everything he knew to people who's job it was to take action. How is he supposed to know whether the police/prosecutor are doing what they are supposed to be doing? That takes place in a black box, and the only thing he would see is whether they came to him the get the exact same information from him he already gave to his superiors.
It's not enough, as the OP makes clear.
From Wikki:
"In 1995, Paterno was forced to apologize for a profanity-laced tirade directed at Rutgers then-head coach Doug Graber at the conclusion of a nationally televised game.[9] He was also accused of "making light of sexual assault" in 2006 by the National Organization for Women which called for his resignation,[10] and was involved in a road rage incident in 2007.[11]
...
In 2008, due to a litany of football players' off-the-field legal problems, including 46 Penn State football players having faced 163 criminal charges according to an ESPN analysis of Pennsylvania court records and reports dating to 2002,[13] ESPN questioned Joe Paterno's and the university's control over the Penn State football program by producing and airing an ESPN's Outside the Lines feature covering the subject.[14] Paterno was criticized for his response dismissing the allegations as a "witch hunt", and chiding reporters for asking about problems.[15]"
2008 graduation rates were 78% which was second to Northwestern in Big Ten.
He has always seemed more concerned about his reputation than anything else. Not a fan.
381:
Same goes for his dad who is a prominent guy in town. He was alerted to a child rape taking place at that moment, and did not call the police.
Shame on him.
@381
I was reading some of the "mandatory reporter" procedures, such as those described here, and they do seem to boil down to "inform your superiors and then erase the incident from your mind and assume it's being handled correctly". Which is problematic.*
However, the mandatory reporting stuff seems to be addressed at suspected abuse.
McQ is an eyewitness to a crime. Doesn't that count as a wholly different situation (genuine question. Unlike 70% of Unfogged I'm not a lawyer.)?
*I do understand that well defined procedures are necessary to avoid the kind of stuff that happened in the 80's.
Yglesias is completely right whenever he writes about monetary policy, which makes his other economics writing extra shitty. I basically read Yglesias because he's good at being sarcastic, and sarcasm is the only thing left that can cheer my calloused soul.
Drum, while somewhat centrist, has come to his economic opinions far more organically than the Drinks-With-Schmibertarians method that Yglesias has, so are easier to take.
384 -- I think it would be quite quite common for employees to report lawbreaking by other employees to the boss, and, with the assurance that the boss is going to take appropriate action, let it lie. That is, I think a whole lot more people are effectively in cults than is reflected by the opinions of some folks above.
No excuse for not stopping the act in progress.
No dispute with 382 or 376 either.
The guy reported everything he knew to people who's job it was to take action.
Not true. He didn't report that there was right at that moment a child under the control of a rapist - except to his father, who was not the correct person to take action.
311: It's an understandable confusion, since Mitnick is the founder of Minix, the inspiration for Linux.
I also find it very hard to believe that no other suspicious things were brought to Paterno or anyone else during this entire time or before 1998.
Suddenly, he starts getting caught in 1998??
I doubt it. It is more likely that this had been happening for a long time and that many people mentioned odd things over the years. But, nobody did anything bc Paterno was "so ethical." Or Paterno vouched for him when wierd stuff was brought up. Paterno is a clearly a guy who gets fired up about stuff. I wonder how many times Paterno yelled at someone for questioning Zandusky.
PSU's outside primary counsel, who reviewed the 1998 report, was also the lawyer for The Second Mile. And then he tried to lie about it. Who the fuck are these people?
387 -- Right, no excuse for not taking action immediately. None. An excuse for not taking action 2,3,6 months after telling JP? I think that's a bit grayer.
a bit grayer.
I don't think so. If I was in that situation and hadn't been contacted by the cops, I would assume a whitewash. It's not like they'd go to Sullivan or to a family member without talking to McQueary first. Step 1 in any investigation would be to talk to McQueary.
And remember, from the outset, McQueary was in on the scam. He himself made the decision not to go to the cops - to leave that as an option for his superiors. Why in the world would he be surprised if they exercised that option and kept their mouths shut?
Thought: McQueary hasn't been fired yet because he's threatening to spill more damaging information.
I mean, you have an assistant coach who can't come to a game because of death threats, and you keep him on the job? Either you think he is 100% right and you want to stand by him, or he has something on you.
393 -- If you were a member of a cult, you might assume it was being dealt with properly, but out of sight. You'd be wrong, in this case.
385:Yglesias is completely right whenever he writes about monetary policy
No, he isn't. Yggles is a follower of Sumner and Beckworth (and Goldman-Sachs) and the MM crowd. Steve Randy Waldmann had a long thread last month in which the MMT crowd had it out with the MM crowd. There is a huge radical difference between the two, and it is not a coincidence that most of the MM crowd are conservatives and libertarians, until some mainstreamers like DeLong and Krugman very reluctantly and desperately accepted MM as a lesser evil.
Here is Sumner yesterday on the mistakes of the Bush administration
1. Massive increases in federal spending on education2. Tax cuts without spending cuts.
3. A huge increase in the welfare state (Medicare drug benefit.)
4. A crackdown on immigration, especially high-skilled immigration.
5. A 40% jump in the minimum wage, right before the Fed squashes NGDP.
6. Massive increases in "defense" and "homeland security."
7. Extended unemployment benefits.
A lot of people are having trouble connecting "NGDP targeting" to Sumner's conservative ideology but the connection is very much there, just smart and subtle. A clue: Sumner fully accepts NAIRU
To follow up on Oudie, if the lawyer was actually representing SM back then -- a technical question as to which 'semantics' might not be improper -- I think he ought to get his ticket punched.
He was acting GC for PSU.
another post at Sumner's, an argument about NGDP application to the Nixon administration
It would need a lot of study, but one takeaway is that Sumner would tolerate a NGDP of 10% if and only if employment was below NAIRU
I can't prove it yet, but I really believe that NGDP targeting, not in theory but as how it would be implemented by conservatives, is a plan to put the macroeconomy into permanent and accelerating wage deflation.
More dispatches from the popped bubble:
Since 2008 there has been a course at Penn State titled "Joe Paterno, Communications and the Media", and it is being taught this semester. To be fair, it appears to not not be merely an exercise in hagiography* (and my independent secondhand experience is that the College of Communications there had some very good courses and instructors), but topical guest Joe Posnanski (who is in the middle of writing a book on Paterno) appears to still be in the bubble. "The only thing people remember about Woody Hayes is that he hit a player. I don't want that to happen to Joe. He didn't hit a player."
*Although its mere existence is an interesting comment in itself on Paterno State.
In some ways, this reminds me of the companies who have a stellar work-place accident record or of the colleges who have no sexual assaults reported on their campuses. Or in the police departments who manipulate their statistics or arrests to look better.
Paterno's interest and Penn State's interest have been in having a great reputation. Not in actually doing the right thing.
396: I disagree with this almost completely. You're right that Sumner endorses NGDP targeting for the same reason that Friedman endorsed targeting the money supply -- it's a narrow mechanical fix so that he can go back to pretending that markets are perfect.
But on the important question, MM and MMT are on the right side, and everyone else is on the wrong side. People like Krugman endorsed NGDP targeting because it's better than the status quo, not because they secretly yearn to smash the working class.
46 Penn State football players having faced 163 criminal charges
That's an average of four each, in six years. But who stays on the team for six years? Taking the turnover into account they were getting not just arrested but brought up on criminal charges at least once a year each.
McQueary hasn't been fired yet because he's threatening to spill more damaging information.
If you fire McQueary he may be able to sue you for wrongful termination. Maybe you fired him because his grand jury testimony caused a big scandal.
Good luck, Al. Ignore the dumb part of your brain. It's possible, I've been doing it (for the most part) for about sixty years.
MM and MMT are on the right side
They are absolutely not on the same side, and as I said, Krugman is panicking and desperate. MM and MMT are ideological opposites and it is critical to understand how and why.
Yglesias supposedly on counterinsurgency in Southeast Asia this morning. Clinics and schools are tools of state suppression. The first commenter quotes Murray Rothbard.
Fucking goddamn stupid anarchists. Yglesias and the assholes will use their rhetoric of meany statism to create a glibertarian paradise. Lots of concentrated property and wealth and no state = neo-feudalism. The anarchists will enable them all the way.
Anarchists always lose, and always enable reactionaries.
399: it's a shame that Posnanski has been such a craven piece of shit about this story*. I mean, I guess it's rough when the book you're writing (have mostly written already, I think) suddenly evaporates before your eyes. Still, I thought Posnanski had better judgement. Oh well. What's one more craven piece of shit atop such a huge pile (Paterno fluffers, PSU fans, sportswriters, moral monsters, unfogged commenters)?
* Though, in fairness, to my knowledge he hasn't said that much yet. Maybe when the time comes he'll get it right, even though that will mean fundamentally reconceptualizing his book as an expose or a tell-all, neither of which were in his plans and neither of which are his style.
403: Yeah, you just fired the star witness in the perjury trials against the AD and VP. And maybe eventually Paterno.
Paterno's interest and Penn State's interest have been in having a great reputation. Not in actually doing the right thing.
As I'm sure you know, will, this raises a much deeper question about the nature of morality. Regardless, this episode has demonstrated that you're clearly right. And that's why all the people -- not that many of them so far, thank goodness -- insisting that we must never forget all the good that Paterno has done in his career can fuck right off.
Dean Smith: the only big-time college coach in the modern* era who was not also a horrible person.
* Post John Wooden, I think.
405: Sure they are. The other side is that money has no real effects, and that the only thing monetary policy can do is cause inflation, and that the only thing governments can do in a recession is cut spending to balance the budget. Monetary policy is not all of politics, and the question of what central banks should do in the middle of recessions isn't even all of monetary policy. On the central question of the day -- should central banks do whatever they can to pursue expansionary monetary policy -- they are on one side, and all of US and European officialdom are on the other side.
What did they know and when did they know it?
The earliest documented report of possible abuse at the hands of Sandusky is in 1995, when his now-legally adopted son was still a teenage foster child in his home. The adoption file for Matt Sandusky, who had a different name at the time, contains letters of concern from his mother to children and youth officials and to a Centre County judge.
407: OMG, I just realized that when the news reports he's been getting death threats, they aren't talking about threats from people who are furious that he walked away from a rape in progress and then participated in the cover up. These are threats from people who are mad at him for testimony that hurt Paterno!
Penn State is a deeply, deeply fucked up place.
399: it's a shame that Posnanski has been such a craven piece of shit about this story*. I mean, I guess it's rough when the book you're writing (have mostly written already, I think) suddenly evaporates before your eyes. Still, I thought Posnanski had better judgement. Oh well. What's one more craven piece of shit atop such a huge pile (Paterno fluffers, PSU fans, sportswriters, moral monsters, unfogged commenters)?
This must be the most sanctimonious comment in the thread so far. Can you have a tiny bit of sympathy for people who can't abandon their entire worldview in one day, completely abandoned, 100%, no exceptions, what was good is now bad, no good thoughts can now be thought about the thing you thought good thoughts about on a daily basis since 1980?
411: Charter revocation ought to be discussed. Short of that, I don't understand why the school ought to be permitted to continue to field a football team.
409:The propaganda that there are only two sides to a given debate is the central fucking problem.
On the central question of the day -- should central banks do whatever they can to pursue expansionary monetary policy -- they are on one side
The reason fiscal stimulus and isn't even on the table, isn't even in the fucking discourse, is because expansionary monetary policy is the central question of the day of the last thirty fucking years.
MMT is about putting fiscal stimulus back on the table. MM is about keeping it off.
I have nothing much to say about this whole thing (It's bad to rape kids? Sports teams are corrupt? Sports fans have weird priorities? What totally shocking surprise could be next?!) but for the hell of it I will add that I was very amused to hear that Paterno is called "Joe Pa"--pronounced basically like "жопа", i.e. Russian for "asshole."
337: Ha!
To you Sausagely bashers, I simply don't see it that way. He generally pretty clearly acknowledges the limitations of the frames he's using. Thinking he's an idiot is a clear sign that you're reading him uncharitably. OTOH, the Iraq war support was pretty damn awful. If that's the basis for discarding him, I won't chastise you. On yet another hand, he pretty damn quickly realized and has been pretty consistent in noting (and not papering over) how wrong he was.
SYMPATHY? HOW CAN THERE BE SYMPATHY FOR ANYONE EXCEPT THE VICTIMS? THEY'RE THE REAL VICTIMS. CALL ME CRAZY BUT I'M DIRECTING my SYMPATHY AT THEM.
You know, it is about ideology. Tyler Cowan has a neat thread about ideology today.
The Right is always one step ahead because they have ideology.
Krugman and pragmatic liberals are thinking about getting out of recession/stagnation.
The Right is already thinking about what comes after the economy improves.
Back to Daniel Guerin and Makhno. Bye
One other element that I was not previously aware of that I picked up from the Corbett Times story, The grand jury indictment had been filed under seal, but because of a computer glitch it had mistakenly been made public. A *glitch* ... hmm. Not that it was not all coming out soon anyway, but still.
More dispatches from within the bubble:
PSU Creamery discontinues "Sandusky Blitz," keeps "Peachy Paterno"
The flavor "Sandusky Blitz" has been permanently discontinued from the Berkey Creamery's menu, Creamery Manager Tom Palchak said Thursday.
412: once again, I'm going to venture out onto a very unsteady limb and say that were I to discover that someone, even someone I cared about deeply (as surely poor Posnanski* must care about Paterno -- is that your contention? really?), was either raping children or protecting people who raped children I would change my opinion of them rather abruptly. And further, were I asked for my opinion publicly, I would have the good grace either to say that I had changed my opinion or to keep my mouth shut. I guess, as I've tried to make very clear, I don't even see this as slightly complicated.
412: really, can you clarify for me what you're saying? Are you saying, as you seem to be, that I should have some empathy for the people who are empathizing with the child rapists and their protectors? Or is that too sanctimonious a reading of your comment?
416:If a Rothbardian comes over and tells you "great fucking post Matt" you can be sure you have slipped over the line into radical evil.
My guesses on My to Slate.
1) Money
2) Matt Yglesias thinks he will be supporting Romney next year. Matt voted for Mitt once already. MY of course can't support Mitt and stay at CAP
More speculatively, MY will be able to excuse supporting Mitt because Obama will be waging war in Iran. You identity peaceniks will probably join Matt.
I will be outside the pragmatic either-or crowds.
Thank God I didn't go to a college that named ice-cream after the football coach. (In our case there would have been one flavour and it would have been called "Gary", but that's besides the point.)
As Bob says, they had ideology. In fact, to crank up the Catholic analogy, they had partaken of the flesh of their pseudo-Christ..
422:that I should have some empathy for the people who are empathizing with the child rapists and their protectors?
No dammit! Never
I will always hate those who don't hate those who don't hate Posnanski for not hating Joe Paterno.
Do I pass your test?
Do I pass your test?
Not until you demand that we nuke Happy Valley, no.
For what it's worth, I think this is a really interesting post about the PSU mess.
I will be outside the pragmatic either-or crowds world of reality.
As usual
423: The Rothbardians hate Obama. You hate Obama. Does that make you reconsider your view? I'm guessing not.
427: Hah. I actually had exactly the same thought; that universities often systematically cover up sex crimes committed on campus by discouraging reporting to the police and so on (remember we talked about such a case here a few months ago? Woman whose rapist contacted her many years after the fact, and when she reported the contact to the police, they prosecuted the original rape that the university had kept her from reporting when it happened?) and that it seemed like a strong possibility that the system had just swung into gear when the reports hit.
Al, add my voice to the (external) choir. I hope you soon get what you need to get through this pain. All good thoughts aimed toward Narnia.
The piece in 427 is very good.
Does anyone doubt that the Penn State football team and coaches, at least at some point in JoePa's 60 year career there, covered up a rape or sexual assault that was known to the coaches and team members? I sure don't.
So much of the problem here was that it was simply assumed by everyone involved that the University, and the football program in particular, operated outside of the normal rules and called its own shots, and that this was OK. That's part of what I was trying to say above -- McQueary's totally bizarro, horrible actions become more comprehensible if you assume that he was in a system in which Joe Paterno, football coach, really was the highest authority in the land. Which makes Paterno particularly reprehensible.
Al, thoughts and prayers are going your way.
One last sally: the problem with asserting that most people don't operate in the semi-cult-like environments conducive to McQueary's choices is that, regardless of how many "most" is, as a result abusers will gravitate toward such environments for safety.
abusers will gravitate toward such environments for safety
I think this is almost certainly true. But it also suggests that abusers are born rather than made, doesn't it? And insofar as I think the culture of college football helps to make rapists and people who protect rapists, I'd probably want to see such a caveat added.
431: yes, I thought of the conversation you mention here as I read Claire's post.
Of course there's nothing more to life there than football.
But I'm not talking about how large Penn State looms in the hinterlands, it's how large it looms in a mid-size city like Pittsburgh, which is 3 or 4 hours away. If you want to stupidly worship a football team associated with sexual assault, we have better options.
That's facetious, of course, but my point is that it just doesn't seem like Penn State should be as big a deal here as it is. I don't have any sense of whether it has an outsize presence in Philly as well; it's a much bigger, and more cosmopolitan city, but it's also closer to State College, and I don't have any reason to believe that southeast Pennsylvanians are more prone to go elsewhere than southwest Pennsylvanians.
433 is key. I was talking to somebody about the case yesterday who, while he felt that Paterno deserved to be fired, felt sorry for him that his career ended this way. I'm sorry, but that's just nuts. Paterno was the King of Pennsylvania. He could have gone to the Pennsylvania legislature, and said "I can't tell you why, but I need you to have Sandusky killed," and the bill would have passed unanimously.
Does it have something to do with the sheer number of people they graduate?
438: It has an outsize presence. When I was a kid, I thought it must be right outside the city, just because I heard about it so much.
440: I'm trying to figure that out. I mean, by definition they're a minority even of college grads who live in metro Pgh (and thus a small minority of all residents), but it may be that there are, in fact, more of them here than I've really understood.
There's also the part where families get assimilated - one kid goes to a given U., and now everyone in his extended family has at least some affinity for it. And when it's an iconic place like Penn State (or any other state U.), it becomes easy to double down on that. "I used to be a Pitt fan, but now that my nephew goes to Penn State, I threw away every garment I own that isn't blue and white."
One of my main clients right now is a Penn Stater, but I don't think I'll be raising this subject with him.
438: Actually, Pittsburgh is a bit closer. And the answer lies in the general place of football at all levels in Western PA, 440, and the on-campus cult which was due in part to Paterno and I suspect in part to the relative isolation of the campus.
Keep passing the open windows, alameida.
I might add that I went to HS in northern NJ, somewhat closer to Del Water Gap than to NYC, and I was surprised at how many of my classmates were gung-ho to go to State College.
On some level, it probably comes back to snobbery: Penn State is nothing special academically, so why would anyone care about it unless it was in your own backyard?
I think UVa people are nuts (Hi, Will!), but at least it's a really good school with a significant history.
Would it be terribly snide to suggest that the cult of JoePa comes back to people trying to justify their attachment to an otherwise unremarkable institution?
"I used to be a Pitt fan, but now that my nephew goes to Penn State, I threw away every garment I own that isn't blue and white."
Thanks to my preference for traditional patterns, I'd get to keep my boxer shorts if I had to make that adjustment.
445,last: It would be what a snob would say, yes.
443: 440?
Actually, Pittsburgh is a bit closer.
Shows what I know. I've only been there once (for about 3 hours), a testament to its utter isolation. Looking at a map, I had vaguely assumed it was about 25-50 miles east. And mind you, I could pretty well fill in a blank map of PA.
We Are Not Normal We Are Penn State Football.
Cult video.
447: But would it be correct?
And never mind my question in 448. Out of practice here.
448.1: Just referencing what Minivet said about the shear number of grads. The most, or among the most alumni of any school.
I figure it's because high school football is big in PA, and so I you root for a high school team it's likely that some of your best players go to Penn State, perhaps more consistently than other institutions.
452 is a very good point. I'm totally insulated from HS football in western PA, but I"m aware of its importance, and it makes total sense that that would lead to a connection even among people without a single family member or close friend at the school. Hell, I paid vague attention to Rutgers football for a couple years because an HS classmate of mine played for them.
People from Pittsburgh go to Penn State? Almost nobody from Philly does -- though I guess it would be silly to since there are 80 million colleges in the area.
because an HS classmate of mine played for them.
Was he an history major?
Walt Someguy is the Pauline Kael of eastern PA.
449: It is good to see how the YouTube commenter demographic is responding to this scandal. For once I am in sympathy with their mean-spirited name-calling.
445
Sorry this is bullshit. According to US News (highly flawed but still), UVa is the 2nd best public school in the US, PSU the 13th (comparable to UWashington, UWisconsin, UofIllinois, and UTexas).
According to the Times Higher Education ranking (an attempt to remove the USNews' highly flawed "reputation" component), UVa is 135th in the world, PSU 51st (14th among US public schools).
In a ranking of Top Public Research Universities, The Center for Measuring University Performance says Penn State is in a group ranked 8-13 amongst US public schools. That group includes GaTech, Ohio State, UMinnesota, Pitt, and UWashington, and is several ranks ahead of UVa.
The Washington Monthy published a college ranking system that was unique in trying to measure these criteria "how well it performs as an engine of social mobility (ideally helping the poor to get rich rather than the very rich to get very, very rich), how well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research, and how well it promotes an ethic of service to country". In this ranking, PSU was 3rd (just behind Berkeley and just ahead of UCLA) and UVa was 20th.
You can believe or disbelieve these rankings as you wish; they are all highly flawed in some way. But any way you shake it out, PSU is one of the top public universities in the US, and is especially good at research. Just because their football program has big problems, and there is one subculture of meatheads doesn't invalidate the rest of that.
Ohio State and Pitt are both much, much better than Penn State.
And McQueary put on administrative leave.
459
Wanna explain? Saying don't make it so.
461: Penn State has never once employed me.
Well, Pitt's philosophy department is way better.
Despite having never once employed me.
Also, Pitt stopped Polio. Ohio State's coach got fired for hitting a grown man.
458 basically gets it right. UVa has stronger undergraduates, but Penn State is better academically in terms of graduate students and research.
463: CA would disagree, for predictable reasons.
Surely most of us can agree that UVA both sucks and has an even worse culture. At least at Penn State they play football, not lacrosse, and faux-Southern racist aristocrats from Greenwich, CT are thin on the ground. Sorry, Stanley and Will!
On closer (read: any) inspection, the only person on PSU's phil faculty whose work I know anything about is L—nard Lawl-r.
I just said what I did about Pitt on the grounds that its dept is pretty spectacular, not because of any detailed knowledge about PSU.
I often walk around and reflect on how spectacular the philosophy program is here. One day I may find out what building it is in.
Wait, you mean the Cathedral of Learning isn't the only building on campus?
That's kind of disappointing.
463
In pretty much every science and engineering field, PSU is comparable to Ohio State and substantially better than Pitt.
I was pleased to note that my undegraduate alma mater beat both Penn State and UVA in some of the rankings, and decided those were the important ones. Then I noticed that my undegraduate alma mater beat my current graduate school in one of the rankings that I had decided was particularly important, and then I looked at a different ranking and neither of them were high enough for my taste, and then I decided that rankings are bullshit. They definitely both rank much higher than wherever Halford went, though.
Which state schools are on the map is kind of field-dependent, of course, but I can't say I'm very interested in any research coming out of Penn State or UVa. There are, I would think, about seven Universities of California that belong somewhere near the top of these lists.
In pretty much every non-science and -engineering field, the department is in the Cathedral of Learning.
There's only one University of California, essear; it just has many manifestations.
Penn State is apparently very good for certain kinds of science, at least according to the postdoc we know there who keeps grimly repeating that to himself (and others) when considering why he's now spending most of his time locked in his apartment perusing netflix while yahoos flip TV trucks in the street.
475
Of course. Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD are unequivocally better, and Santa Barbara, Irvine, and Davis are comparable but probably a bit better..
Berkeley and UCLA are certainly the premier public institutions in the country (though we'll see how long they can keep it up). The next tier is very crowded though, as the US has a lot of very good public schools especially in the midwest, mid-atlantic, and California.
476: I think most of the social sciences are in Posvar.
Better for what, F? Virology? Economics? Astrophysics? Veterinary medicine? Materials science? Epidemiology? The content of your statements is unclear.
UCSB actually often comes out ahead of UCSD on science-y lists. I'm fairly sure their physics program is known to be quite a bit better.
I have irrational prejudices against SO MANY universities, for so many different reasons. Maybe I'll do my own rankings.
Ever since they closed the Roy Roger's in the basement, I've found it hard to go back to the Cathedral of Learning.
I believe we'll be needing this in order to properly continue this discussion.
In biomedical sciences I'm familiar with, UCSD, UCSF, UCLA are way ahead of UCSB. I think I also see more citations from Irvine and Davis.
However I generally conflate UCSD with anything involving the words "La Jolla", "Torrey", and "Scripps" - who knows all those details. Also "UCLA", "Cedars" and "Kaiser".
#*!!%& linkfail. It's the douchiest colleges list, 2011 edition. See where your school rates!
General overall quality? Especially in the sciences? Seriously, if you want to take the point of view that it is actually impossible to rank universities in any meaningful way, I can't really argue with you. And yet, all the various ways of ranking universities (include subjectively) do generally agree qualitatively, if not quantitatively.
I havent read much upthread. Why are you bastards picking on Mr. Jefferson's University!??!?
We rock!
JRoth!?!? WTF? That is a dangerous thing for you to say.
UCLA is pretty much at the bottom of the heap in my internal ranking of UC schools by the sort of physics I'm interested in. Well, Riverside and Merced aren't really in the picture at all. But all this stuff is so field-dependent that it gets a little silly to rank places.
484: UCSB has a special Theoretical Physics institute, UCSD has a special Oceanography institute. So you'd want to look away from those two field when comparing.
UCSD is certainly stronger in math. I find it hard to ignore my own biases coming from math in comparing schools. For example, I always think of Michigan along with Berkeley and UCLA as the top tier of public schools, but looking around at rankings that didn't seem to actually be true.
After all, we have a soccer teams, tennis teams, lacrosse, swiim teams. Plus, it is really pretty.
And the students dress up for the games.
Thomas Jefferson???
(My inablity to write/edit should not impact your view of UVa.)
But all this stuff is so field-dependent that it gets a little silly to rank places.
Yeah. Ranking in terms of research, a school could have two or three really good faculty in a subfield, and that's enouh to vault them into the top ten, easily. But then the department those faculty are in could be merely fair, and undergraduate options even in the subfield could be miserable. And it could be in a godforsaken shithole in the middle of nowhere.
I deem all of the following culturally unacceptable, for different reasons:
Princeton
UVA
University of Chicago
Any fancypants conservative liberal arts college in the South (Sewanee, Washington & Lee, etc.)
Brown
Arizona State University
Duke
SMU
Everything in Florida
Ole Miss
Roughly 45% of Steinford
Bennington College
What am I missing?
484: UCSB has a the special Theoretical Physics institute
It's kind of the archetype for something that no other place has really managed to replicate.
497:
Nobody cares what an entertainment lawyer thinks.
General overall quality? Especially in the sciences? Seriously, if you want to take the point of view that it is actually impossible to rank universities in any meaningful way, I can't really argue with you. And yet, all the various ways of ranking universities (include subjectively) do generally agree qualitatively, if not quantitatively.
It's just that to put Penn State and Ohio State on a tier clearly above Pitt is to ignore their biomedical institutes.
493
No, actually, I would say that's true. Michigan is always in the top 5 public schools. I also think UNC is close to that level.
I love the bizarre opinions being expressed here.
Brown is culturally unacceptable! How dare you overlook their biomedical institutes! UCLA physics sux!
Let me clarify that I have no standing to evaluate UCLA's physics programs, I just think it's amusing, though of course understandable, the way one's disciplinary lens leads to an evaluation of the university as a whole.
So you'd want to look away from those two field when comparing.
Why? Doesn't the fact that they have those special institutes make them better institutions?
I mean, nobody says "well, MIT has the Broad and Whitehead institutes, so you can't really fairly rank it in terms of biomedical fields."
340 was sort of pointless when I wrote it, but it can be considered a rebuke to 454. At least for the Philly burbs.
Well, for med-school-location-based reasons, life sciences is one of the few fields that Pitt has a substantial advantage over PSU in.
Brown also seemed the weird one on the list to me.
499: I'd actually like to hear more about Rob's reasoning, in part to determine if I fell into the verboten 45% of Steinford.
504: isn't the point that evaluating the university as a whole is sort of a mug's game? Plausible it's easier when you're speaking in terms of undergraduate education.
Halford... I have no idea what's up with Halford. Personally I would replace U of C and Brown with, oh, say, USC and Princeton, but I know very nice people who went to (and got a lot out of) both, so why would I?
No one but me has the courage to proudly and boldly state their irrational prejudices.
Maybe it's just that I grew up near it, but I always thought that Hershey was very very strong in medicine and related research. Is that impression wrong?
We're less than a decade away from making our part of Gattica come true. But has Penn State built interstellar spacecraft?
I just think it's amusing, though of course understandable, the way one's disciplinary lens leads to an evaluation of the university as a whole.
Well, I wasn't evaluating the university as a whole. Hell, I won't even claim to be able to evaluate the physics department as a whole. They do have one interesting guy in my field but most UC schools have three or four. The point was really that it's kind of pointless to try to take a global view of these things, since the disciplinary lenses give such different pictures.
Gattica? You're changing the structure of DNA?
505: If one of them had the premier institute in a field and the other didn't then that would be relevant. But it seems very silly to me to have the argument of which is better UCSD or UCSB come down to which is better oceanography or theoretical physics.
Plausible it's easier when you're speaking in terms of undergraduate education.
Plausibly it only has a point when you're talking about undergrad education, because only undergrads arrive at a university as a whole (in the sense that they could end up affiliated with one of a broad range of departments).
In fact, PSU suffers in the overall research rankings for the same reason - their med school is 100 miles away in Hershey, and it isn't a very large research hospital.
I do tend to be pretty irrationally prejudiced against most southern schools. Finding out that Vanderbilt has some really top-notch researchers (and some really cool former undergrads) has been fairly unmooring.
516: We removed the shielding from the X-ray machines.
511: Personally I would replace U of C and Brown with, oh, say, USC and Princeton
497.top-of-the-list: Princeton
Don't forget Princeton!
511: Princeton is already on the list, though.
518: I find your assertion plausible as asserted, yes.
Yeah, but UCSD has a seriously unusual library.
Everyone who was ever associated with Princeton is an asshole, clearly.
There has to be somebody on unfogged who has been associated with more than two of the schools on Halford's list.
I take halford's list to mean that he loves Hillsdale College desperately.
Everyone who was ever associated with Princeton is an asshole, clearly.
Still making amends for Woodrow Wilson?
528: my grandfather was a big Princeton booster, and he was definitely an asshole. That seems dispositive.
Plus that fratty bro-icin'-bro Krugman was faculty. So shady.
530: I come from a long line of cultural unacceptability (three generations, three schools on the list.) Woot!
497 would be awesome, but the absence of Dartmouth really calls Halford's judgment into question.
You know what are weird? Little, fancy liberal arts colleges in the middle of damn nowhere. Whose big idea was that? Srsly.
I guess Wellesley and Middlebury aren't as far from civilization as the rest of them.
Swathmore isn't very far from civilization either, if you consider Philly civilized.
Honestly there's no really plausible justification for not including USC on the list, but they're my main hope for my breaking even on a real estate investment, so more power to them.
Brown appears because of its perceived (to me) undergraduate population. I'm in such a bubble I hadn't even heard of Hillsdale College until today.
Yes Dartmouth needs to go on, for sure. Oh, and Williams College.
538.1: Entertainment lawyer and slumlord!
Who will not hate me at the end of today?
537: well, sure, in that case neither is Haverford.
340: Really? Was it a far-out suburb?
In the city I knew people who went to Penn, Drexel, Villanova, Temple, Lehigh, La Salle, St. Joes and various liberal arts colleges, but no Penn State.
I sure do with the building enforcement code fairy would come and build a camp south of our campus and write citations for weeks.
538.2 - Eurotrash and celebrities' children? Investment bankers' kids who want to smoke a lot of weed? Brady Quinn's girlfriend? Hermione Granger? I'm not sure what the currently active stereotype is.
So, to sum up: Ivies are terrible. Large public schools with football teams are terrible. Small fancy southern schools are terrible. Large southern schools are terrible. Small hippie-ish private schools are terrible. Small fancy northern liberal arts schools are terrible. Everybody who didn't go to a mid-sized, middle-but-not-top-tier university with excellent but occasionally overlooked research and a shitty football team, located in the northeast, midwest, or on the pacific coast, should be ashamed of yourselves.
543: Penn State has 50,000 students or so. Their alumni must all hide when you walk around.
544 isn't too comprehensible to me, but I probably should have gone to a better college.
Doesn't 538.2 answer itself?
545: the unacceptability of Bennington is well-attested among people who would have been UMC enough to attend Bennington if they'd been arrested for drugs a couple more times in high school.
Pretty much the only Ivy that's not contemptible is Penn (excluding Wharton, at that), but since these revelations about Joe Paterno, I think Penn is disgusting too.
Everybody who didn't go to a mid-sized, middle-but-not-top-tier university with excellent but occasionally overlooked research and a shitty football team, located in the northeast, midwest, or on the pacific coast, should be ashamed of yourselves.
This actually seems about right to me.
549: I may have had a word order issue.
That's the people who come from places in Pennsylvania where State College is a step up. I'm just surprised to find out that Pittsburgh is one of those places.
Large public schools with football teams are terrible.
Actually I probably don't agree with that one.
547 actually isn't strict enough because it lets places like Colgate off the hook.
places like Colgate
Onto the list with you!
When I was a kid, the way I kept Penn State and Penn straight was by remembering that Penn State was the one with a football team, and Penn was the one with a basketball team. This information will probably kill a Penn alumnus somewhere.
I also think UNC is close to that level.
Plus, basketball.
Little, fancy liberal arts colleges in the middle of damn nowhere.
But then, Cornell was already mentioned.
Apo, the other day I was wondering how much support the also-ran teams have among non-alumni. Like, is everyone in North Carolina who didn't go to one of the ACC schools legally obliged to root for UNC or Duke, or are there strong outposts of support for NC State and Wake?
Halford's poor kid is never going to figure out why Bates, Wash U. and UCSD are the only acceptable college options.
Thomas Jefferson???
Racist. Well, you asked.
Except of course Wash U has the right-winger thing and Bates, right, step out of the Subaru, and UCSD is totally racist. So I guess those are on the list.
Community college it is! I know a great one in LA, actually.
Isn't Bennington condemned by the AAUP for disposing of tenure? Everyone I know who went there transferred after their freshman year.
Frighteningly, I think Pitt meets the criterion. But I can't have my child educated too close to the Hammer.
Community college it is!
Moving from ridiculous mode to kinda serious mode, I honestly can't figure out why two years at [what I am guessing was] the community college you went to followed by a transfer isn't the best strategy for just about anyone.
I honestly can't figure out why two years at [what I am guessing was] the community college you went to followed by a transfer isn't the best strategy for just about anyone.
In CA, it is. Well, unless you get a full ride to a four-year institution. Everywhere else is should be, too. But then there's the stigma thing. I actually thought that the Obama Dept. of Education (renamed, of course) was going to try to deal with this issue. Oh well.
566: it's censured for some reason or other, yeah.
My impression is that the CC then transfer approach is way more normalized in California. In the rest of the country I don't think it's as viable if you want to be successful.
My stereotype about Bennington may be 30 years out of date. OTOH I just went to their website and was greeted by a picture of a bearded trustafarian, so maybe not.
Mine is basically "Bret Easton Ellis." And he is presumably in his 50s now, so.
I'm pretty sure the community college that Sifu went to was in CA, so that strategy is probably only viable in CA.
Also, Berkeley's a good school known for academics, while California is a big state school with aspirations for its football and basketball teams that never quite work out, and sometimes lead to scandals and sanctions.
People, UCLA is not a community college.
OK, I stand corrected, there is an Internet discourse lower than high-handedly demanding a football playoff system instead of the BCS.
are there strong outposts of support for NC State and Wake?
Not so much Wake Forest (maybe there is in Winston-Salem, I'm not sure), but NCSU definitely has a large contingent, especially among the NASCAR and smokeless tobacco demographic. They've just been wandering in the basketball desert for so long that they mostly have their hopes pinned on football instead.
If there had been a football playoff system, then Penn State would have won more national championships, making the loss of innocence the nation is now undergoing that much greater. So really, the BCS is a better idea.
UCLA is people! Soon they'll be breeding them like ag schools! You have to tell the world!
I was a little surprised that Paterno only had two national titles under his belt. I thought that number was higher, but then I don't pay much attention to college football.
Don't be fooled. Stormcrow just wants to promote the elite game of soccer, and since he likes soccer so much he probably also likes Dartmouth.
580: Well one of the "features" of the place was that he had 5 undefeated teams only one of which was undisputed National champion as I recall (or maybe ). They also have not really been top tier for quite a while.
Penn State has an unusually large number of controversial non-championships. For example LBJ robbed them of a championship by congratulating Texas as champions on national TV. They went undefeated 5 times which you'd expect to mean 4 or so championships.
583: That was Nixon. It led to one of the few endearing Paterno quotes a few years later, ""How could Nixon know so much about college football in 1969 and so little about Watergate in 1973?"
Complaining about how they were cheated by the polls is a long-standing Penn State tradition, like in '94 when they were undefeated but were ranked #2.
Those Penn State undefeated teams are one of the reasons we got the Bowl Alliance followed by the BCS. The Rose Bowl traditionalists wept.
581: Let me recall, Laura Ingraham was Dartmouth and Anne Coulter was Cornell. Or was it the other way around? Same diff, I guess.
577: Do any actual locals cheer for Duke?
Dday at FDL (and his commenters) have news about Pennsylvania, the molestation state
1) Sandusky caught once in San Antonio. Dday has a long list of sports programs and coaches recently caught abusing.
2) Entire donor/sponsor list for Second Mile has disappeared. Madden was right, but he apparently vastly underestimated the extent of the conspiracy
3) Comments speculate that all the DC/NYC/Boston power elite regularly exchange Pasolini-level party favors. All of them-price of admission to trilateral commission-becoming made persons.
I always did believe that Bandar did George back at age 14 or so, with pictures taken by Barbara, Now Georgie, there may come a time an Abdullah needs a favor.
The rich are different.
all the DC/NYC/Boston power elite regularly exchange Pasolini-level party favors. All of them-price of admission to trilateral commission-becoming made persons.
It's true. This is what people are taught at Princeton.
1) Sandusky caught once in San Antonio.
That was the Victim #4 Alamo Bowl Trip (also was apparently at the Outback Bowl)., the Teas police are now investigating based on the PA Grand Jury information. Do try to keep up, bob.
589: he apparently vastly underestimated the extent of the conspiracy
Man, if I had a nickel for every time that's happened!
3) Comments speculate that all the DC/NYC/Boston power elite regularly exchange Pasolini-level party favors. All of them-price of admission to trilateral commission-becoming made persons.
If you can think of a better way for the Annunaki lizards to exchange information-dense protein strings, I'd like to hear it.
I used to laugh about leaving a U with the motto Fiat Lux for one with the motto Education for Efficiency.
Stanford isn't bad for a junior university.
I'm not sorry my daughter left Bennington after 2 years, and have my own grudge against them. It's the right place for some people, though.
Carp's comment made me look up this awesome list of University mottos. (how did I forget "Fiat Lux???). Anyhow, my favorite is the University of Maryland, whose official motto is apparently "Fatti maschii, parole femine" (Manly deeds, womanly words). All right then.
All of them-price of admission to trilateral commission-becoming made persons.
HAHAHAHA. Good one.
"I would found an institution, but I'm all the way out here in the middle of fucking nowhere..."
"I would found an institution where anyone from Long Island can learn about sheep rearing and hospitality science."
OG@417: SYMPATHY? HOW CAN THERE BE SYMPATHY FOR ANYONE EXCEPT THE VICTIMS? THEY'RE THE REAL VICTIMS. CALL ME CRAZY BUT I'M DIRECTING my SYMPATHY AT THEM.
WE ALL CAN SUPPORT THE PLAYERS AND TEAM,THEY ARE VICTIMS TOO !! THEY CAN DEDICATE WINNING THIS GAME TO ALL THE VICTIMS AND THEIR FAMILIES,SOMETHING LIKE WIN ONE FOR JOEY AND THAT WILL HELP SHOW ALL THE HURT ONES THAT THE TEAM AND FANS ARE BEHIND THE HURT ONES AND NOT THE ONES THAT ARE RESPONSABLE FOR ALL THIS !! THE TEAM DID NOT CAUSE THIS.ALL THE DAM POLITICS,GREED AND ALL THE MANAGEMENT AT PSU DID, NOT THE STUDENTS OR ATHLETES OR THE UNIVERSITY DID !!! STOP CREATING MORE VICTIMS AND LETS START HEALING ALL THIS NOW !! SORRY FOR ALL CAPS.BUT WE JUST CAN NOT BLAME THE WHOLE NITTANY NATION !!
Do any actual locals cheer for Duke?
Oh, sure. But then I grew up in Durham, where they're surely thickest on the ground. All the same, you win a bunch of championships, you get a bunch of fans.
567: yes and no, but in a lot of ways maybe no, but I'm out for the evening and can't answer in detail until later.
If this was linked earlier, I missed it. Joe Posnanski breaks his public silence, but alas, is unable to break out of the bubble:
I am sickened, absolutely sickened, that some of those people whose lives were fundamentally inspired and galvanized by Joe Paterno have not stepped forward to stand up for him this week, have stood back and allowed him to be painted as an inhuman monster who was only interested in his legacy, even at the cost of the most heinous crimes against children imaginable. Shame on them.
Shame on them!
People are making assumptions about what Joe did or didn't know, what Joe did or didn't do, and I can't tell you that those assumptions are wrong. But I can tell you that they are assumptions based on one side of the story.
Asshole. Joe's side of the story is that he behaved reprehensibly. I doubt that when the real story comes out, it's going to be more charitable to Joe than Joe's own story.
I think the University could not possibly have handled this worse. It was disgusting and disgraceful, the method in which they fired Joe Paterno after 60 years of service, and yes, I do think Paterno was a scapegoat.
!
596: Since I was pretty familiar with two places that were Fiat Lux but not in California, looked it up, and it is a fairly extensive list although not that many in the US.
605: sanctimonious! Kidding aside, I'm bummed about Posnanski. He's from Cleveland and should know better than to look for morality tales in sports.
606: I believe the UC has officially changed its motto to, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" or maybe just the pithier and mutitendretastic, "Spare change?"
603: Many (most?) of the staff when I was there would cheer for UNC.
I mean the locals on the staff, not the whole staff.
Moody's reviews Penn State for downgrade. Now we know it's consequential.
And I mean the whole staff, not just your staffhole.
543: Medium far out. Penns/bury High School, in Lower Bucks County. Normally.
UNC's motto is Lux Libertas. Duke's is Eruditio et Religio. Wake Forest's is Pro Humanitate. Best I can tell, NC State doesn't have one. I'd suggest BRICKS!
I believe NC State are keeping "Don't Give Up ... Don't Ever Give Up" in reserve in case they ever need a motto.
St. John's has the best motto: Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque. (A pun! In Latin!)
[I make free men out of boys by means of books and a balance.]
I make free men out of boys by means of books and a balance.
That is really, really inappropriate given the subject matter of this thread.
He's from Cleveland and should know better than to look for morality tales in sports.
I would say, rather, "He's from Cleveland and should therefore get his sports morality tales right."
608 606: I believe the UC has officially changed its motto to, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" or maybe just the pithier and mutitendretastic, "Spare change?"
Which reminds me, a few days ago I was in a BART station and took pity on a particularly pitiful story spun by a beggar and gave him a few dollars. While I continued to wait, a steady stream of people approached me and asked for change. I guess they have a system for pointing out the pushovers to each other.
Here's a good one:
Baylor - Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana. For Church, For Texas.
Who knew there was a Latin name for Texas?
Evergreen State's official motto is "Omnia Extares," translated as "Let it all hang out."
Does it go on the list? Not sure.
I like that Iowa State didn't even bother to translate their motto into a foreign language.
Warren Wilson College - "We're not for everyone... but then, maybe you're not everyone."
Illinois State's motto is "And gladly wold he lerne and gladly teche," which is pretty cool.
597 -- That's the state motto of Maryland. Not sure whether it was the motto on the Calvert family coat of arms.
To 497, I'm kind of the anti-Halford. My prejudices aren't irrational -- hard won each and every one of them. On the other hand, I have irrational attachments, to schools attended by my siblings, parents and their siblings, grandparents and their siblings, etc, so far as I know. And that list is definitely not Halford approved: Reed, Stanford, Princeton, Middlebury, Dartmouth, Smith, USMA, Williams, USNA, Harvard. Trinity, too.
In the link on 487, the one on the Florida Gators is dead on.
Oh, and Iowa. Which should be Halford approved. My mom's grandfather went there, and married the daughter of one of the professors.
Earlham has a Quaker fight song. Apparently it has a line along the lines of:
Kick them, smash them, beat them senseless
Fight them till we reach consensus
And it was the Calvert family motto.
Fight, Fight, Inner Light!
Kill, Quakers, Kill!
Knock 'em Down, Beat 'em Senseless!
Do It 'til We Reach Consensus!
My mom's grandfather went there, and married the daughter of one of the professors.
Your great-great grandfather?
I had a vague fear that 632 was either an urban legend or something I made up, so I'm pleased to see 634.
You're all a bunch of elitists. I once was told by someone involved in U.S. News rankings that I had graduated from a fourth-tier state college. I responded that I wasn't interested in the opinion of a fourth-tier news magazine.
Oh shit do not read to the end of 487.
602 quotes the most fucked up response I've seen to this scandal yet. If you google it, you can find more weirdos on the same discussion board.
I just found that he went to NYU. Not ready to form an irrational attachment.
640: Although I'll admit that trolling through local newspaper comment sections is cheating. They're not much better on any topic. I see them in the sidebar when I go to the only active PA High School Soccer forum*.
*Special for Halford: State Championship next Saturday. AAA will be won by a UMC suburban team from outside of Pittsburgh, Philly or Harrisburg. Oh wait, State College is still alive as well.
642: the best is to read the comments on stories reporting the death of a cyclist hit by a car or badly injured in a crash.
So, um, the link in 487 declares Cornell the "douchiest school in America" because of the presence of the "resentment douche" who is obsessed with criticizing other schools
I uh um uh uh un uh um uh Hey Unfogged, read said something mean about feminism in the other thread and also grammar fight! Go over there!
||
I am at a show with my very least favorite person in the whole world. Last time I saw him (over a decade ago) I swore I would spit in his face next time I saw him. This far I have avoided him. I am definitely a hero.
|>
Imagine if a successful college coach drove over a cyclist and the cyclist was on her way to an Occupy Wall Street meeting with Justin Beiber. That would be a comment thread.
And the cyclist was wearing Stanley's faux-Doc brown IT dork shoes.
Cool! Make it happen! Get out of this thread
I can't become a successful coach in that kind of timeframe.
Are there a high number of Cornell alum here? I only know of the one obvious character from the Michael Chabon novel.
650 -- It doesn't take many to feel like there are a lot.
When I was a kid, my dad used to sing the High above Cayuga's waters song.
I know two Cornell grads and they seem nice enough, especially considering that one is an historian..
650: It seems silly to keep track of these things.
I think peep and I share an alma mater.
I used to slag on a colleague who went to Cornell. He's now the IG at the SEC, which isn't bad for someone who didn't go to a real Ivy.
645: I need to know more about this.
I'm alive! yes to 497 +duke and dartmouth and usc. except husband x was undergrad at chicago, so maybe I have to take them off, despite its belonging. I, too, will share my irrational prejudices. oh, but -brown. what's wrong with "the playpen of the ivy league," as it is known? also plus uga. anti-psychotics picked up but not yet taken. fucking anti-psychotics. teh suck. I don't want to get fat. I've lost weight on the "freak the fuck out all the time" diet.
I'd be safer in the ward. but my husband's going away and then there'd be no one to take care of the girls. except our wonderful, competent live-in maid. and if I'm dead ain't nobody to take care of them either. so my friend said "this isn't a convenient time because I need to take care of my kids" was LOGIC FAIL.
How often over, say, the last ten years have you endured something like the last two-ish months? Am I right that there was a distinct change about two months ago, or did you just start sharing more here?
Ignore me if I'm being nosy.
I've lost weight on the "freak the fuck out all the time" diet.
I did that one once! We should write a best-selling diet describing how you can slim down by gnawing on your own liver.
I lost 40 pounds and kept most of it off for a decade. Alas, I am fat and happy these days.
Best wishes, alameida.
I think all the safer antipsychotic meds do have a risk of weight gain but the other ones have greater TD problems.
650 Are there a high number of Cornell alum here?
At least two former Cornell undergrads and one Cornell PhD.
Yeah, al, I hope you turn a corner on this thing. It sounds awful.
Does it really count as a PhD if it's from Cornell?
Within the greater Finger Lakes Region, sure.
I'm sure I'll be exposed as a fraud any day now.
650-- I think we went through this once, and there are at least 4 of us (including grad students) among the regulars. Of course, to avoid sounding presumptuous, I just tell people "I went to school in Ithaca."
I told someone that once and got a long story about how their daughter attended Ithaca College, and they wanted to know what I thought about such-and-such there, and then I really wished I hadn't used that phrasing.
There are also many former U of C people, Halford, so you'd better watch what you say about it.
A couple of days ago I was at dinner with a group of people included one person who was describing how he would have to change flights three times on his 20-hour journey back across the country to Ithaca, and I said something like "yeah, it's aptly named," and got a bunch of blank stares.
There is a real estate agent in Heebie U sadsack town, who specializes in sad houses in sad neighborhoods, with (I think) Essear's real name.
Essear, I say hi to you when I pass his signs.
670: I would have also given you a blank stare.
671: Hee. Google suggests there's a one-letter spelling difference in the last name, though.
I would have given you a blank stare and two dimes.
670 gets it right. I don't know what Ithaca was named after. A place in Greece.
essear can make his joke because he went to the U of C. So there, halford. (and his joke is funny!)
You know. Circe waiting for you when you change planes at Philadelphia, and whatnot. Do not fear the Lestrygonians.
I am pretty sure the lotos eaters are in Berkeley.
677 -- maybe, but if I'd been cooler, I could have taken classes in things like Beef Cattle Management.
I get it! You guys are talking about O Brother Where Art Thou?, aren't you?
Ah, Berkeley. It is so hard to drag oneself away.
It's like dairy cattle management, but with higher turnover.
Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Ten years from everywhere!
Why I hated The Odyssey as a kid.
- by JP Stormcrow.
Fucking whining fuckhead. Ten years boo-fucking-hoo. Now, if you'll excuse us, we're dead. Thanks a lot - your crew.
I demand the Internet to have a copy of the cartoon showing cattle in line outside a slaughterhouse with one turning to its neighbor and saying, "I hear 10%".
I get it! You guys are talking about O Brother Where Art Thou?, aren't you?
The film from Sullivan's Travels?
I was wondering if reading this thread would be a worthwhile use of the hours it would take. Turns out it was.
"Cornell?! That's a super-safety school!"
Reason #1,896 why I'm not married.
384: I had to report alleged abuse. 19 year-old who said that the property manager of her SRO fondled her and/or made inappropriate sexual advances. DMH client, therefore disabled, therefore we have a heightened standard, and because the SRO was run by a non-profit, the property manager had a quasi case manager/caregiver role. We had to report it to the DPPC per my supervisor's supervisor. I saw that report and heard that the DPPC investigated and found no wrong doing. What else should I have done?
Not the same as having witnessed child rape, but I think your point about reporting to superiors and then assuming that they'll handle it stands to a certain extent.
Hearsay or suspicion are very different issues than being a direct witness. The point is that you don't know for sure whether the allegations are true, and so once you've reported to the appropriate authorities you're morally in the clear.
I'm totally insulated from HS football in western PA, but I"m aware of its importance
Interestingly, I went to high school in Pittsburgh and remained blissfully unaware of its importance. In the city itself, it was the tiniest of blips.
what's wrong with "the playpen of the ivy league," as it is known?
Just so.
Anyway, Cornell was fine for me, but I don't necessarily recommend it to people.
teo isn't made of people! teo isn't made of people!
I think the lotos eaters are at bennington, yo. I tripped my balls off the one time I ever went to bennington, as is traditional. yes, I had a kind of double shock like 2 months ago of looking at my daughter and thinking about how little and helpless 11 year old kids are, and then additionally my merc friend scared me a few times that...whatever. so, my psychiatrist and sponsor both suggested that since I was freaking out so bad I should do the lame Oprah homework about being abused as a child, fucking fuck that. but I was probably headed for depression anyway because I got manic first. a rich cocktail of a tapestry of factors. now it really might be soothing psych ward time, though I find work pleasantly distracting. I know it won't go on like this forever. I'll just hang on by my fingernails until it stops feeling like demons are gnawing on my paper-thin soul.
695: Yeah, hey. It was good enough for Hermione.
497, 550, 571, 699: Camden College is what I think you people are talking about.
691.1: "Cornell?! That's a super-safety school!"
Flip is Sydney Pollack/Al Eustis:
Al Eustis: You've never been here before? What kind of Harvard man are you?
Jan Schlichtmann: The Cornell kind.
702: TBD. She says she is going back next year.
694: It's like you never heard of Central Catholic.
But you're right anyway. She toured G/a/llatin, but didn't enroll, so we know *that* wasn't good enough.
705: "It's just that I'll spend my third year abroad -- at Oxford. Then I'll return to Brown to complete my last year," she told the Virginian-Pilot.
Fucking whining fuckhead. Ten years boo-fucking-hoo. Now, if you'll excuse us, we're dead. Thanks a lot - your crew.
"Awesome plot device, wonder if I could do anything with that." - Gene Roddenberry in High School
I went to Cornell, liked the education but not the society so much. I chose it over Columbia for rather trivial reasons; not sure what would have happened if I had gone there instead.
The write-up for douchey school #3 is remarkably on point. Obvs the "where'd you go to school" thing but also the "passion, which distinguishes us from those robots at Harvard and Princeton" thing.
The one quibble I have is that students tend to suppress the I-could-be-president thing while they are attending in order not to grapple with the facts of the social stratum reproduction project. Then we're out and how'd we end up writing stories on A-1 of the NYT a year after graduation? oh, passion. (OTOH most of my friends from there are fuckups and union organizers.)
Also I wouldn't characterize Yalies as both proud of New Haven and scared of it -- tends to be mostly the latter, and a few the former, but the mix is rare.
