Stop abdicating the responsibility for your own humanity: The Penn State Rapes
The fact of the Penn State horror are simple and clear to me:
No child should be raped. No child should be raped in a shower. No child should be raped in a shower by an adult he trusts. And no one watching that rape should sleep until they know that that child–and others like him–are safe. Whether they are the witness, the coach, or the president of the university. If you know, you cannot not know.
You cannot abdicate the responsibility for your own humanity to others, or to the law, or to the system.
End of story.
But that's not what happened at Penn State. There are probably a lot of reasons for that–some have said that football trumped reason, for example. That the money generated by football was too great to jeopardize, even though a child was at stake. Many children. Whatever the reasons–and there might be many reasons–they are not valid. They are not true and just and appropriate. No matter the reason, they fall short in this case. They are excuses, not reasons. They are representations of our too-convenient "not seeing" because too much is at stake.
As a young employee in my first job after graduate school, it became clear that my boss was taking money from a grant fund our organization had received–and applying it to his own personal expenses. I went to the president of the organization with documentation of what was happening because it was wrong. And here is what he said to me: "Frank just had a heart attack, and we don't want to do anything to upset him. Plus he is really respected in the field."
I left that job after sending the documentation to the grant-making organization to ensure that they knew. That is what we must do. We cannot stand up for children, for truth, for others, for ourselves, only when it is convenient. We must not.
There is no reason that comes close to explaining why so many knew, and so many did nothing in the case of Penn State. This is also true of the Catholic Church and other institutions that are built on systemic injustices and abuses, of which there are many.
I am not talking about what people were legally bound to do–because that has no place here. None. The life of a child is simply not measured in legal terms. I do not care what the law said. I do not care what the policies and procedures of that university said. Children should not be raped in the shower and that abuse covered up.
People knew. And they did nothing.
A friend asked my opinion on this case, and here it is:
We are not responsible for the actions of those we admire, whether they are a coach or a teacher or a movie star, or the university from which we graduated. And since every institution is comprised of human beings–all of us flawed–we make mistakes. Sometimes they are small mistakes and sometimes they are large ones.
It is heartbreaking to watch a university or any institution crumble under the weight of bad decisions, of looking the other way, of condoning by commission and omission.
I believe the only appropriate response–the only one that improves the chances of other children in that situation–is not only one of justice against those who did nothing–and they are all to blame–but much more importantly one of commitment that each of us as individual people will stand up against child abuse each and every time we see it.
The woman on the plane cursing at her small child and slapping him across the face? You have a responsibility. I know you don't want to make a mistake or make things uncomfortable or misinterpret or cause a scene.
Neither did the people at Penn State.
We are better than this, people. We owe it to our children to do better. We must do better.
If you are a graduate of Penn State, be proud of what you took away from that fine institution and let this be a time of learning rather than damning. This is a hot spot, a time when we can either shut down or open up to learning. Let it be the latter.
