The Issue: Whether sanctions should be imposed on Penn State in the wake of its child sex-abuse scandal.
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Penn State’s failings are the failings of an entire community that glorified one man and one athletic program so completely that an entire administration came to look the other way (“Melt Joe Paterno,” Editorial, July 18).
Of course, football needs to be shut down at Penn State for some period of time. And there is a way to do this without harming innocent players. Penn State and the NCAA could simply agree that beginning with the September 2014 football season, Penn State will not field a team for four years, from 2014 through 2017.
One generation of no football at Happy Valley is a minimal sacrifice for the horrors that occurred to several generations of children.
Steve Gidumal
Orlando, Fla.
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Penn State trustees should create a rogue gallery by erecting sculptures alongside Joe Paterno’s of other disgraced and loathsome figures: Jerry Sandusky, Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz and Tim Curley.
At Paterno’s statue are the words “Educator, Coach, Humanitarian.” This could be removed in favor of a new inscription: “Football First, Vulnerable Children Last and Forgotten.”
Oren Spiegler
Upper Saint Clair, Pa.
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Any sanctions, fines or penalties in regard to the Sandusky molestation cover-up should be issued to the university, not the football program.
The current football players at Penn State were between 8 and 10 years old when these disgusting acts and the equally horrific cover-up took place. To punish them makes no sense.
It would be the equivalent of punishing good behavior, a hard-work ethic and success. Wait a minute — that sounds like President Obama’s social-justice economic plan.
Matthew Nugent
Staten Island
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Students can chant, “We are Penn State,” but without Paterno there would be no Penn State. Paterno did an unforgivable thing, but it does not completely outweigh all the good the man did.
He died in infamy, without a job and alienated by all those he helped.
Now Penn State wants to act like Paterno never existed, with its pockets lined with cash it would have never seen if it weren’t for him.
Jim Morley
Utica