A lot of terrible things are done in the service of ideals, the abstract and the big picture giving people license to rationalize what should not happen. Sometimes people believe that a place is special and being a part of that place makes them special, so they reflexively lash out at those who see dark corners and not just green lawns. It’s my country right or wrong. For too long, Penn State has been its own country. From Bruce Arthur’s excellent National Post essay about life in the place named Happy Valley:
“People who grew up here, and people who live here, both point to the local ties of the people already implicated, how they are steeped in this place. As State College native Michael Weinreb wrote for ESPN’s Grantland.com, ‘We grew older, and we came to understand one of the central truths of human nature, which is that when you brush up against a truly powerful force, it is never quite as benevolent as you imagined it to be.’
‘You’ve got to remember that a lot of guys who were involved in the cover-up grew up here, or close enough,’ says the State College native who knew McQueary, the Curleys, and the Paternos.
‘There are a lot of people here who never left,’ says another longtime resident who works for the university. ‘Look at this. Joe’s been here 60 years. Mike McQueary, local guy, played here, never left. Tim Curley grew up here, high school here, never left. Schultz came here to go to school, never left. Even Spanier had been here for 16 years. That’s a long time for a university president.
‘And again, that in itself isn’t evil. But it makes it a lot easier for secrets to be kept when you’ve been here forever, and you’re part of this thing, and there is this mafia-like sense of the family. It’s identity. And it wasn’t just Joe.’
It wasn’t just Joe. It wasn’t just Spanier. It wasn’t just Curley. It wasn’t just Schultz. And tragically, it was not just Sandusky, either.
Happy Valley is a place wrestling for its soul, wrestling to keep itself alive in its own mind. The high priests let the children suffer for the grander idea, for the place that was good. A professor who teaches journalism ethics here, Russell Frank, wrote a piece that began, ‘It’s time to stop calling this place Happy Valley. The name doesn’t fit. It never did.'”