By Professor Doom
So Sandusky’s
son has been arrested on pedophilia charges. It’s curious how easy it
is to get into these situations with underage girls…but you think this guy of
all people would eschew just things. In addition, we should probably consider there's an infrastructure here--how exactly does he find underage girls to do this to?
The sins of the son are not today's concern: I reckon it’s time to tally up the
damage at Penn State.
It’s been painful
watching the Penn State scandal play out, drop by agonizing drop. From
revelations of the huge coverup, to the fat reward
the Poo Bah received for the coverup, to the
defamation lawsuit payoff to the assistant coach for refusing to cover it up, to the
complete reversals of the punishments meted out to Penn State, to the
complete silence from accreditation for this grotesque violation of the
accreditation policies (I can’t link to this last claim, because there’s no punishment
by accreditation for me to document…).
After years of
denials and court trials, we’re finally able to tally up a financial cost. How
much?
Naturally, the
article fails to point out a few things. Foremost, of course, is mention of who
is paying that bill. That’s you and me. Don’t get me wrong, what was done to
those children was horrific, but I just don’t understand why the people most
responsible for it can’t pay.
Yes, Sandusky
certainly bears responsibility, but there’s also the entire administrative staff
at Penn State, who for over a decade simply refused to pay attention to
complaints, even punished people that dared to say that maybe the sportsball
team shouldn’t be used to protect a child molester.
These admin were
paid very well for their silence. The Poo Bah, of course, is most outstanding,
$2.3 million just for the last year of his service. I’m sure his money for over
a decade of such service would add up to over $10 million, and he’s also being
rewarded with an additional $600,000 a year for life, contingent upon him
staying out of jail for the services he rendered. I don’t think it’s too much
to ask to give some of that back. He certainly hasn’t offered, which is a
little strange under the circumstances, and there are a half dozen, quite possibly
more, admin who also had to have taken part in the coverup, and likely were
paid in the low 7 figures as well.
Now we toss in
the sportsball team, which supposedly exists because it’s a money-making
enterprise. Why is donation of the revenue to pay back some of these costs not
on the table? If sportsball is not a money-maker, why can’t we just shut down
the team and save the taxpayers some money there while simultaneously
destroying a public enterprise that only served to help cover up hideous
crimes?
Why aren’t these
questions being asked?
The article
helpfully highlights some of the many costs:
The eye-watering tally
is a combination of various fees, including the recent $12 million payout to former assistant
coach Mike McQueary, who won a whistleblower and defamation case against the
school after he testified against Sandusky in 2012.
I covered this
before, but I want to highlight: Penn State didn’t do the defamation, actual
human beings did, and did so as they were following the deep chain of command
of associate deans, vice deans, deans, associate provosts, vice provosts,
provosts, assistant vice presidents, and vice presidents at the school. Can’t
some of these people pay a little for their crimes? Why is the system set up so
that these guys get away free like this?
On top of that, the
school settled out of court with 33 victims who allege
they were molested by Sandusky, with a total payout of $93 million, as well as
a $48 million fine from the NCAA.
There are 33
documented victims here. We’re really just going to accept that they randomly
deposited themselves in the showers and then randomly were taken away by…what,
robots with “Penn State” stamped on them? Really, nobody thinks there’s a
question or two worth asking about this?
Adding to
the tally is $27 million in defensive legal fees, nearly $14 million is down to
the three former administrators currently facing charges for their failure to report the
suspected abuse,
The reason why
so few questions are being asked is because the answers are pretty scary. For example,
here’s an obvious question: why is Penn State paying the legal fees for
administrators that possibly engaged in disgusting, vile crimes? Admin sure made it
clear that if I screwed up in class, they would not have my back if I put so
much as a coffee stain on a student’s shoe. But they sure are caring for each
other here. Why would they do that?
The answer is
obvious: because otherwise the administrators being charged might talk, and
likely expose the entire network that, quite obviously, had to be involved in
the coverup here.
Ooh, what a
scary, albeit obvious, answer. Does that make it a good thing nobody else wants
to ask these kinds of questions?
$5.3 million has been
spent on “crisis communications and other consultants,”
AP reports.
This is another delight that comes up so
often when I cover university “scandals” (I feel the need to put the word in
quotes because it strikes me as an understatement here). Not only does the taxpayer
get to pay for all the legal penalties, the taxpayer actually gets to pay for
the coverup. I assure the gentle reader, those crisis communications
consultants aren’t hired to investigate what really happened and root out
evil…they’re hired to spin, spin, spin away whatever the scandal abomination
is.
Finally, the school
was fined a record $2.4 million by federal investigators last
November after a five-year probe uncovered evidence of noncompliance with
campus safety law.
I know it’s dark
humor, but yeah, what happened at Penn State had to have been in noncompliance
with a safety law. Or two.
One final slap
in the face of the average taxpayer:
Several insurance
claims are pending, but so far insurers have covered $30 million of the
university’s costs.
I have good
insurance, and I’m a cancer survivor. Every doctor visit, I had to shell out
money, every drug, more money…and I, like everyone else, had to fight to get
the insurance company to honor some of their promised coverage. Same when I had
a car accident…a real battle, and I had to fight for each dime. Same thing for
dental work, despite my insurance, because they only cover what they think I
should have been charged, and only a percentage of that (and trust me, when you
start multiplying fractions together, the percentage getting paid gets small quickly).
I wonder how
hard Penn State had to fight to get the insurance companies to actually honor their
coverage? Probably a million or so man-hours of work, to judge by what it takes
me based on my own experience with insurance companies. Those are administrative hours, so more millions indirectly spent.
Oh wait, there’s
one more insult here that the article failed to notice. A look at Penn State’s history of
tuition shows a tuition hike pretty much every year. But…these guys have
$237 million to blow on the scandal.
Once again I
have a question nobody else asks: why do other schools always raise tuition? We’re told every year our
schools are broke, no money, gotta raise tuition.
Ok, Penn State
can justify their increases because of the scandal, I guess, though that
doesn’t explain why they needed hikes before the scandal. It’s a safe bet many
other schools could have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars as well…but
didn’t. And yet, tuition is rising at schools that don’t have to pay out a few
hundred million due to a scandal of their own creation. Why is that?
Maybe I’m asking
too many questions…
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