Penn State Protest Seems Relatively Peaceful, But Students Shouldn't Agitate Over Joe Paterno's Departure

I really like Dejan Kovacevic’s comment about what’s going on Wednesday night in State College.

Someday, all these students preparing to wreak havoc on campus here will tell their own kids they took it all out on Sandusky instead.

Yeah, this. Joe Paterno is a legendary coach, and deep down, he’s probably not a bad person. But he’s not the victim here. He did not report Jerry Sandusky – a man he had strong reason to believe was a pedophile who used Penn State’s football facilities to abuse at least one child – to the police. He also continued to allow Sandusky to be around Penn State’s football facilities long after a graduate assistant alleged that Sandusky raped a child in the showers of a Penn State football locker room. The charitable explanation is that Paterno, due to advancing age or for some other reason, didn’t really appreciate what was allegedly going on. But it appears Sandusky was using Paterno’s football program to do terrible, terrible things, and in the end, the university made the only decision it reasonably could have.

It looks like the so-called “Penn State Riot” so far has been relatively uneventful. (The Daily Collegian Twitter account has, as we approach midnight Thursday, mostly been a series of tweets from out and about in State College that describe absolutely nothing of consequence.) We’ll see if that continues through the night, but so far, that appears to be to the students’ credit. But their entire reason for protesting is a poor one. Paterno is a great coach who has meant a great deal to the university, but children were allegedly abused here. He left the university no choice.