This is in response to the column “Rally distracts from victory.” I am a 1978 graduate of Penn State. My son is a graduate of Penn State. I am a veteran of the U.S. Navy.
Saturday represented for me a poignant reminder of the camaraderie of those years I spent in the armed services. The most important thing I did on Saturday, though, was to leave home early and attend the Rally for Resignations on Old Main Lawn.
I didn’t do it for me. I did it for my son.
He and his Penn State buddies who live away from Happy Valley are taking a pounding over the Sandusky sexual abuse case.
The pounding hurts.
It hurts more because the leadership of this school has allowed this school’s culture to be dragged down and trampled by Louis Freeh, by the NCAA and by the media with hardly a word of opposition.
Rodney Erickson and the Board of Trustees had a responsibility to defend our culture, and they have failed miserably in that task.
I believe that there will someday be books written citing the actions of our leadership as an example of how not to manage such a crisis.
If these people were running a Fortune 500 company, they would all be out of a job. The fact that all these people were so collectively inept at managing this crisis suggests that they cannot be trusted to continue to run our school.
They certainly cannot be trusted to select our next president. That was why I was at that rally Saturday morning.
Bob Mooney
Class of 1978
