Penn State will officially honor the late Joe Paterno this season, five years after the university fired him amidst the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case.
The commemoration, set for the Nittany Lions bout with Temple on Sept. 17, will recognize the 50th anniversary of Paterno’s first game as head coach, the athletic department announced on Thursday.
The university’s move to honor its former head coach was quickly met with criticism from Jennifer Storm, who serves as the victim advocate for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
“I believe it is incredibly insensitive and unfortunately evident that they still have learned nothing about changing the culture on their campus,” Storm said in a statement to NBC News.
Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship, a group dedicated “to promote positive change within the University Board of Trustees, demanding transparent, trustworthy leadership,” said in a statement that honoring Paterno is a step to “repair the needless damage caused by the unwarranted condemnation of Joe and the entire Penn State community.”
The group also called on Penn State to “explicitly repudiate Freeh’s bogus 'conclusions', which were improperly influenced by outside forces acting against Penn State’s interests including the NCAA and the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General."
The Freeh Report, an independent investigation ran by Louis Freeh, suggested that Paterno and former president Graham Spanier, as well as two of Spanier’s top aides, Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, attempted to cover up a 2001 allegation of child sex abuse against Sandusky.
Paterno and Spanier were removed from their positions by the Board of Trustees in 2011, just four days after Sandusky was arrested on 40 criminal counts on Nov. 5. Sandusky, who was convicted of 45 counts of child sex abuse, is currently serving a 30-60 year prison sentence and continues to appeal his conviction.
The NCAA took swift action the following summer, levying unprecedented sanctions against Penn State, though they were continually reduced before being completely eradicated after a little over two years.
Penn State was also forced to vacate 112 of Paterno’s wins from 1998 through 2011, though those wins were restored on Jan 16, 2015.
That same summer the NCAA came down hard on Lions, the university removed Paterno’s signature bronze statue outside of Beaver Stadium. The statue’s original sculptors, Yesid Gomez and Wilfer Buitrago, have already expressed on creating a new memorial for Paterno.
Earlier this year, court documents surfaced in which a man alleged that Paterno knew of Sandusky’s heinous child abuse as far back as 1976, though those reports were never confirmed and were heavily disputed by the former head coach’s family.
Penn State has yet to officially honor Paterno, though an image of the long-time coach has appeared in pregame introductions at Beaver Stadium. The game against the Owls will also be a stripe out as well as THON and Community Heroes Day and Faculty & Staff Day.
Collegian staff reporter Matt Martell contributed to this report.
