On Monday the NCAA announced it would lift Pennsylvania State University’s sanctions two years sooner than expected. Penn State is now permitted to play in Bowl games, and all of their football scholarships have been restored. Former Senator George J. Mitchell, who was hired to supervise Penn State in the aftermath of the Sandusky scandal, recommended the NCAA lift the sanctions because the university had made progress, and the football players did not deserve to be punished for the mistakes of others.
Some have said all along that the NCAA’s punishments were too harsh, as they mainly impacted the players who had no role in the scandal, and this reversal is an admission by the NCAA that their initial decision was a mistake.
It is not sufficient only to punish Jerry Sandusky for his crimes. He is serving a 30- to 60-year sentence for the 45 counts of child sexual abuse he was convicted of, but there are other responsible parties in this case, namely, Sandusky’s colleagues who knew about his crimes and did not report them. Penn State recognized this when they fired former head coach Joe Paterno. Penn State also has settled 26 lawsuits with Sandusky’s victims, agreeing to pay a total of $59.7 million.
Because Sandusky used resources from the Penn State football program to take advantage of his victims, and because other members of his coaching staff neglected to report their knowledge of his crimes, the NCAA may feel that they have a responsibility to address the situation. But there is little the NCAA can actually do to rectify the situation. Their punishments mainly affected the players by barring them from post-season play and limiting their scholarships, but the players were not responsible for monitoring one of their coach’s behavior.
The NCAA’s power to revoke post-season eligibility makes sense in situations where a school’s team is not meeting academic and graduation requirements, because in such cases the university is not doing a sufficient job of prioritizing the academics of athletes. But the Sandusky case is different in that it deals with employees victimizing young people who were not directly related to the university.
The state can take more effective action than the NCAA can in this situation, because the state has the authority to mandate a university change its policies and redirect its funds. A mandatory reporting policy, for instance, could be a measure to prevent another situation like this from happening again. University President Teresa Sullivan herself said she suspects the mandatory reporting policy, recommended to the University by the government, may have stemmed from the Penn State sexual abuse incident. Though we argued against the mandatory reporting policy in cases of student sexual assault, child abuse is a different case because the victims are minors and adults are responsible for their welfare.
Lawmakers can also establish policies that state if universities and their employees do not fulfill their responsibility to report child abuse, the state can take some control over the school’s budget. Such oversight could mandate schools divert a certain amount of money from the athletics department, for example, to faculty training programs.
The NCAA also fined Penn State $60 million and intended to put that money into a national fund for sex abuse survivors. A Pennsylvania state law sought to put that money instead into a state endowment, and though the NCAA initially challenged that law, they have now announced they will drop that challenge along with the sanctions. As some of Penn State’s money does come from the state taxpayers, and most students paying tuition are from Pennsylvania, it make sense to keep the money within the state.
We have argued that colleges ought to maintain their athletics departments in accordance with their academic missions and not let sports teams grow into their own independent enterprises. By this logic, the mistake of an athletic coach is the mistake of a public institution, and the state bears more responsibility for reparations than the NCAA. Responsible parties have already been punished in this case, and new measures are in place to prevent another tragedy of this magnitude. The Penn State football program now deserves a chance to thrive under leadership that would never sweep child sexual abuse under the rug. Hopefully all universities have learned a lesson from their mistakes.
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