Before a big Penn State game, overwhelming emotions

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Outside Beaver Stadium, under a wind-whipped canopy emblazoned with signs that said Stop Child Abuse, alumnus Brandon Lapsley called to passing football fans to please pick up the free literature and wristbands.

"Did you get your ribbon yet?" he shouted to one, who shook his head and kept walking, like others too rushed or uninterested.

A woman took all the pamphlets she could carry, saying she would pass them on to friends.

And one man, David Dimmick, who taught sports ethics here at Pennsylvania State University, pulled open the front of his blue team jacket, like Superman, telling Lapsley to pin a supportive blue ribbon to the front of his white shirt.

"I'm happy the board of trustees is cleaning house," Dimmick said. "I'm embarrassed that six people I admired screwed up big time."

Emotions ran high here Saturday - even among those who thought all emotion had been wrung from them last week, as the nation focused on the child-sex-abuse scandal in which former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged.

Grown men wept, not believing that legendary football coach Joe Paterno was gone. Other fans cried as well during a moment of silence for the young boys who allegedly had been molested and sexually assaulted by Sandusky.

Players on both teams knelt for a joint prayer moments before the start of the game, as Penn State fans staged a "blue-out," coming dressed in blue to support the victims of sexual abuse, replacing the traditional Penn State white-out. About $22,000 was collected during the game to be donated to child-abuse causes.

"It feels like all the other games - but weird," psychology major Sarah Macklin said as she waited in a concessions line at halftime.

Some people were furious - that children had been victimized, of course, but particularly that Paterno had been fired before a full and final accounting of his actions or non-actions had occurred.

"I'm totally devastated," said Mike Leister, a fan who has missed just three games in 24 years. "It's like a bad dream. I'm waiting to wake up."

Leister, principal of Tulpehocken Junior-Senior High School in Berks County, said he hasn't been able to sleep. He phoned the university to say he was returning his diploma. And this, he said, would be his last game. After the way Paterno was treated, he said, he's done.

Before the game, beside a stadium gate, a lone woman, who declined to give her name, stood silently holding a blue-and-white sign: "To the victims: I apologize for Penn State."

On nearby University Drive, a small group of counselor-education students passed out bookmarks that carried the national hotline and local phone numbers of groups that work to stop child abuse.

"It's not about Paterno," said Pia Smal, a doctoral student. "It's about the kids who were sexually abused. . . . People in a position of power should be held to a higher standard."

But one fan walking by called the students exploitative, and not everyone appreciated getting the information.

All week here, emotions have peaked and fallen and risen again, as lifelong football fans watched the scandal demolish the clean, honor-bound reputation of the head coach and his school, and rioting students overturned a news van near campus. People at the game were split among each other and even within themselves over who was responsible, what punishment was just, and what could atone for all that has occurred.

"As the mother of two boys," Suzanne Corriere began - and then stopped, pausing to gain control of her emotions. "I can't even express my anger at Mr. Sandusky. That's where the true anger needs to be placed."

Care and respect for victims, "that's the first thing," she said. But what about the Penn State football players who have seen their program tarnished? Some have NFL careers on the line. "I came to support them," she said. "That's who I came for."

Penn State has long been a school that wallows in self-love, the walls of buildings papered with laudatory magazine covers, the gift shops of hotels like the Penn Stater and the Nittany Lion Inn jammed with goods in a single blue-and-white color scheme. On College Avenue last week, stores were selling T-shirts emblazoned "Unhappy Valley." Another shirt bore an image of Paterno, and the years 1966-2011, as if he had died.

With minutes left in the game, the 107,903 in attendance spoke as one, roaring out, "We are!" with the answer coming back, "Penn State!"

"There's a lot of energy, a lot of emotion in the community right now," said Stuart Shapiro, a graduate student here who was helping distribute blue ribbons and wristbands. "The goal is to direct that in a positive way."

Nearby stood representatives of Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania, who said that for all its horror, the scandal has people talking about the hidden topic of child sexual abuse - and that offered a chance to educate.

"Nobody wants to talk about this - and the window of attention is short," said David Turkewitz, a pediatrician and board member of PCAPA. "Most of the Penn State campus is asking: 'What can we do? How can we move forward?' "