Penn State tires of more negative publicity

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Pennsylvania State University senior Lauren Owazany said she'd had enough of seeing her school pounded by bad publicity.

First Jerry Sandusky was arrested, tried, and sent to prison for child sexual abuse. Now former university president Graham B. Spanier is charged with covering up Sandusky's misdeeds.

"It's so aggravating," said Owazany, a 21-year-old biology major from Luzerne County. She learned of Spanier's indictment when she walked past a campus TV and noticed a crowd of people watching. "I was like, 'Oh, my God, are you serious?' "

On Thursday, the weather at Penn State fit the mood - gray, gloomy, and overcast. The lawns around Old Main, from which Spanier once ruled unchallenged, were empty but for students walking to class. Several said they were tired of being defined by the Sandusky scandal, which began almost exactly a year ago.

"I just want to move on," said junior Kathrin Harper, 20, who was reading the student newspaper at the campus creamery. "To keep bringing up the past doesn't help."

She sighed as she pointed to a front-page story about Sandusky being transferred to a permanent prison home: "How is that relevant to us?"

But child advocates said the charges against Spanier - perjury, obstruction of justice, endangering the welfare of children, criminal conspiracy, failure to report suspected child abuse - were important and necessary. Similar charges were lodged against former university vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley, already scheduled for trial in January.

Authorities noted instances in 1998 and 2001 when Spanier, Schultz, and Curley discussed allegations that Sandusky had abused boys on campus, but took no action.

"What boys would have been spared?" asked the Rev. Aaron Anderson, who visited campus as a board member of Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania, based in Media. "Spanier, that's where the buck stops. He's the one who has to report it."

Some were surprised and disappointed by the charges against Spanier, that the university was again under scrutiny.

"I was hoping we had turned the corner," said David Dimmick, a retired Penn State sports-ethics instructor who taught for 33 years. "This is what we're going to be known for, for years and years, and that's unfortunate."

Dimmick taught Curley as a student. And he considers Spanier a friend. He said he knew them to be good people and couldn't imagine they would willingly ignore or cover up allegations of child abuse.

But the school has been stained, and "the 100,000 of us who are students, employees, former employees, we're suffering for it," Dimmick said. When he wore a Penn State T-shirt on a recent out-of-town trip, "I could see people looking at me sideways."

One student said it was tough to hear the allegations against Spanier but university life would go on.

"I know it's front-page news," said 26-year-old graduate student Stuart Shapiro of Orange, Conn. But "whatever happens, we have classes to go through and work to do. Whatever is in the news isn't going to change that. This is still a world-class university."

Shapiro helped found Blue Out, an event in which students wear blue to symbolize child-abuse awareness during big home football games. Blue Out and a group called One Heart raised $126,000, most of which went to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.

On campus, Andrew Danga-Storm, a 21-year-old senior, stood smoking outside the Paterno Library. He said he wasn't surprised by the news.

"I saw it coming. How could he get away with that?" Danga-Storm said. "Hopefully, it's the end of people who are covering up."

Doctoral student Antwain Hunter, 30, said he believed the Penn State community was divided. Some focus on the tarnished legacy of former head coach Joe Paterno, who died in January, others on whether the NCAA overstepped its bounds in imposing sanctions on the football program - but not many on damage to the children who were abused, he said.

Hunter doesn't think the new charges will cause much of a stir. Students seem more focused on supporting the new football coach, he said.

"Ultimately," Hunter said, "people are literally moving on."