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Meet Mike McQueary.
He grew up just a mile from the Penn State campus, excelling on the State College High football team. In 1994 he was recruited by Penn State, where he started as quarterback in his senior year. The team went 9-3 that season, with McQueary breaking three school records.
After graduation he signed with the Oakland Raiders, and then the Scottish Claymores of the World League of American Football. When his professional career didn’t work out he returned to Penn State as a grad student and assistant to the football team.
In March 2002 he stumbled across something he wasn’t supposed to see. Jerry Sandusky, his former assistant coach, now retired, was anally raping a ten-year-old boy in the team’s showers. McQueary didn’t intervene. He didn’t go for help. He didn’t call the cops.
He called his father.
He called his father and his father told him to call his coach. So that’s what he did. And when his coach stayed silent, and the athletic director stayed silent, and the university vice president in charge of the campus police stayed silent, Mike McQueary stayed silent too.
Today Mike McQueary is a member of the Penn State coaching staff. And he’s still staying silent.
Last night at Penn State thousands of students took to the streets. They tore down light poles. They vandalized cars. They overturned a news van. They lit a fire. They threw rocks at police and at least one bystander.
Why? Because their football coach, Joe Paterno, was fired.
And why was he fired? Because nine years ago, one of his staff witnessed Jerry Sandusky, one of Paterno’s former top assistants, anally rape a ten-year-old boy in the team’s showers. And because when that staffer reported what he had seen to Joe Paterno, he did nothing. No police were called. No investigation was undertaken. Paterno didn’t even revoke Sandusky’s access to the team’s locker rooms.
Sandusky was indicted on forty counts of sexual abuse last week. Two top administration officials were indicted for covering up his crimes. And yesterday Joe Paterno and the university’s president were fired.
Some Penn State students supported the Paterno firing. Others — many others — attended a vigil last night for Sandusky’s victims.
But thousands took to the streets around the campus chanting “fuck the trustees” and “we want Joe” and breaking things and hurting people.
And I honestly have nothing more to say about that.
Continuing my liveblogging today — Thursday — on the second day of Occupy Cal. Newest updates at the top of the page.
9:30 am | An odd quote from Berkeley Dean of Social Sciences Carla Hesse in the Daily Cal, apparently from comments she made yesterday:
“‘I’d like [the activists] to think about what they’re doing,’ she said. ‘I’m worried if they destroy property, the public isn’t going to be very sympathetic.'”
But the group’s only formal statement, distributed earlier that day, said “We will remain peaceful and non-violent. We will do everything to ensure the campus is a safe space and will not engage in vandalism. We will take care of each other and the space we create.” There had been no indication of any plans for vandalism or property destruction.
The campus administration, however, had at the time Hesse spoke already made it clear that even peaceful, nonviolent, nondestructive protest would not be tolerated on the Berkeley campus if it did not conform to the university’s restrictions in every detail. UC police have for the last two years shown repeatedly that they are willing to engage in physical violence against peaceful protesters, and they did so again yesterday afternoon, not long after Hesse spoke.
9:25 am | Word on Twitter is that all 39 of yesterday’s arrestees have been released. Professor Celeste Langam reportedly sent out an email to friends on the faculty saying that she will make a public statement on her arrest at a later time. Meanwhile, a small group of activists spent the night in Sproul Plaza, apparently keeping one small tent up overnight. Next meeting scheduled for ten o’clock.
6:05 am | Yesterday the Berkeley administration made Occupy Cal an offer they had to know would be flatly rejected — the students and others could stay on Sproul Plaza, but with no tents. And no sleeping bags. Also no sleeping. And they would have to leave in a week. This wasn’t a good faith negotiation or an attempt to reach an accommodation that would — as Birgenau suggested he was hoping to — control “costly and avoidable expenses.” It was a piece of theater, a prelude to the use of police violence against peacefully demonstrating students on an American public university campus.
5:50 am| Lots to cover this morning, including the arrests of 39 people on the Berkeley campus, but I guess this is as good a place to start as any: Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgenau yesterday justified the bust of Occupy Cal with the following statement: “We simply cannot afford to spend our precious resources and, in particular, student tuition, on costly and avoidable expenses associated with violence or vandalism.”
Wow. That’s just … breathtaking.
5:46 am Pacific Time Thursday | I continued to track the events of last night (both Cal and Penn State) on Twitter yesterday evening, but didn’t manage to get back here for an overview post before literally falling asleep at my keyboard. It was a long day. Resuming coverage now.
5:59 pm Wednesday | Good roundup of the day up to now is here.
5:58 pm | Done with dinner. While I was gone the police retreated. Six arrests, apparently dozens of student injuries. All but two tents confiscated, but those two tents are still standing. Activists are requesting that the Berkeley administration explicitly — and publicly — declare that the police will not be directed to roust the encampment.
3:47 pm | Cops in riot gear are wading into the crowd with batons drawn, breaking the student line defending the tents. Activists are chanting “stop beating students” and “what law are we breaking?”
3:45 pm | Okay, I’m going to be late for dinner.
3:30 pm | I’m on the East Coast, and I’ve got dinner plans I can’t break. Back in a bit. I’ll be on twitter at @studentactivism as much as politeness allows.
3:20 pm | Latest tweet: “Police issuing a dispersal order. Against students. At a rally. On campus. At 3:15 on a Wednesday. That’s fucked up. #OccupyCal”
3:08 pm | As I just tweeted, it’s a hell of a lot easier to take down a tent with nobody in it. And a hell of a lot harder to bust someone who’s in a tent. If Occupy Cal succeeds in setting up an encampment, the UCPD situation changes dramatically.
3:05 pm | Have been tweeting rather than liveblogging for the last little while because so much is in flux, but it appears that Occupy Cal students moved immediately to set up tents after the GA vote, and that UCPD immediately swept in to take them down. But then students locked arms in a semi-enclosed part of the lawn to protect their friends, and tents got set up behind their line.
2:49 pm | The vote on the encampment at the GA was 456-1 with 12 abstentions.
2:44 pm | A Daily Cal reporter is tweeting that there are no votes in opposition to the encampment proposal and only a handful of abstentions.
2:40 pm | The initial UC occupations in the wave of student action that began a little over two years ago tended to be “closed,” meaning that students (and others) took over buildings and barricaded themselves inside, shutting them down. As the movement developed, it evolved in the direction of “open” occupations, in which folks occupied spaces but left them accessible to others while the occupation was going on. That shift was not accompanied by a corresponding shift in UC administrative tolerance of the occupations — notably, 66 people were arrested on December 11, 2009 in an early-morning police raid on an open, peaceful occupation of Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall.
It’s now looking like a new occupation strategy is being adopted at Berkeley — the open-air encampment. My hunch is that the administration will find mass arrests of such a group hard to justify, but they’ve never backed down before.
This is going to be interesting.
2:33 pm | Twitter reports say the proposal for an encampment is receiving serious discussion and debate at the Berkeley general assembly. One report from a reliable observer not long ago put the size of the GA at something like 1000 people. The Berkeley administration has said it won’t tolerate an encampment, but it’s hard to imagine them going through with arrests on anything like that scale, particularly if — as I assume it will — this occupation is of a lawn rather than a building.
2:25 pm | From the draft statement: “We will remain peaceful and non-violent. We will do everything to ensure the campus is a safe space and will not engage in vandalism. We will take care of each other and the space we create. We will organize. We will have fun. We will not end our encampment until we are ready.”
2:15 pm | The Daily Cal has the text of a draft statement from #OccupyCal establishing a UC Berkeley encampment.
1:50 pm | The Sproul rally marched to the Bank of America branch and back. Next up: A General Assembly meeting.
1:09 pm | Not much of a surprise, but now it’s official: Occupy Cal will be setting up an encampment today.
1:08 pm | Word on Twitter is that the Berkeley demonstrators will be marching on a Bank of America branch at Telegraph and Durant, just a block off campus right by the Sproul Plaza entrance.
1:00 pm | Just tweeted this: “UC admin has quieted student protest since 2009 with mass arrests. Now there’s 1000s out at Berkeley. What next? #OccupyCal”
12:50 pm | On Twitter @jpanzar says there are a lot of faculty at today’s rally. Given the way that UC profs have distanced themselves from UC student protest in the last year or so, that’s a big deal.
12:47 pm | Sign: “Arab Spring, Chilean Winter: Meet the American Fall.”
12:43 pm | The Daily Californian, Berkeley’s student newspaper, has an #OccupyCal liveblog up here.
12:40 pm | Today’s Berkeley rally began a little over half an hour ago. According to multiple on-the-scene observers, the crowd already numbers in the thousands.
12:27 pm Pacific Time | Today the Occupy movement is coming home to Berkeley, and early reports suggest this is already the biggest action to hit the Berkeley campus since the September 2009 walkout that launched the contemporary student movement nationwide.
See updates at bottom of post.
In 1998 Jerry Sandusky, a prominent assistant coach on Penn State’s top-ranked football team — and a possible successor to Joe Paterno as the team’s head coach — groped an 11-year-old boy in the team’s showers. The boy’s mother learned of this incident, she reported it to Penn State police. Sandusky later admitted to police that he had hugged the boy naked in the showers.
No charges were brought, and Sandusky retired the following year, retaining emeritus status at Penn State, an office in the university’s football building, and full access to the team’s facilities.
In 2000 Penn State janitors witnessed Sandusky performing oral sex on a male child in the football team’s showers. They reported the incident to their supervisor, who took no action. The janitors, fearing that they would lose their jobs if they took the matter forward, made no formal complaint about the incident.
In 2002 a Penn State graduate coaching assistant witnessed Sandusky anally raping a ten-year-old boy in the team’s showers. He told coach Joe Paterno, and then Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, the latter of whom had authority over the university’s police. None of these officials reported the allegations to any police agency, nor did Penn State president Graham B. Spanier when he was notified.
Sandusky continued to have access to Penn State facilities, and to travel with the team, until his arrest Saturday on 40 counts of sexual abuse, allegations involving eight victims and incidents stretching from 1994 to 2009. Curley and Schultz have been indicted on perjury and failure to report charges stemming from the 2002 incident. Schultz has retired, and Curley has been placed on administrative leave, while Spanier and Paterno remain in their positions.
Spanier has said he has “complete confidence in how” Curley and Schultz “handled the allegations.” The university is paying the two men’s legal bills.
Paterno has more victories than any football coach in NCAA Division I history. His salary stands in excess of one million dollars a year, making him the highest-paid employee at Penn State.
Update | A statement from NCAA president Mark Emmert Monday evening condemned the sexual abuse of children but made no reference to the alleged Penn State coverup of Sandusky’s behavior.
Second Update | Paterno just canceled his weekly press conference, less than an hour before it was to begin.
Third Update, 12:20 pm | The New York Times is reporting that Penn State officials have decided that Paterno will not remain at Penn State, and that his departure could come “within days or weeks.”
Fourth Update, 1:25 pm | Now the Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that support for Paterno and Spanier is “eroding” on the Penn State Board of Trustees, and that the board could vote to remove both as soon as Thursday.
Fourth Update, Wednesday 9:30 am | A thousand Penn State students marched in response to the ongoing crisis last night, many of them supporters of Coach Paterno. Some called for the resignation of President Spanier, while others simply declared their support for Penn State itself.
Fifth Update, Wednesday 10:10 am | The Associated Press is now reporting that Paterno will retire at the end of this season. Penn State’s trustees met last night by phone and will meet again this evening — they are expected to announce the formation of a committee to investigate the scandal on Friday.
There’s lots of important stuff in the AAUW’s new report on sexual harassment in American high schools and middle schools, but I do want to highlight one small finding that hasn’t yet drawn much attention.
The study asked students to identify which kinds of kids were at highest risk for harassment. Ranking second on the list, chosen by 41% of respondents, was “girls who are very pretty.” Fourth on the list, chosen by 32%, was “girls who are not very pretty or not very feminine.”
Yep.
Oh, and first on the list? “Girls whose bodies are really developed, more than other girls.”
Last? “Boys who are good looking.”
Sexual harassment is misogyny. That’s what it is.
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