Backstory

The date on my birth certificate is December 28, 1987, but it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to call August 23, 2005 my real birthday. That was the day I innocently arrived in State College, PA to audition for the Penn State Blue Band and start my first semester of college.

Other than the fact that it topped my list because then-Deans Jim Thomas and Stan Supon had sold me and my family on the IST program, I really had no idea what Penn State was all about. Like many students my age, I had been involved in a number of diverse activities in my public high school, but the breadth of my worldview was fairly limited. College was just the logical next step to be able to learn the necessary skills to embark upon a career and a life of my own. Penn State was not a magical place. It was not a special place. It was just the place that I had chosen to go to school.

The past six years and three months of my life since then seem like they’re actually my entire life. Now at the age of 23 years old, it’s honestly hard to remember that there were days before I went to Penn State. Those who know me know that a large part of my identity is the fact that I’m a Penn Stater. I call State College my Shangri-La. The experiences that I had during those formative four years leading up to my graduation date of May 16, 2009 were impactful in indescribable ways (but I’ll try to describe them in the next couple paragraphs).

The opportunities that I had at Penn State afforded me the chances to learn how to constantly challenge myself intellectually, the chances to work in numerous team settings and serve in leadership capacities, the chances to travel around the country and the world, the chances to build an incredibly strong support network of collaborators and friends, and the chances to create who I was and what I could become.

Before setting foot on Penn State’s campus, I had never really had much broad exposure to the world. I had seen six states in our union, and lived in two. I came to Penn State with an interest in technology (having been the geek who built computers and played with palm pilots in high school), an above-average trumpet playing ability (having been an all-state musician who briefly flirted with the idea of being a music major), an incredibly strong work ethic (having modeled this after my hardworking parents), and an equally strong (in my opinion, anyway) sense of humor and affability. Other than that, I had no real vision or direction.

Four years later, I left Penn State with a B.S. in Information Sciences and Technology, a minor in Engineering Leadership Development, a global network of remarkable friends and mentors, a travel log of 30+ states and 8 countries, a string of three amazing summer internship experiences including one in India, a career of four years in the Blue Band during which we performed at some of the most incredible venues on the planet, a one year tenure as President of the Blue Band, a one year tenure as President of the IST Student Government, a two year tenure as Director of the IST Learning Assistant program, my likeness on a Penn State football ticket that was held by 110,000 people, membership in a prestigious honor society comprised of extraordinarily accomplished individuals, and unparalleled pride in my alma mater.

In the just over two years that have followed since graduation, I have had the opportunity to take on a global role with responsibility for a number of high-impact ventures at a large multi-national organization (Johnson & Johnson), see even more of the world (travel log currently sits at 46 states and 19 countries), give back to Penn State by establishing TEDxPSU with a group of fellow alumni, become active in the TED community and work with some of the world’s foremost changemakers, help to lay the foundation for the ambitious 367 Project, and start to put together a true vision for a successful career and life.

I truly credit Penn State for helping me to achieve all of these things.

Therefore, it would be an understatement to say that the last five weeks have shaken me to my core.

I have had many reactions to the events that have unfolded, and I’ll continue to have many more as more events unfold in the coming weeks and months. I’ll leave these reactions to my Twitter feed and to the many others who are taking strong stances on various aspects of the ongoing scandal. The purpose of this post today is just to reflect on some things that I’ve learned as this saga has unfolded. These lessons really transcend the current situation, and are just seven of many lessons that we can learn as we reflect. I hope that by sharing these it gives everyone a chance to think about what we can learn from tragedies like this. I’d also love to hear from other people some of the things you have taken away from the events of the past five weeks.

Lesson One: Sexual abuse is much more prevalent than I ever thought imaginable.

According to RAINN, every ninety seconds somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. One in four girls and one in six boys will have experienced an episode of sexual abuse before the age of 18. I was aware that these despicable things went on, but I was not aware that crimes so heinous were so prevalent. My stomach turned as I read the revolting details of the original 23-page grand jury presentment detailing the case against Jerry Sandusky. I was further disturbed and upset by the subsequent 5-page grand jury presentment detailing more alleged crimes.

It’s horrifying to think that these summaries “only” outlined ten children and that this is only a tiny fraction of the crimes like this that occur every day. I hope that the publicity this case has garnered will encourage those who have been victims in crimes like this to come forward and allow for justice to be done as best as possible within our justice system. I also hope that this increased awareness in society can help make life better for victims and hopefully lead to stopping future predators before they can prey on innocent children.

This article from Jeremy T. Simons, Esq. in Florida put it well:

For child protection, let us accept that it takes a village to raise a child. I am not certain what percentage of child abuse investigations are closed with a finding of no abuse. I anticipate that a large percentage of reported child abuse incidents are closed without a finding of abuse. But why take the chance? Reporting suspected child abuse is not an attack on the alleged abuser, but an affirmative legal and moral obligation to protect our youth.

Let us always err on the side of the child should we ever find ourselves in a situation to have to make that call. Let us commit to being vigilant now that there is greater awareness of this type of abuse. If we’re lucky, the good that will come from all of this is that more victims will get the help they need. Now that I have a better understanding that this type of activity goes on, I feel better equipped should I (heaven-forbid) ever be in a situation to deal with it.

Lesson Two: Organizations need a vocal and visible leader during a crisis.

If you serve as the leader of an organization or a community, you need to put all things above yourself, particularly during a time of crisis. That is when people are most vulnerable and most need someone or something to rally around. A leader is not just a leader when times are good. A leader needs to be willing to step up, make tough decisions, and help guide his or her organization through tough times.

When the 23-page grand jury presentment was released on Saturday, November 5, Penn State's then-President Graham Spanier failed miserably in his obligations to lead. When the victims most needed a strong ally and the Penn State community most needed vocal and visible leadership to help people better understand what was going on and what was going to be done about it, the President merely released a heartless statement: 

The allegations about a former coach are troubling, and it is appropriate that they be investigated thoroughly. Protecting children requires the utmost vigilance. 

With regard to the other presentments, I wish to say that Tim Curley and Gary Schultz have my unconditional support. I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years. I have complete confidence in how they have handled the allegations about a former University employee. 

Tim Curley and Gary Schultz operate at the highest levels of honesty, integrity and compassion. I am confident the record will show that these charges are groundless and that they conducted themselves professionally and appropriately.

It’s still baffling to think that the President of a world-class University like Penn State thought that was an appropriate response.

Not only is the sentiment myopic, particularly when he should have had ample time to prepare it, but we should also demand more from our leaders than written statements. Real leaders can stand in front of a microphone and don’t need to hide behind written statements. Get out in front of the problem and address it.

To make matters far worse, after that statement was released on Saturday night, the President made no additional statements or appearances, yet remained in the position of President for four days while the Penn State community was torn to pieces around him. When he was needed most, he was non-existent.

If it’s true that the Board of Trustees wouldn’t allow him to speak, then he should have resigned immediately when that gag order occurred and the BoT should have spoken out as leaders. It’s inexcusable and heartbreaking that no one was willing to put the University above self.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Rudy Giuliani was a rallying force as a vocal and visible leader. Yes, Giuliani squandered away much of that support in the months and years to come by making some poor decisions, but during the immediate 9/11 crisis, he helped give New Yorkers and Americans ("America's Mayor") something to rally around and something to believe in.

The Penn State community was bereft of that type of leadership because President Spanier and the Board of Trustees were too worried about themselves. While they were lawyering up and bringing in PR consultants from around the world to protect themselves, who was there to protect Penn State? Who was there to lead the community of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends around the world?  No one.

Tragic.

Since the appointment of Dr. Rodney Erickson as President of Penn State, we’ve definitely seen improvement with regards to being vocal and visible. On a scale of one to Bill Pullman, President Erickson isn’t quite President Whitmore:

But who is? I think he’s off to the right start, with the frequent communications and the student forum as great steps. In the future, it’s important to remember as a leader that it’s during a crisis when people will evaluate your true leadership capabilities. Step up and lead.

Lesson Three: Who you surround yourself with says a lot about you. 

The team you assemble is one of the biggest reflections on you as a leader. 

Joe Paterno has been a legend in State College for decades. Under his watch, Penn State’s endowment grew tremendously, allowing for a world-class education to be within reach of many students who likely wouldn’t have otherwise had that opportunity. Under his watch, Penn State cemented its reputation and mantra of “Success with Honor.” 

The Penn State Honor Code states, “A good name is earned by fair play, square dealing and good sportsmanship in the classroom, on the athletic field and in all other college relations. We earnestly desire that this spirit may become a tradition at Penn State.” Under his watch, Joe Paterno publicly embodied that message and helped to instill it in so many students over 60+ years at Penn State. His "Grand Experiment" worked.

Those attributes are highlighted in this documentary:

Those attributes are what brought the crowd in Beaver Stadium to tears after his 400th win when this video was played:

Under his watch, Joe Paterno brought many wonderful people to Penn State who have accomplished many amazing things. But under his watch, Joe Paterno hired Rene Portland, who allegedly discriminated against homosexual student athletes during her tenure as women’s basketball coach. And under his watch, Joe Paterno hired Jerry Sandusky, who allegedly committed the most despicable of crimes by abusing and raping children on Penn State’s campus. Regardless of other implications of poor judgment for which the facts are still unclear, he’ll forever need to live with and be judged by at least those facts.

The old saying about how it only takes “one bad apple to ruin the bunch” rings horrifyingly true in situations like this. In interviews with entrepreneurs, they often remark how important it is to bring in the right people to execute their vision. We’re all human and unfortunately even the most thorough vetting process will never be flawless, but it’s incredibly important to ensure that we understand who we’re entering into relationships with and who we’re spending our time with. We’ll be judged based on people’s judgments of them, and while they may take us to new heights, they just make bring us down.

Lesson Four: Discrimination and critical thinking are vital when processing media commentators.

We as a society must commit to utilizing our own critical thinking capacities whenever we consume stories from the media. We cannot blindly trust news reports and commentary from ill-informed individuals who just happen to have an audience on TV, print media, or the Internet. It is very important to discriminate between facts and conjecture that are hurled in our direction by mass media outlets.

Most of us recognize this is true when it comes to discourse about politicians and legislation, but it is just as true when it comes to “news” about current events. For large international stories, I used to naively believe that people at large media outlets did their research and knew what they were talking about, but after consuming some of the coverage of the Jerry Sandusky scandal over the past five weeks, it’s quite evident that they don’t. It took being closer to the center of one of these stories to really internalize that. Knowing State College and knowing Penn State allowed me to more easily discriminate facts from fiction. Having read the 23-page presentment allowed me to operate from the same level of knowledge as many of these so-called analysts, so it was easy to spot fabrication.

We should always be willing to challenge and be skeptical of anything that anyone says, but we especially need to take everything mass media outlets say with an iceberg of salt because many seem to care more about selling their media than getting a story right. Unfortunately, many people are hungry to buy what they’re selling, and the media is a very powerful force that drives conversations and perceptions. My friend Jake Thorwart always says that perception is reality. It’s quite evident that the media has the ability to create their own reality.

This Google Insights graph shows how with no new facts or information, the story of this scandal changed as the days dragged on. The University is largely to blame for this, though, because as noted in lesson two, they exhibited no leadership whatsoever and made no efforts to shape the story. This allowed some media outlets to further turn the situation into a frenzy with a rush to judgment akin to having a mat that they put on the floor with different conclusions on it that they could jump to.

It also led to a lot of unfair smearing of Penn State University that was hard to watch. In this video, Bill Maher makes multiple ignorant statements trying to get laughs from his audience, and Chris Matthews bashes Penn State saying that Universities do not teach students values, a claim I disagree with wholeheartedly because so many of my values I learned at Dear Old State, and these circumstances do not erase them. As Dave Brooks pointed out (he also has a great TED talk by the way), it is easy to be self-righteous and judge others, but I think many people throughout this situation have lacked a real understanding of the facts.

As difficult as it is to be patient, with situations of this magnitude when so much is still unknown, we must be patient until we gain a better understanding of the facts. Much of the conversation in this case has surrounded Victim 2 – particularly what Mike McQueary saw, what he then told Joe Paterno, what he then told Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, and what they then may have told Graham Spanier or others. Given the amount of information about those exchanges that still remains unknown, it is fair for people to have different opinions about what should or should not have been done, but it’s important to remember that a grand jury presentment is merely a summary, and within the summary were a number of conflicting statements (with even more conflicting reports having come out since). 

We need to understand that the only thing we really know in this whole situation is that there’s a lot we don’t know. There is still a lot we need to learn from what was said during the original grand jury proceedings and what will be said in future hearings. Regardless of what each of us thinks, we need to show enough awareness of media bias to make these decisions about what we think on our own based on the limited facts we have, and not just blindly follow someone else’s possibly ill-informed speculation.

Lesson Five: Leadership structure and accountability are critically important in large organizations.

According to Penn State’s website (which looks like it’s from the 1990s because it is): 

The Board of Trustees of The Pennsylvania State University is the corporate body established by the charter with complete responsibility for the government and welfare of the University and all the interests pertaining thereto including students, faculty, staff and alumni. 

The emphasis above is mine because I wanted to point out that in the case of Penn State, the Board of Trustees does indeed have complete responsibility for the University, so they should not be shirking accountability during this crisis. The President of the University reports to the Board of Trustees. Unfortunately, it appears that the Board of Trustees had little knowledge and had done nothing to prepare for the onslaught of this crisis.

Former Trustee Ben Novak explains how the Board of Trustees works in this September 2011 interview with InsideAcademia.tv. He explains that the current structure at Penn State funnels information through the President, so the Board operates without other independent sources of information, and it’s at the discretion of the President what he would like to share with the Board. This can certainly lead to important issues not being brought to the table.

Another former Trustee, Robert Horst, shared his insights that corroborate the idea that the Board was not always exposed to the openness that would be necessary to truly lead. By giving President Spanier that much autonomy, they basically relegated themselves to being a club of advisors that does not always discuss the most critical issues. My friend Tom Shakely further explores these issues with the Board in his blog posts on the subject. 

Obviously there are many dangers to having a Board that lacks oversight and accountability. One of the largest failures of a corporate Board of Directors was Enron’s in 2001. In this case, Jeffrey Skilling was given incredible power and engaged in severe corruption with members of his Board. I’m not suggesting that Penn State’s Board suffers from corruption, but oversight and independence were the key recommendations from the US Senate after the Enron investigation. The Penn State BoT has been seemingly content without true oversight or independent perspective, and that has made this situation even more challenging than it would have been otherwise.

I'm sure it was easy for the BoT to let it get to this point. Nothing ever goes wrong at Penn State, so why should they worry? This scandal should prove that bad things can happen in even the most unexpected of places. Unfortunately, darkness can be lurking anywhere.

In lesson two, I discussed the importance of leadership during a crisis. It’s also important that leaders are proactive to help avoid crises. Given that Spanier, Curley, Schultz, Paterno, and others were all participating in the grand jury hearings as early as last year, the Board of Trustees should not have been so caught off guard on November 5 when the presentment was published. There was even a newspaper article in March that outlined the ongoing investigation. Had they been more diligent, they could have been much better equipped to act swiftly as opposed to being reactive and showing poor judgment throughout the process (choosing to announce unpopular decisions at 10pm when common sense should tell you that could incite a riot?).

In any organization, the leadership structure needs to be clearly defined in terms of responsibility and accountability. Whatever entity or person that is defined as having that responsibility needs to take it very seriously and lead. Anything that you choose to do is worth putting your whole self into and doing it well. If you're simply delegating full authority, what's your role anyway?

Lesson Six: People will let you down.

When people ask me who I admire and who I look up to, I respond that it’s certain attributes or qualities of people that I look up to, not individual people.

For example, I truly admire the visionary capacity of Steve Jobs: the ability to understand what people would want in the future and create elegant designs and platforms to meet those needs. I don’t, however, admire the fact that he was at many times an asshole. 

Unfortunately, one of the only truths in life is that people are flawed and people will always let you down. Even Joe Paterno, who has so many attributes that we look up to (and should continue to look up to), is flawed, and let us down. I’ve let plenty of people down with decisions that I've made. I’m not happy about it, but it’s reality.

Does that fact excuse people from paying for their mistakes? Absolutely not. We should all be prepared to face the consequences of our decisions and our actions, even if we have otherwise impeccable records of good deeds. The reason it’s an important lesson, though, is that I think it’s important for all of us to consider that all people are flawed when thinking about what we look up to. It’s far better to look up to certain qualities of people and then try to emulate all those best qualities in ourselves, rather than holding up certain people as infallible. 

People will always come and go, but values can endure forever.

Lesson Seven: We STILL Are Penn State!

I have been able to take some solace in the fact that the Penn State family has endured this scandal together and showed its strength. My brother Chris is currently a senior at Penn State, and though we've shared many things throughout our lives, I think during this emotional period is the first time we ever texted “I love you” to each other as we helped one another come to grips with the gravity of this reality. 

Current Blue Band member Kyle Harris co-organized one of the most moving events that I’ve had the opportunity to participate in at Penn State as he worked to bring together ~10,000 people to support the victims of abuse: 

Tim Henderson from Penn State Cru delivered a powerful message to Penn Staters in need of guidance. It helped us to put in perspective that what the victims in this case are going through is something most of us will likely never be able to fully grasp. I felt Penn State's collective heart break for them.

Rallying together over the course of just one month, Penn State alumni and friends around the world have raised over $500,000 to prevent and treat victims of sexual abuse. (If you have not yet donated, you can text PSU4RAINN to 20222 to make a $10 donation.)

The Penn State vs. Nebraska game on Saturday, November 12 featured a “Blue Out” of fans throughout Beaver Stadium wearing blue clothing and blue ribbons to support victims of sexual abuse. After a powerful moment of silence and prayer on the field at the beginning of the game, Beaver Stadium also became home to the best slow clap in the history of mankind. Yes, it was even better than this:

I have also been proud to call myself a Penn Stater as many Penn State students (such as Dave Cole and his peers at Onward State) represented Penn State well in the national spotlight.

While the pain the abuse victims feel is lightyears beyond what we know, the tears many of us felt as we grappled with our Penn State identity were also very real. My friend Mike Lampariello shared an e-mail from his mother that really touched me in the initial days of this saga: 

There may be a lot of people tearing down Penn State, but we will not be defined by the horrors of this scandal. In the words of Dr. O. Richard Bundy, the Director of the Penn State Blue Band:

Now, more than ever, WE must be the representatives of Penn State. I have seen how bad this situation is, but I have also seen the many great things about this university. Do not let what's going on now tarnish the time and effort that you put into Penn State.

As I talked to many of my friends over the course of this ordeal, I found each person reflected on something different that made Penn State so special to them. The strong ideals of this institution are deeply entrenched in our hearts and souls. I am far from proud of the actions of a few, but I am still incredibly proud of my alma mater. We have many challenging days ahead, but we will get through them together, and Penn Staters will continue to do remarkable things around the world (many of which continue to be featured on WEstillARE.com everyday).

Conclusion

I'm sure the news trucks have largely left State College. I'm sure the news cycles will begin to fade, and I'm sure the world will turn its eyes to the next big story. The reality for the victims, though, is that the healing is only just beginning (if this is even the beginning of it at all).

The revelation of this abuse is one of the saddest stories to ever emanate from our proud University. If we can lead better lives having lived through it and learned from it, perhaps we can make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

I have not maintained any type of blog other than my Twitter account since returning from Kenya in the summer of 2009. I don't necessarily have plans to regularly blog, but in light of recent events I wanted to share some thoughts, so I've activated this new blog on my site.