Ten years after the Sandusky scandal, what did Penn State — and the nation — learn?
PITTSBURGH — Before and after football games at Penn State, many in the crowd of 100,000-plus at Beaver Stadium join to sing the university's alma mater. It's a tradition meant to promote unity and school pride.
When 2011 graduate Michael Oplinger attended games in recent years, he noticed something different about the inflection people bring to a single line in the song, written more than a century ago.
"There's a line that says, 'May no act of ours bring shame, to one heart that loves thy name,' " said Oplinger, a high school teacher in Camden, N.J. "People put more emphasis on that line now. It's deliberate. It's hard to think of a more shameful act than what Jerry Sandusky did."
The former Penn State assistant football coach was arrested in Centre County, Pa., on Nov. 5, 2011, on charges of molesting eight boys he had met through his Second Mile charity over a span of more than a decade. Some of the assaults occurred at Penn State's football building, to which Sandusky still had access after his retirement in 1999.
The scandal that unfolded 10 years ago this month had a profound effect on countless lives, none more so than those of the boys Sandusky abused. Within a year, Sandusky received what amounted to a life sentence in prison, the NCAA
