No Act of Ours

Walking to my office this morning, I once again marveled at the fact that the set up for the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts took well over a week to put up, but has been mostly torn down over the last 24 hours.  It’s a metaphor with which no one here needs to be beaten over the head.

Since the release last Thursday of the Freeh Report on the institutional failings that lead to the Sandusky scandal, there has been increasing clamor for the NCAA to institute what has become known as “the death penalty;” that is, shutting down the football program for one year.  The argument goes something like this:  the NCAA has acted to sanction programs in which student athletes have been caught selling things or accepting payments or gifts and those are laughably small crimes compared to this.  It’s true; they are.  The logic of this argument, though, fails because in those programs, the crimes (small though they may be) were directly connected with the football program itself.  Think about it like this: if “Coach” Sandusky had instead been “Professor” Sandusky and a faculty member in the engineering program, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would be calling for the engineering program to be completely dismantled.

Only NPR (so far) has had the sense to point out that the NCAA is not, in fact, a law enforcement agency.  Of the four men implicated by the Freeh Report, not one of them is currently involved with the football program.  Only two members of the football program staff remain from Paterno’s tenure.  Unless you’re part of the lunatic fringe that genuinely believes that anyone who is a student, employee, or alumnus of the university, ever was a student or employee, anyone who has ever been to a Penn State football game, has driven through State College on a football weekend, or even wandered through the tv section of your local Best Buy on a Saturday afternoon in October MUST have known this happened and is therefore guilty as sin, there is no credible evidence that either of these men knew anything about Sandusky’s crimes.  Any effect closing down the football program might have on the university will be completely lost on the men accused of coving up for him.  In my heart of hearts, I think what sticks in the craw of the NCAA most is that the one person they truly wish to punish had the audacity to die in January, putting him completely and forever out of their reach.

Nor will stopping football have an enormous impact on most of us who currently work here.  It will make me sad to see the football program I have loved since childhood go dark, but it will really only alter what I do for a couple of hours on a handful of Saturday afternoons.  In my house, the person it will impact most will be my three year old son, who loves PSU football and understands none of this.  He’s resilient, though.  He’ll find other things to do.  This will be true in most households.  We have children to raise, bills to pay, and work to do.  Life will go on.

Let’s talk about the people who really will be hurt by this course of action:

1.      The student football players.  Yes, the argument has been that those here on football scholarships should keep them and still go to school, and that’s the most important thing.  There’s no denying, though, that these kids came here to get to play football and do it in front of a national audience.  Many of them have aspirations of being professional players, and the way to get to do that is to get to play in front of crowds, journalists, recruiters.  Closing the program gives them one less year to do that. It’s hard to argue that this is a fitting punishment for young men who were in elementary school or younger in 1998; kids who are younger, mostly, than Sandusky’s victims.

2.     The students in the Blue Band and the Cheerleaders.  The Blue Band isn’t a show competition band. They play a small number of performances outside of the halftime football show.  The cheerleaders do compete, but most of their appearances are tied to the football games, too.  These kids get to travel and perform in front of national audiences because their activities are tied to the football program.  Again, only the loonies screaming for those security tapes from Best Buy could attempt to argue that these young people deserve to be punished.

3.      The stadium staff/employees.  A small army of people work in Beaver Stadium on football weekends; many of them as part time workers.  For a number of people in the community, working parking, security, concessions, sales, or assistance is the second job that helps put food on the table and pay mortgages.  For many students, it helps pay for housing, tuition, and books.  It’s unclear to me what the young woman selling Diet Pepsi at the concession stand has done to deserve to lose her job.

4.        Much of the local economy depends on the income from football weekends to sustain its workforce.  This includes locally owned restaurants, shops, and hotels.  Most of the people employed by these businesses have no affiliation with the university at all.

Aside from all of these people, though, there is another compelling reason why the NCAA should step aside here.  The NCAA intervening in a criminal case that isn’t actually about football sends a message, but not the one that everyone screaming for blood hopes it will be.  What an NCAA sanction says is that football is SO important to the school that ONLY sanctions from the athletic governing body can truly set things right.  Think about this for a moment.  What the NCAA is (inadvertently?) saying is that athletics are paramount and that until they’ve had the chance to mete out justice, justice can’t possibly be done.

There are a number of people who will argue that the world is not fair and that if some of these folks suffer as collateral damage in an effort to punish those responsible at Penn State, then so be it.  If this were actually an athletic scandal involving the football team as central players, I would agree.  I have yet to hear a reasonable argument for why this sanction should be meted out other than “It’s just The Right Thing To do.”  I haven’t yet heard who it’s right for; who it will help.  And here is, perhaps, the biggest risk in NCAA sanctions, at least to the NCAA and others.  If the program “goes dark” for a year, a year from now what you will find is that the university is still standing.  There will still be intercollegiate and intra-collegiate athletics going on. There will still be faculty doing nationally and internationally renowned research and teaching. There will still be wonderful staff working hard to make life better for all of us.  And there will still be students getting a world class education and doing the most incredible, amazing, selfless things to improve the world.  We will all still be here, doing our jobs and living our lives.   

Because to us, it was never really about football.  It was only ever about football to everyone else.

Legally Despicable

Today the Supreme Court struck down what has been called the Stolen Valor Law—an act that would make it illegal to claim to have received a military honor you did not, in fact, receive.  The name itself is a bit of a misnomer.  It’s not clear to me how valor can be stolen.  My husband is a veteran or the US Air Force.  I can think of no plausible way that someone else claiming, falsely or not, to have been decorated in combat takes away his valiant service.  Aside from the name, though, I am not at all sure how I feel about this decision.

On a personal level, I think anyone who has the audacity to lie about military service has, at the very least, some extended accommodations awaiting them in Purgatory.  It falls under a class of behavior that makes you a sorry excuse for a human being.  Included in that class would be telling children there is no Santa and cheating on your dying wife.  These things make you despicable, to be sure, but I’m not convinced they should make you a criminal.

In general, I am opposed to making it illegal to say things.  Those efforts usually start out well intentioned and end with people like Joe McCarthy.  The one broad exception to this would be saying things that are completely untrue IF that dishonesty could potentially cause demonstrable harm to someone.  For example, it is not difficult to foresee how someone could be caused serious harm or injury if I were to waltz into my local ER and pretend to be a medical doctor.  That should be a crime, and it is.  It’s called fraud.

If someone were to claim military service to collect a military pension, educational benefits, or VA medical services, then that would potentially cause harm by stealing services that you had not rightfully earned.  That would also be fraud.  Any potential, serious harm that could be caused by someone falsely claiming military service or honor would be covered by existing laws.  Being an awful person is not illegal, but does carry certain social sanctions.  These social sanctions are often more effective in controlling or altering behaviors than any legal sanctions ever could be.  My neighbors and I don’t have to meet any burden of proof to not talk to you at the neighborhood picnic; we just simply don’t have to talk to you.  What will stop me from claiming to my friends and neighbors that I have served in the military when I did not will be the same pressure that keeps me from claiming that I invented Post-Its, toured with The Bangles, caught a 40 lb. mackerel, or starred in an off-Broadway production of Oklahoma:  my friends and neighbors can easily find out the truth, and when they do I will be shunned and ridiculed.

Telling my neighbor I served in Iraq when I did not makes me contemptible, but it does nothing to negate or detract from the dedicated, selfless service of those men and women who did actually serve.  Making it a crime, ironically, does chip away at one of the freedoms that they pledged their lives to defend.

Pomp, Circumstance, and Strange Shoe Choices

This weekend is Graduation Weekend here in Happy Valley.  The ceremonies over these three days mark the culmination of an academic year that started with an earthquake and lead to, in some ways, the end of our world as we knew it.  Here are just a few of my somewhat random thoughts about this year’s graduation:

1. I noticed something for the first time today that, once I saw it, I wondered why no one had ever done before.  Three resourceful families were tailgating graduation--one complete with canopy, plastic wine glasses, and champagne!  Genius!!!  You're going to be stuck there for a good while, you might was well start celebrating instead of complaining.  :)

2. I think I may have underestimated one of my male students all this time.  Today under his blue graduation gown, he had on a bright kelly green shirt with a very, very loud pink tie.  He was one of two boys not wearing a white shirt and blue tie or blue shirt and gray tie (the other was wearing a gray t-shirt and rumpled jeans and looked as though he rolled out of bed hungover, wearing whatever he went bar hopping in last night, threw on his gown and strolled off to graduation).  Again, genius!  His family surely had no problem picking him out.

3. As I was walking down to the Green Room before the ceremony, I noticed two girls walking in front of me wearing what had to be 5” stilettos.  I thought to myself that every year the heels seem to get higher and higher.  During the ceremony, a few of my colleagues made the same observation.  Some of the stilettos and platform shoes were so high as to be awe inspiring in a you-know-there’s-going-to-be-an-accident-and-yet-can’t-look-away kind of way.  This is one of those few days in your life when everyone really IS watching you; is it really the day you want to wind up in a cast from falling off of your own shoes???  The winner of the Most Female Graduates in Reasonable Footwear award goes to Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Management, in case you wondered.

4. At the end of the ceremony, during the singing of the Alma Mater, one of my colleagues nudged me and motioned for me to look behind me at our students.  The entire group of them was not only singing, but swaying back and forth to the song, arms draped around each other.  It was an adorable and touching sight.  During the 4^th verse, their voices swelled to be heard above the pit band and the thousands of spectators.  They confirmed what I suspected at the fall graduation ceremony: that this new enthusiasm for the words and meaning of their school song has become a new tradition.  The refusal of these resilient young men and women to be cowed or shamed by others and their determination to hold their heads up to look for solutions to the problems they are confronted with is both awe inspiring and humbling.  I have never been more proud to be a teacher, and I will always be proud to have been their teacher. 

Congratulations, Penn State Class of 2012!

The Hidden Dangers of "Yes"

For the sixth straight year, Penn State students have persisted in participating in what they call “State Patty’s Day,” an event organized on social media outlets, the sole purpose of which is to provide an excuse for people to wander aimlessly around town for 36 hours straight in a drunken stupor so profound that they appear too brainless and purposeless to even qualify as extras on The Walking Dead.  No, I take that back.  It does appear to have one other purpose: to ensure that photographs of people wandering the streets half-dressed and with fewer functioning brain cells than a pureed carrot can survive in perpetuity on the internet for not only future employers, but future grandchildren, to find.

No, I’m not a fan of this event.  And no, it’s not a “holiday.” Stop calling it that.

Funny thing is, I don’t think many of my students are fans anymore, either.  Last year in a very long, very candid conversation with my graduating seniors, I heard many of them say over and over that the majority of the people who were drunk all day, wandering out into traffic, driving the wrong way on one way streets, and generally causing mayhem, were not PSU students but people from out of town.  The arrest records and emergency response reports bear this out.  My response to them was that not one hotel was booked up that weekend (yes, I really did check), so these people who were coming from out of town were staying somewhere.  That “somewhere” was with people who go to school here.  Over and over again people told me stories of coming home to find 6-7 guests in their apartments, some people they didn’t know.  I suggested that they were the ones with the keys; they could always say no.  My students looked at me in horror.  “Well, that would be kinda rude, wouldn’t it?” one normally very bright young woman asked me.  Rude?  Someone you don’t know is crashing in your apartment without your consent, after coming here uninvited and spending the whole weekend drunk and disorderly?  I think “No, you can’t sleep in the apartment I pay rent for” is the only reasonable, sane response.

This year, in the midst of my yearly pathetic attempt to convince them why participating in this insanity is a bad idea (particularly this year), I heard more than one student complain that out of town guests had invited themselves for the weekend.  My students felt compelled not only to allow these people in their apartments, but to make accommodations for them (being home at a certain time to let them in, making bedding available, and even granting specific food requests).  The comments I heard were all variations on the same theme: “This is just a hassle. I wish it would go away.”  I was dumbfounded.  I suggested to one young woman that she could just tell these people that it’s a VERY bad time for this and they should not expect to come and stay with her.  Then she was dumbfounded.  “I don’t want to be rude and say no.”

That’s when it struck me.  My students were very uncomfortable saying know, even to unreasonable requests from acquaintances, because they didn’t know how to say no.  They had no model for it because they had heard it so seldom themselves.

No one likes to say no.  It’s human nature to want to please other people and accommodate requests, but those of us who did not grow up in the “everyone plays, everyone wins” era at least have some model for saying and hearing no.  We’ve been told no by parents, teachers, coaches, and directors and survived it.  We’ve learned to understand that “no” isn’t fatal and doesn’t have to be mean.  By always telling our kids “yes,” we’ve robbed them of that model.  By always giving them what they want, whether it’s the lead in the play, a place on the team, or a car, we’ve taught them not only that hearing “no” is bad, but that saying “no” is worse.  If no one has ever told them no, it must be really, really terrible.  If their parents and teachers avoided it, they probably should, too.

I’m not suggesting that being able to say no to their friends would prevent any of the bad behavior that goes on here during this annual event, but it might allow them to let it die the natural death it should have fallen to years ago. Then again, if they had heard "no" more often earlier in life, the whole spectacle of walking around drunk, throwing trash and urinating in people's yards, and stumbling out into traffic, and then demanding shelter from people you hardly know might have struck them from the start as the bad idea it truly is.

A Few Thousand Special Snowflakes....

Last week I again had the chance to participate in what is one of my favorite professional duties. It also happens to be one of the most frustrating.  Graduation.  I love graduation ceremonies and I will admit that I tear up at every single one.  What’s not to love?  It’s the one day in an academic career when everyone is happy—parents, students, and faculty. 

 

Since I started teaching, I have had the chance to participate in roughly 18 graduation ceremonies.  In all that time, I never seen a ceremony disrupted by a student.  This year two students, one male and one female, decided that moment after shaking hands with everyone on stage was the appropriate time for Tebowing.  In both cases, their self-conscious silliness was mostly ignored.

This fall’s ceremony was disrupted several times by parents and family members.  In every ceremony, the attendees are instructed twice to please hold their applause and cheers until after everyone’s name is called.  Families are told that every one present is there to hear the name of one person, and everyone present deserves to be able to hear that one name be read as that student crosses the stage.  It shouldn’t require an advanced degree to understand that if you’re blowing an air horn (and it does happen with dismaying frequency), no one is going to be able to hear the name being read at the same time.  For the first 50 names, more or less, everyone behaves appropriately.  Then one family member decides that their special snowflake is far too special for their family to be held to the same standards as everyone else, so they yell and scream when that snowflake’s name is called.  A few minutes will pass and some other family will decide their snowflake is far MORE special, so they yell and scream and clap.  Sooner or later, someone breaks out the air horn.

This happens at every ceremony.  Most of the time, it’s only half a dozen families or so who think their student is the most special snowflake in the blizzard.  Occasionally, it happens frequently enough that the nomenclature or the provost feels compelled to scold the crowd and again ask that they not prevent other families from hearing the name of their student.  This time, both the nomenclature and provost had to scold the crowd several times, with increasing irritation.  At one point the rest of the crowd was so disgusted with the blatant disregard for the several hundred other graduates that they broke into applause after one scolding.  You have to know you’ve really crossed some social boundary when a few thousand people are applauding you being publicly scolded.

This annoys me every year, but it was particularly galling this year.  Unless you live under a rock or on a deserted island in the Pacific ocean, you have at least some vague notion of the events that have plagued Penn State this fall.  I don’t wish to minimize the trauma to everyone involved by oversimplifying the case, but three men are currently awaiting trial, several more have had their careers either ended or irrevocably disrupted, and an entire community had been turned on its head because at least three people decided the rules did not apply to them.  Apparently, and sadly for all of us, some people in the PSU family have not learned from this lesson.  You would think that any one in any way connected with the university might be particularly sensitive to playing by the rules, doing the right thing, and looking out for the other people around you.  It makes me unspeakably sad and unsettled to discover that it’s largely the parents who chose to do otherwise.  We often wonder why it is that so many young people seem to feel that there are no consequences for their behavior and that the rules don’t apply to them.  We have no business being shocked by this; they are only following the example they have been taught.

In all fairness, even this fall it was only a small percentage of families who behaved badly.  Most smiled and waved quietly as their student crossed the stage and then cheered their hearts out when the last name had been called.  After the last student had crossed the stage, several yelled out from various points “WE ARE…”and everyone—administrators, faculty, students, and families thundered back “PENN STATE!”  It was a fun and proud moment, but not as proud as the one that came at the end of the ceremony.  Just before the administrators and faculty process back out of the hall, the entire crowd is asked to sing the Alma Mater.  In most ceremonies, the students begin singing proudly “For the glory of Old State…” and then peter out from there, humming along and leaving the faculty and the alumni in the crowd to carry the song to its end.  This year, to my surprise and delight, the students sang with earnest through the first three verses.  The real moment of pride, though, came at the beginning of the last verse when the singing from the students swelled considerably.*  I hope their families noticed, too, and decide to follow their example.

*For the non-PSU folks, the last verse begins with these two lines:

"May no act of ours bring shame,

To one heart that loves thy name..."

Raise the song...and your voice

This is the time of year when I see a lot of people who have recently decided to change majors for one reason or another. A huge percentage of them tell me they want to go to medical school or to become a physician assistant—both very noble, honorable professions, to be sure. When I ask them what make them want to become doctors, nurses, or PAs, many of them respond with lengthy explanations about how they’ve always loved science and biology in particular, how they had a pediatrician they loved, how a PA helped diagnose their asthma or a nurse took care of a sibling who had been hospitalized, etc. A good many of them, though, give me the same, vague answer: “I want to help people.”

This is a noble calling, too; don’t get me wrong. I am all in favor of the give-back-pay-it-forward-leave-the-world-better-than-you-found-it philosophy. My problem is with their very, very limited definition of “helping people.”

As I started writing this a week ago, I intended to write about the many ways in which you can help people outside of medicine. Then I saw a documentary on he replications of the original Stanley Milgram studies on authority. Milgram's original studies brought volunteers into the lab and paired them with "learners" who were really research assistants. The "teachers" were told to give increasing electric shocks to the learners sitting in a remote booth when they made mistakes on the task given. Even when the learners screamed in pain and complained of heart trouble, a lab coated investigator asked the teacher to keep going. Milgram found that the vast majority of people were willing to give what they thought might be dangerous shocks to another human being just because someone told them to. In one version of the replications, teachers came in to the lab in pairs. One of the pair was another research assistant who, in half the cases, was told at one point to refuse to administer any more shocks. When that person refused, far more of the subject teachers were willing to also refuse. One person standing up and saying "No. This is wrong." is all it takes to inspire others to do the same.

Shortly after watching this special, news broke about Jerry Sandusky's heinous acts and the horrible cover up that ensued at Penn State. The most shocking, and for some of us most heartbreaking, part is that so many people seemed to have had the chance to stand up and say "No. This is wrong," but no one did. People did what they believed they had to, but no one did what they should have. I have no doubt that their failure to do more than they did will haunt Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno until the day they die.

So here is my charge to all of you, future clinicians or not. Want to help people? It's this simple: Be the one who stands up. Be the voice that says "No. This is wrong. I won't go along with it." Be the one who inspires others to stand up and do the right thing. Be the one who insists that we are all better. Be our pride, not our shame. No matter what you do after that, you will have helped everyone. Not a bad day's work.