3393 The boys in the club

Friday, November 11, 2011

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same
time, will that it should become a universal law.
-- Immanuel Kant, the categorical imperative
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals --

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Happy Nerd New Year! (11/11/11)

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I left a comment on Becs' post re the Penn State mess, and I decided to just copy it over here as a post. She wondered why that graduate assistant (now an assistant coach, I believe) is not being charged or fired, and what is wrong with people who allow things like this to happen.

Yeah, I wondered about the grad assistant, too. He's apparently the only one who actually SAW something. For everyone else, it was a case of second or third hand information, possibly watered down, easily denied by Sandusky. And yet, the grad assistant is the only one not in trouble.

BTW, there had been several accusations in the '90s. The local DA (who mysteriously disappeared a few years later) had investigated. Mothers (the kids were fatherless) had confronted Sandusky and participated in the investigations. But it was all dropped, no charges, because there was no proof. "He says/he says" kind of thing. That grad assistant's eyewitness testimony could have made all the difference. And yet, the grad assistant is the only one not in trouble.

As to what's wrong with people, when people (and particularly men) belong to a tight-knit group, they will defend the reputation of the brotherhood at all costs. Threats to the group are quashed. People also tend to see things through filters - there's a psychological term for it, "motivational bias" - such that things that don't fit our world view are simply not given credence, or are reformatted with excuses, or made to go away. We all do it, but fraternal groups in group think do it more.

The randomly generated green quote at the top of this post seems particularly apt.
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