WATCH: Penn State Kids Chant for Return of Joe Paterno Statue
Yesterday, the NCAA announced it had lifted Penn State’s sanctions stemming from the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal. The Nittany Lions — now 2-0 this season after wins in State College and, um, Dublin — would be returned to their full set of scholarships, and were immediately eligible for the postseason.
Via Onward State comes this video of Penn State students’ impromptu celebration rally last night, which included the students chanting “Where’s the statue?” outside of Old Main.
College kids will be college kids — but this is a little odd, to say the least. It wasn’t like the removal of the JoePa statue was an NCAA sanction, or that the Paterno statue had been replaced by a different statue of NCAA president Mark Emmert. It’s a shame it wasn’t, because then the kids could have toppled the NCAA-installed statue like when a dictatorship falls!
One of the students celebrating even carried around a cardboard cutout of Joe Paterno. “Joe Pa could be a hero with us in spirit — this is representing him,” Marty Powers told the Daily Collegian. Per the student paper, the only real damage: “A stop sign was removed from the ground.”
To answer the students’ question, incidentally: “Probably in storage somewhere.”