The Other Penn State Cover-Up: Death Threats Against Black Students
Hate mail to black students and a death, all swept away by PSUAs news unravels around the grand jury report revealing charges against former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky for raping and sexually molesting underage boys, some former black Penn State students are now painfully reliving a scandal that occurred at their university ten years ago. In 2000, the year a janitor witnessed a boy younger than 13 (“Victim 8” in a grand jury report) “pinned against a wall” while Sandusky performed oral sex on him, black students and football players on Penn State’s campus began receiving hate mail.
The hate mail sent to black students had nothing to do with Sandusky’s proclivities, but the two incidences shared something in common: both were ultimately covered up by the university, even as both chain of events grew worse. Sandusky went on to molest and possibly rape more boys, according to a grand jury report (Sandusky denies foul play), and hate mail against black students became death threats.
Ultimately, a black man’s dead body was found by police near Penn State as one of the death threats said it would. And some black students had to attend their graduation the following May with bulletproof vests on in fear of their life.
But few know about the death threats because Penn State and Joe Paterno were not willing to allow bad publicity to ruin the university’s image, say some of the black students at the center of the tragic events.
One of my girlfriends went to Temple, but had considered Penn State, even going on a tour with her mother. She said that she was one of the two black women on tour and in sight on campus, so she asked the first black person she saw - a freshman using the restroom - about what it was like and if she liked it. The girl shrugged and said she was transferring out but wouldn’t articulate why. She laughed about it when telling me the story, but apparently the reception and attitudes towards her and her mom were far from welcoming, and very chilly.
