In addition to all of that, there has been cases of sexual harassment of female teachers, and Penn State also has an extensive history of racism.
Yeah! It just keep on getting better and better all the time!
In the following article, written by Kristin Rawls, she tells of her experience at Penn State, and how she was harassed after trying to complain to university officials about what has been going on at Penn State.
She has also mentions, that when she had attended other colleges and universities, she had never gotten into trouble after openly criticizing university and college officials there.
But, at Penn State, apparently, on can not openly criticize university officials without getting into trouble and being harassed afterward.
I have to wonder . . . . . what is it about Penn State?
Why is it, that at most other universities, one may openly criticize official policies, while at Penn State, one may not?
Anyway, please do check out the following article.
Thank you.
http://www.alternet.org/story/156154/on ... paging=off
OK, while doing a Google search for Penn State University, I found their web site at:AlterNet / By Kristin Rawls
One Woman's Account of How Abuse, Corruption and
Silence at Penn State Perpetuate a Poisonous Culture
A former Penn State student and instructor says a culture of abuse exists
well beyond the football field and the school's problems are systemic.
July 24, 2012
These days, it seems, the downfall of Penn Stateâ??s beloved football program makes national headlines every few days. Just as the news cycle exhausted the Sandusky conviction and the Freeh report, on Monday the NCAA announced harsh sanctions against Penn State that are likely to gut the football program for many years to come.
Photo Credit: trekandshoot via Shutterstock.com
As an education journalist, I have watched Jerry Sanduskyâ??s downfall with a mixture of horror and fascination. But as a graduate school alumna of Penn State, it has been difficult to separate my own experiences as a student and instructor from what I am seeing in the news. Based on my own observations of abuse and misconduct while at Penn State â?? none of them related to the football program â?? I have every reason to suspect that the allegations released last November, and the punishments leveled just this week, mark only the beginning of a long and painful fall from grace for the institution as a whole. After all, Sandusky is just one man, but it took a proverbial village to hide three decades of overt abuse.
Mainstream news sites like the Daily Beast have suggested that we need to start asking how the popularity and wealth of Penn Stateâ??s football program may have contributed to silence about Sanduskyâ??s crimes. Others, like Jay Jennings at CNN, have asked whether Americaâ??s high-stakes sports culture is to blame. These seem like reasonable questions, given just how much money is attached to the sport. Last year, Penn State football program was valued at $446.9 million, third highest among public schools in the NCAA.*
But in focusing our ire and outrage on sports culture alone, itâ??s easy to lose sight of broader problems -- like school administration or local context. These elements, too, played a role in creating the culture of abuse, corruption and silence that allowed a man like Jerry Sandusky to operate untouched for so long. But his is not the only case of misused power or abuse at Penn State. In fact, many of these cases have nothing to do with the football team. Since I started writing about education, many former students and staff have contacted me to share details about the various kinds of abuse they say they experienced at Penn State, leading me to believe the problems I witnessed were not one-offs. They were, and remain, systemic.
The Place: Hate Culture
The main campus of Pennsylvania State University is located in State College, PA, a tiny exurb of the aptly named Centre County, the geographical center of Pennsylvania. When I first visited in 2007, I thought the university was nestled in a pleasant enough college town. A place of great natural beauty, State College sits deep in a valley just east of the Allegheny Mountains. Itâ??s a town that seems lovely on the outside. It took some time for me to realize just how oppressive the environment could be.
Central Pennsylvania is often denigrated as â??Alabama in Pennsylvania,â? largely because of its extremely conservative political landscape. Sure, the residents of State College usually vote for Democrats, as towns that revolve around large universities often do. But Central Pennsylvania as a region is hate group central. It houses the national headquarters of both the Aryan Nation and the Association of Independent Klansmen Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The latter is located in Lemont, just a 10-minute drive from Penn State. Plus, smaller militia and/or neo-Confederate groups are sprinkled throughout the area, and continue sprouting up. People in the region commonly note that State College has the â??highest per capita hate group membershipâ? in the United States.
Itâ??s hard to find reputable statistics about hate group numbers since many are inclined not to mention their membership when statisticians ask. But anyone who lives in the region â?? and pays attention â?? can attest to the open presence of hate group activity. This was particularly shocking to me, a product of suburban North Carolina, where racist institutions and stereotypes are far more common than actual hate groups campaigning on behalf of â??white power.â?
In North Carolina, the Confederate flag bumper-sticker often suggests that the driver is an undereducated but nonviolent â??heritage, not hateâ? type. But Civil War nostalgia is by no means a â??heritageâ?-based element of white Pennsylvania culture. In Pennsylvania, itâ??s safe to bet anyone flying the Confederate flag is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I spotted far more Confederate flags â?? dozens, at least â?? in and around â??liberalâ? State College, PA than I had ever seen in my Southern-raised life.
The election of President Barack Obama in 2008 was particularly fraught in Central Pennsylvania. Though the Secret Service never confirmed that someone actually screamed, â??Kill him!â? at that Sarah Palin rally in Scranton, the Scranton Times-Tribune (which originally reported the incident) stands by the story today. In any case, the veracity of the report wouldnâ??t have been a shock to anyone who has lived in the region. I saw a skinhead contingent about a dozen strong waiting in line to be admitted into a Palin rally that year, white men unashamedly boasting white power and swastika tattoos. Acquaintances spoke about seeing open Klansmen and Aryan Nation members in the audience as well.
This was not a surprise to black students at Penn State, whose student associations received an onslaught of death threats in 2000 that culminated in the killing of a young black man. Long before this, in the 1980s, several black men were targeted in violent assaults in town.**
Students whispered to me of other disappearances in State College, as well. Indeed, when the Sandusky allegations became public, former PSU professor of African American studies Robyn Spencer published part of her journal from 2001 in an attempt to expose the long history of violence at the university. She wrote:
My concerns were as basic as survival. Hate mail, death threats, and sit-ins thrust this school into the national spotlight before the ink on my job contract had time to dry. Unclaimed black corpses were found in surrounding areas, student leaders were assigned bodyguards and attendees of graduation had to pass through metal detectors.
The universityâ??s students of color know this history well, up to and including the fact that students whose lives were threatened received precious little support from the university administration or Joe Paterno â?? whose black players were specifically targeted As student activist Assata Richards told one reporter last year, â??We asked him to talk to the players because we were concerned about their safetyâ?¦and he said in that meeting that he would never do anything to put the university in a bad light. So we said, â??Then you are choosing the university over studentsâ?? lives.â??â?
In 2008, a graduate student in another program told me that a black student group, fearing for the safety of its members, had advised students of color to stay home the day after Obamaâ??s win. One of my students shared these concerns. Through tears, she spoke of a friend who found notes attached to her front door reading, â??N****r, leave.â? Some friends, she said, became too exhausted and fearful to stay, so they did leave.
Not surprisingly, State College, the town, can feel oppressive in a visceral and suffocating way (quite literally, given the poor air quality). Though it is not nearly as well-documented as the race problem in the community, members of the LGBT campus community reported death threats as recently as 2010. LGBT students and graduate instructors had to consider whether being â??outâ? in their classrooms might jeopardize their safety, and many of my own friends and acquaintances -- particularly those perceived as â??gender non-conformingâ? -- were targets of harassment and ridicule.
In my experience, many people associated with the university who do not belong to minority groups often look the other way when incidents like these occur. When a majority of students in my 2009 class suggested that racism is no longer a problem for the US because of Obamaâ??s election, I received no support from faculty in trying to organize anti-racism training or education for my class. Many of my white students, despite the open hate group presence in the town they lived in, insisted without irony that â??racism is really just a Southern problem.â?
â??Itâ??s just a tough egg to crack here,â? one professor told me, resigned to the state of things and unwilling to take action to change them.
The University: Rape Culture
Just as racism and, to some extent, homophobia, are omnipresent in State College in ways that seep into everyday life, the university culture itself is also particularly dismissive of sexual harassment, assault and rape allegations.
For decades universities across the country have been plagued by what many have termed a â??rape epidemic,â? in which about one in five college women is raped. (A 2009 study suggests that the real incident rate actually far exceeds this ratio, because so many survivors fail to report.) As someone who has had more than a bit of experience on different college campuses -- I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2002, completed my first masterâ??s degree at American University in 2006 and then spent a year in Montréal, Québec at McGill University -- I can tell you that I saw plenty of rape culture at all three. At UNC, in fact, I once opted to leave a class when faced with an ongoing sexual harassment problem.
I was, in other words, no stranger to these problems when I entered Penn State. But neither had I ever seen a university close ranks with such precision against students who decided to go public about assault or rape. At PSU, it soon became clear, you simply cannot take any abuse public without suffering severe consequences. Maybe thatâ??s what makes Penn State culture so unusual.
When I first arrived on campus in fall 2007, I was required, along with all new instructors, to take what I thought was a routine training seminar on sexual harassment. Looking back, I clearly should have seen what transpired as a red flag. At this particular seminar, we were taught that itâ??s perfectly fine for instructors to have sex with their own students. It was considered â??unwiseâ? to engage in these sexual relationships during the course of the semester, but it wasnâ??t exactly prohibited. Weâ??d simply need to alert the proper administrative authorities, and make certain the sex didnâ??t affect our grading.
It didnâ??t end there. About half an hour of this training was spent fielding one participantâ??s complaint that provocatively dressed women were in fact sexually harassing him. This was treated by the seminar facilitator as a legitimate concern. Never did the facilitator mention that the â??problemâ? of revealing dress is frequently (and erroneously) used as a justification for sexual assault and rape.
In retrospect, I should have been prepared for the kind of abuses this type of â??trainingâ? enabled. Some graduate students whispered about colleagues in my department having sex with their 18-year-old students. Several acquaintances saw one colleague escort two drunken 18-year-old female students back to his apartment one night. Another colleague spoke of finding a graduate student in a compromising position with an undergraduate in our student lounge.
It isnâ??t clear whether or not any of these young women, particularly those seen at the bar, were intoxicated past the point of meaningful consent. In other words, I canâ??t be sure whether or not either of my colleagues committed a criminal offense or was just culpable of a despicable misuse of power. Iâ??m not terribly comforted either way.
A graduate student from another department told me of being sexually assaulted by a drunken colleague from her department. She was never quite sure whether or not the perpetrator, known to experience alcohol-related blackouts, remembered what heâ??d done. She said he pushed her down on a bed one day and tried to have sex with her without her consent. She didnâ??t dare tell any faculty members or administrators what had happened; sheâ??d known too many other graduate students in other departments who were forced out of the university for revealing less. In another department, a faculty member hadnâ??t been punished for assaulting a student at all. His one sanction? He had to keep the door open while working in his office.
In 2009, the Princeton Review famously ranked Penn State the number-one party school in America, prompting NPRâ??s This American Life to report on the drinking culture organized around the football team at Penn State. Then in 2011, after the Sandusky allegations came out, the radio program revisited that broadcast to consider whether or not something specific to that culture had allowed the abuse to happen so openly for three decades.
Itâ??s something that many have scratched their heads over since the allegations first came out: Did the football culture cause it? Did some kind of lawlessness aided by out-of-control alcohol consumption play a part? Was it the corrupting influences of high-powered college athletics? Was it a university adept at covering up scandal and crime?
I canâ??t answer these questions. All I know is that I found the place poisonous from the outset, as did many â?? perhaps most â?? of my acquaintances and friends. I saw the university respond to serious allegations with impotent coverups. And I know graduate students who were excised from the university because they chose to speak out about the abuses they saw. I happen to be one of them.
Business as Usual
I have always been a person who speaks out. But no academic institution before Penn State ever marginalized me for it. Back in 2005, I was part of a group of activists at American University who protested the far-too-gentle treatment of then-president Benjamin Ladner, who had used university funds for personal expenses. One day, we rented a U-Haul and drove it around campus with a billboard that said, â??No golden parachute. Weâ??ll help Ladner move.â?
This protest was featured in The Washingtonian magazine, and I co-wrote a letter urging no mercy for Ladner that was published in the Washington Post. Yet in spite of all this, I always felt safe at American; and despite all my rabble-rousing, I was awarded the top prize for academic achievement in the School of International Service.
Such a thing never would have happened at Penn State. You canâ??t get away with â??treasonousâ? behavior there and survive.
Since I have never been good at keeping my mouth shut for political reasons, itâ??s probably not surprising that I was systematically pushed out of the Penn State system after I raised private concerns with administrators about the sexist and racist behavior I observed in a class. That was never forgotten; indeed, I was marked as a troublemaker out of the gate. The department escalated its abuses for the remainder of my three semesters at Penn State. In the end, they waited until I was vulnerable to make their final move.
Ultimately, I was more or less denied a one-semester medical leave of absence after I was diagnosed with lupus in 2008. On the one hand, I was told that I could leave for a semester, but I was also told I would not receive health insurance while I was gone, nor would I be guaranteed funding on my return. Faculty half-heartedly suggested that this wasnâ??t actually termination, but of course it was termination, as later meetings with administrators made plain.
When the university finally moved to push me out of my department in 2009, I felt so beaten down by the two years of struggle Iâ??d undergone that I lost the resolve to stay and fight. By then, I just wanted out. I had been the subject of a targeted bullying campaign that culminated in a letter written by the departmentâ??s then-graduate director to the administrators handling my case. Through them, I learned that the very graduate director who had continuously assured me he was trying to be my advocate, had written a letter filled with trumped-up charges and outright lies about me.
The day I found out about that letter, one officer dealing with my case noted to me that I was â??unwittingly getting caught up in dysfunction that started long before you even got here. I donâ??t even understand why you want to work with them.â? Indeed, just before my arrival, my department (philosophy) had been embroiled in lawsuits and was placed in receivership. Due to swirling allegations of sexual harassment and faculty infighting, the department was not permitted to govern itself or admit new graduate students for a few years. During this time, many students were pushed out of the university for political allegiances seen as disloyal to the department. Several faculty members left, some of whom later sued as a result of what they viewed as campaigns to remove them from the university.
Looking back at the timeline I ultimately prepared for legal counsel, I am once again shocked by how meticulously calculated my expulsion from the university was. Nevertheless, the graduate director who purged me (and another student in similar circumstances the year after) has since been promoted to a deanship. For a long time, I have stayed quiet about what happened to me and others at Penn State. Then Sandusky happened, and it seemed wrong to keep quiet any longer.
At the end of the day, this is what I have concluded: University culture in general runs on a certain degree of dysfunction. As a result, many who go public with their experiences of abuse are told, â??Oh, thatâ??s just academic politics.â? A graduate of my former program at Penn State -- from long before my time -- recently found me via Twitter. He said itâ??s sometimes difficult to communicate just how bad his experience was to people without direct knowledge of the culture. â??Sometimes I think they may not even believe me,â? he said.
When I entered Penn State, I thought I was already cynical about politics in higher education. In the course of those years, I began to learn that this universityâ??s dysfunction could be far more treacherous than what I would call the "normal" university dysfunction of my previous institutions. In some ways, I was lucky that the experience only ruined my academic career and personal finances. Compared to many others, I am largely unscathed.
Ultimately, I hope that the Sandusky case will have an important public impact, empowering others like me to speak out and motivating the public to demand answers about just what goes on in State College â?? even beyond the football stadium. The ongoing criminal investigations and NCAA sanctions are a good start, and will likely have wide-ranging consequences for the university. But the public has yet to truly understand how deep and wide this culture of abuse runs within the university as a whole.
It will be crucial for the public to watch carefully as Penn State tries to redeem its image. Right now, it would be very easy for the administration to use Sandusky and Paterno as sacrificial lambs, and the universityâ??s acceptance of the NCAA penalties as â??proofâ? that the place is changing -- while continuing to operate, off the athletic fields, much as it always has. Citizens and taxpayers should demand more. If the state of Pennsylvania cannot or will not hold Penn State accountable as an institution, we have a responsibility to do it ourselves.
***
* An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Penn State spent $446.9 million on its football program last year; that number is in fact the valuation of the entire program, not the amount spent on it by the university.
** Additionally, the original article erroneously characterized the murder of Langston Carraway as a hate crime; such a claim has been removed from this version of the article.
Kristin Rawls is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, GOOD Magazine, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, Global Comment and elsewhere online. The author can be found on twitter @kristinrawls.
http://www.psu.edu/
I did a web site search, and they do offer many academic programs and courses in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Biology, Chemistry, Forensic Science, Mathematics, Pre-medicine, Premedical/Medical (BS/MD) and Physics.
I'm sure they're all excellent courses, and have some really excellent professors there at Penn State.
Now, it is my most sincere hope, that the recent fines and penalties levied against Penn State University, will not effect their academic programs in science, astronomy, math, biology, and medicine, etc. etc. but that it will only effect their sports program.
I think there should be a complete moratorium on the athletic department, and their sports programs should be shut down for keeps!
Also, all those university officials who were involved in the cover-up of the sex scandal, should have criminal charges files against them.
No, the rest of the colleges, their academic programs should not have to suffer because of this.
That would certainly be unfair that the academic departments lose out, just because some drooling moronic sports-tard, who thinks with his little head instead of his big head, can't keep his rocket in his pocket!
In fact, I wish that all the money that is usually spent on their sports programs, would now go over to their academic departments instead.
And those students, who had started the riots, because they were more pissed off over coach Joe Paterno being fired, while showing no concern for the victims who were sexually molested by Jerry Sandusky, those students should get a one-year suspension.
It was only the students who were sport fans who rioted on campus.
The students who were victims of sexual harassment and racism were often afraid to openly speak out, for fear of being harassed by the sports fans on campus.
And finally . . . . . the university should set up counseling services for those students who have been the victims of sexual harassment and racism.
I remember back in 1980 reading a book titled "The South And The Nation" but I can't remember the name of the author, only the title of his book.
In one of the chapters, it mentions football in our universities.
Shortly after The Civil War, many of the colleges in the southern states started having football teams. Of course, there were the usual physical requirements, such that, you had to be at least a certain height and weight, and physically athletic and strong enough to qualify. But also, you had to be of good moral character.
Well, they soon discovered that it was hard to find people who could qualify on both requirements, being BOTH strong and athletic AND having a good moral character. So, many colleges were perfectly willing to fore-go that latter in favor of the former, which would eventually lead to sports corruption in our colleges and universities, and our high schools.
In the meantime, the universities in the northern states held out for many years after The Civil War before they finally started getting football programs in their colleges.
So, it looks like in some ways, the south did win after all.
True, the south lost The Civil War to the north, but the south seems to have always had a strong cultural influence on the rest of the USA.
Pennsylvania is a northern state, but apparently, it's just as redneck as any southern state, because of the sexual harassment and the racism that has been allowed to go on at Penn State University for so many years.
OK, getting off topic here . . . . .
I recall, back in 2005 there was a controversy over Intelligent Design (ID) being taught in high schools at Dover Pennsylvania.
The so-called Intelligent Design is just a new word for Creationism, and it should NOT be taught in a science class.
Anyway, this is from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover,_Pennsylvania
Naturally, one would think that something like this would occur mostly in the southern states, but apparently, we have some northern states that are going redneck.Dover, Pennsylvania
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Education
Dover's public schools are operated by the Dover Area School District.
Intelligent design controversy
Dover received national attention in 2004-05, after the Dover Area School District voted to include the following statement about intelligent design in the biology curriculum of its schools:
The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin's Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.
Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory of Evolution, while technically not a fact, is the most widely accepted amongst the scientific community. Gaps in the Theory of Evolution exist for which there is no evidence; however, these gaps are becoming much less prevalent through modern science. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.
Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.
With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.
Aftermath
The controversial statement by the school board triggered the court case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in late 2005. The case was resolved on December 20, 2005, when Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the Dover Area School District cannot teach Intelligent Design in a science class room, due to its religious origins. The separation of church and state principle, as derived from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibits any government agency from endorsing religious points of view.
In an upset election on November 8, 2005, the eight Republican school board members who voted for the language were all defeated by the challengers from the Dover Cares slate - four Democrats and four Republicans, forced by election rules to run on the Democratic ticket - who opposed the teaching of intelligent design in a science class.
Over the past few years Dover has incorporated a Comparative Religion course as an elective for students who want to learn more about all the religions of the world.
Pat Robertson
Two days after the upset, Pat Robertson commented on the election results on The 700 Club:
I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city.
He later revisited his previous warning:
God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them.
Anyway . . . . .
I'm just glad that, Judge John E. Jones III, ruled against teaching ID in school science classes.
And guess what!!!
Judge John E. Jones III, he is a conservative Republican who was appointed by President George Bush.
And yet . . . this conservative ruled that teaching Intelligent Design or Creationism in a science class violates the First Amendment and the principle of the Separation of Church And State.
Yeah! I'll just bet that President Bush had a really big shit-fit and pissed in his pink ruffled pantaloons after the ruling at Dover Pennsylvania!
True . . . . . the words "separation of church and state" does not appear in The Constitution of The United States. That was something that was said by Thomas Jefferson.
But, here is what the First Amendment does say . . . . .
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That means, that our Government can not promote or sponsor any one religion over another, or religions of any kind.
So, our Government can not pass laws based on religion, nor prohibit the free exercise of religious beliefs. Another words, our Government can not promote or prohibit any religious beliefs.
The "separation of church and state" is what the first amendment implies, even if that exact phrase is not written into The Constitution, it is still, what the First Amendment implies.
Therefore, even conservative Republican Judge John E. Jones III was correct in his ruling that inserting Intelligent Design and/or Creationism into school sciences classes is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment, because it promotes a religious belief.
You're free to have your religious beliefs, to practice your religion all you like.
But, you can not force your religious beliefs on other people against their will.
And that is what the attempts to insert Creationism into a science class does. It promotes a set of religious beliefs, and forces those beliefs on the students against their will.
And so . . . . . to Judge John E. Jones III . . . even though you are a conservative Republican, I thank you from the very bottom of my heart, because of your correct ruling in the court case at Dover Pennsylvania.
Yeah! You did good!
But, after that, Judge John E. Jones III received death threats to him and his family from right-wing ultra-conservative religious fanatics in E-mails and phone calls, so he and his family had to come under protection.
OK, getting back on topic again . . . . .
It just seems that Pennsylvania is just another redneck state.
What happened in Penn State University is typical of what happens when a cult takes over.
And yes! Sports is just another religious cult!
The coaches are like the cult leaders, and the sports fans are all mindless sheep following their cult leaders, and harassing anyone who has the nerve to speak out against it.
In the meantime . . . . .
I have to wonder what will eventually become of all those victims were sexually molested by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
One of the victims was harassed in his high school, after the PE coach shot off his big mouth about him having been molested by Sandusky. The kid had to leave his high school before he could graduate. All of these young lives have been ruined.
This is something that will effect them for many years to come, perhaps for the rest of their lives.
Yes, as I have mentioned numerous times in these forums, that back in April of 1969 when I was 17 years old, I was beaten and raped by an older man.
It effected me so bad, I didn't want to heave the house, and spent most of my time in my bedroom. I was in desperate need of some kind of psychological counseling, but none was forth coming. No, they would just prescribe tranquilizer and send me home. This was back in the 1960s and 1970s back when nobody believed that a guy could get raped.
My stepfather had worked in the steel factory up in Duluth Minnesota until he retired, so he got a big social security check, and it covered other members of the family, and all three of us kids, my brother, and sister, and I, but as each of us turned 18, we would lose our social security benefits, unless, we were still in high school, then we would lose our benefits sometime after graduation. So, it was either until age 18 or after graduation from high school, whichever came first.
Since I was the oldest, I knew that when I turned 18 that I would lose my social security benefits. Emotionally I was shot to Hell. I was out of school, and I was in no condition to go out and look for a job. I was an emotional wreck, and I would have been unable to hold onto a job, and for a few years afterward, I didn't even want to go outside, but stayed in my room, that's how screwed up emotionally I was!
So, my mother filed a disability claim so that I would continue to get social security after I was 18 years old, and a few years later, back in 1973 we got a notice that I also qualify for SSI, Supplemental Security Income, plus Medicare/Medicaid which was added on to my social security. But first I had to see a psychiatrist up in Albuquerque New Mexico since we were living in Las Cruces.
When my mother and I went up to Albuquerque, where I saw the shrink, I really laid it on him, spilling my guts, telling him everything!
Yes! Everything, about the abuse and bullying I had been subjected to when I was in grade school and high school, about having my head bashed against a brick wall by my 5th grade teacher in an argument over an astronomy book that he would not allow me to check out from the school library, about having dizzy spells and headaches for years afterward, about how my teacher harassed me in the gymnasium in front of the other kids, and the time he punched me in the stomach with a basketball so hard that he could have easily fractured my ribs, about having been suspended from another school because I failed to climb a rope in a gymnasium, due to my crippled up left knee, and how I was suspended anyway, despite passing all my other academic subjects, and about having an emotional breakdown, and spending three weeks in the state mental hospital where I beaten and raped by a much older man.
Yeah! I really laid it on him! I nearly had another emotional breakdown in the shrink's office while talking to him.
I told him about how I didn't want to leave the house, and why I only wanted to stay in my bedroom.
Yeah! First I get fucked up the ass, and then, I was all fucked up in my head!
The two seems to go together!
Then I had mentioned to the shrink about when we had bought two and a half acres of land back in March of 1970 out in the high desert at a residential area named, Moon Gate, outside of Las Cruces, and how, it was only then, I felt like going outdoors again. I loved it out there! It was peaceful and quiet, and I would hike out into the desert to bring back cactus for my cactus garden. Then, after my stepfather died in September of 1971, we could not afford to live out there anymore, and had to move back into Las Cruces again. Yeah, I had to say good-by to my desert garden with all the cactus I had collected while living out there. I was very sad when we had to move back into Las Cruces again.
Anyway . . . . .
I really spilled my guts to the shrink!
About a couple of months later, I got a notice in the mail that I would be getting my SSI check, and also, Medicare/Medicaid benefits.
That was back in 1973, and of course, by then, I felt that I was able to go outdoors again. Living out on the high desert helped me to get over my fear of getting out again.
And then, a few years later, through the DVR, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, I started going to college in September of 1975 at NMSU, New Mexico State University, where I majored in Physics and Astronomy, and took math courses. I had to take remedial Algebra and Geometry, which were high school level courses to make up for the math I was suppose to get in high school, before I could go on to Trigonometry. I was there from September 1975 to May 1978.
But, due to my financial situation, and when the grant money ran out, I had another emotional breakdown. So, I was screwed once again!
It was back in June of 1985 when my mother died at the age of 72, so I was living alone having to cope with severe depression.
And over the years, I still had anxiety attacks and severe depression.
Then, more recently, since moving down to El Paso Texas back in 1996, back in November of 1997, I made an appointment to see a shrink. I was under a lot of emotional stress. I lived in a two bed room apartment, and my room mate had a stroke, and I was trying to take care of him during his recovery. He was about 5 years older then I was. And I nearly had another emotional breakdown from the stress.
I told my new shrink about all that had transpired during my life. We became close friends. He even drops by to visit me in my apartment.
Yeah! I'm so screwed up in the head, I have a shrink who make house calls!!!
Well . . . actually . . . He visits all of his clients, and he now works in the VA Hospital, counseling veterans of the recent war in Iraq.
Anyway . . . . .
In recent years, I have been diagnosed with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brought on by all the incidents that have transpired during the course of my life.
Yeah, I'm having to live with all these memories, and sometime I have really bizarre dreams that wakes me up in the middle of the night.
Therefore, we can never really "get over it!" as so many ignorant people like to say to us.
That's usually what happens to victims of sexual molestation and rape.
That is the first rape!
Then, being told to "get over it!" and being harassed afterward, that is the second rape!
And so, I have to wonder what will eventually become of the innocent victims of Jerry Sandusky.
Of course, psychological counseling for male victims of sexual molestation is now available, which was not available back in the 1960s and 1970s when it had happened to me.
But, I still have to wonder what will become of these young victims as the get much older.
Many of them will probably put their lives on hold, forgoing any possible career choices they might otherwise have made, if the incidents had not occurred in the first place.
Who knows! Maybe some of those students might have gone on to pursue a career in science, and one of them might have been the one who gets a Noble Piece Prize for discovering a cure for cancers, or diabetes, or AIDS.
Or perhaps one of them might have gotten a Noble Piece Prize for coming up with a unified field theory in quantum physics.
Yes, who knows what potential these young lives might have had in the future.
But NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
All we care about is winning football games!
One of the victims, after he had reported Sandusky, in his high school he was harassed until he had to leave his school and was unable to attend graduation, all because his PE coach had blabbed out to everyone there about the sexual molestation.
And then, a grandmother of one of the Penn State football players approached the mother of the student who was molested by Sandusky, saying to her, that Penn State was going to lose the next game, and that, it was all their son's fault!!!
Yeah! The young rape victim gets blamed for Joe Paterno getting fired, and that Penn State might lose the next game.
That's how it goes!
Our society has become so morally corrupt, and we only care about winning football games, and we don't give a damn about kids who were sexually molested by an assistant coach, and we don't give a flying fuck about education, and we no longer care about the lives of the children, or their future.
We're perfectly willing to flush it all down the crapper!
And for what???
All for the love of sports!
I'm fat and sassy! I love to sing & dance & stomp my feet & really rock your world!
