Pennsylvania State University Alumni and Students for Child Rights, Dignity, and Safety

We are alumni or students of the Pennsylvania State University (PSU), who seek to share our voice on the essential priority of child human rights, dignity, and safety, as essential aspects of our values, morals, and responsibilities as human beings.

Among all of our human rights, our obligation and responsibilities for children's rights and safety is our foremost priority as adults. Our children are humanity's future, and their rights, dignity, and safety is the responsibility of every human being.

We unequivocally condemn the actions of all those individuals and organizations associated with or linked to the Pennsylvania State University who have performed or enabled child sexual abuse, child rape, and other reprehensible acts against children in any way.

We seek to raise our voice to make it clear that we support the punishment of all individuals, groups, charities, and institutions actively involved in, enabling, or concealing such child sexual abuse, child rape, and other reprehensible acts against children.

A clear message must be sent by our society that the horrific crimes against children performed by those associated with PSU, including acts performed on PSU campus facilities, will never be tolerated and must never happen again.

To those who are only focused on our legal responsibilities, we remain committed and devoted to our societal, moral, and ethical responsibilities for child safety, dignity, and human rights - as we are committed and devoted to human rights for all of our fellow human beings.

We also unequivocally reject any organizations and social climate which allowed individuals associated with or linked to PSU to believe that they could have priorities that were greater than the priority of children's rights and safety. We do not and will not support any organization, rationale, or social climate that believes that our children's safety is not always our first priority. Furthermore, we reject such thinking of social climates with priorities "greater" than our children's rights - as completely opposite to our values, morals, and human responsibilities.

In our shared responsibility and accountability for children's rights and safety, there is no individual, organization, or institution that is ABOVE such human priorities, or who must not be held accountable for actions or inactions resulting in harm and abuse against children. We urge the PSU, PSU alumni, and PSU students to measure and honor its leaders, present and former, by this top priority for all of us regarding our children's welfare, not by their other actions or other accomplishments.

Finally, we urge the Pennsylvania State University to publicly release all records involving PSU leaders, PSU employees, the PSU football program, and any individuals associated with or linked to PSU to set the record straight on their actions and inactions. We urge the PSU to accept, as an institution, its responsibility and accountability in this situation.

We urge the PSU to demonstrate its responsibility and accountability, and it is commitment to change at the PSU, not merely by words, plans, and checks. We urge the PSU to demonstrate its commitment by significant change in the organizations associated with child sexual abuses, including (at a minimum) discontinuing the PSU football program. We must demonstrate that we truly are committed to the words in our Alma Mater song: "May no act of ours bring shame."

The July 2, 1862 Morrill Act of Congress was designed to permit land grants by states to improve our nation's education. This Act signed by our President Abraham Lincoln, had the goal of allowing states to issue land grants for colleges and universities "to promote liberal and practical education." These very words are etched into Old Main today, and must be a reminder of the goals of the PSU.

The PSU must return to this institutional focus as a place of higher education. It must end the social climate where any department of the university feels sufficiently empowered to detract from the human rights and educational priorities of the university.

Such change requires real sacrifice from PSU as an institution and a community. Such change requires ending the past and beginning the future. We urge the PSU to end the past focus on the PSU football program, and to discontinue future football games at PSU. We urge the PSU to start a new beginning by creating a Bachelor of Arts program for Child Welfare and Safety, as a new university major and program within the College of Liberal Arts, with investment to educate PSU students in child human rights, dignity, and safety - that should be the priority for all human beings.