Page 66 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

7.

Tim Curley and Gary Schultz were charged first. Two of the most important officials at one of the
most prestigious state universities in the United States were placed under arrest. Spanier called his
senior staff together for an emotional meeting. He considered Penn State to be a big family. These
were his friends. When they told him the shower incident was probably just horseplay, he believed
they were being honest.
“You’re going to find that everyone is going to distance themselves from Gary and Tim,” he said.
But he would not.

Every one of you in here has worked with Tim and Gary for years. Some of you, for thirty-five or
forty years, because that’s how long Tim and Gary, respectively, were at the university.…You’ve
worked with them every day of your life, and I have for the last sixteen years.…If any of you
operate according to how we have always agreed to operate at this university—honestly, openly,
with integrity, always doing what’s in the best interests of the university—if you were falsely
accused of something, I would do the same thing for any of you in here. I want you to know that.
…None of [you] should ever fear doing the right thing, or being accused of wrongdoing when
[you] knew [you] were doing the right thing…because this university would back them up. 9
This is why people liked Graham Spanier. It’s why he had such a brilliant career at Penn State.
It’s why you and I would want to work for him. We want Graham Spanier as our president—not
Harry Markopolos, armed to the teeth, waiting for a squad of government bureaucrats to burst
through the front door.
This is the first of the ideas to keep in mind when considering the death of Sandra Bland. We
think we want our guardians to be alert to every suspicion. We blame them when they default to
truth. When we try to send people like Graham Spanier to jail, we send a message to all of those in
positions of authority about the way we want them to make sense of strangers—without stopping to
consider the consequences of sending that message.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

1 At the time, that was a record amount for a U.S. university in a sexual-abuse case. That record was soon broken, however, in
the Larry Nassar case at Michigan State University, where damages paid by the school may end up being $500 million.
2 Charges also included perjury (which was quickly dropped) and child endangerment. Eventually the two men pled guilty only
to “child endangerment” so that all other charges could be dropped.
3 Just as this book was going to press, Spanier’s conviction was thrown out by a federal judge, the day before he was to finally
report to prison. Whether or not the prosecution will appeal the ruling is—as we are going to press—unknown.
4 This was not unusual for Sandusky. He showered all the time after workouts with Second Mile boys, and loved playing
locker-room games. “What happened is…the horsing around would lead to him starting like a soap battle,” one former Second
Miler testified at the Sandusky trial. “There was soap dispensers beside each one of the showers, and he would pump his hand
full of soap and basically throw it.”
5 The idea that traumatic memories are repressed and can be retrieved only under the direction of therapy is—to say the least—
controversial. See the Notes for a further discussion of this.
6 The evidence gathered by Ziegler on this point is compelling. For example, when Dranov testified in the Spanier trial, he said
he had met with Gary Schultz on an entirely separate matter late that February, and had brought up the issue of Sandusky
“since this was maybe three months after the incident and we hadn’t heard any follow-up.” Will we ever know the exact date?
Probably not.
Ziegler is the most vociferous of those who believe that Sandusky was wrongfully accused. See also: Mark Pendergrast, The Most
Hated Man in America. Some of Ziegler’s arguments are more convincing than others. For a longer discussion of the Sandusky
skeptics, see the Notes.
7 The prosecution’s report on Allan Myers is a doozy. An investigator named Michael Corricelli spoke to Myers’s lawyer, who
told him that Myers now claimed to have been raped repeatedly by Sandusky. His lawyer produced a three-page account
allegedly written by Myers detailing his abuse at the hands of Sandusky. The prosecution team read the account and suspected
that it hadn’t been written by Myers at all but rather by his lawyer. Finally the prosecution gave up, and walked away from one
of the most important figures in the entire case.
8 Courtney had doubts about Sandusky’s innocence. But in the end Sandusky’s cover story was just too convincing. Someone
that goofed around with Second Mile kids all the time in public. Curley then called the executive director of the Second Mile,
John Raykovitz. Raykovitz promised to have a word with Sandusky and tell him not to bring any more boys on campus. “I can
only speak for myself, but I thought Jerry had a boundary issue, judgment issue, that needed to be addressed,” Curley
explained. Sandusky needed to be careful, he felt, or people would think he was a pedophile. “I told him,” Raykovitz said, “that
it would be more appropriate—if he was going to shower with someone after a workout—that he wear swim trunks. And I said
that because…that was the time when there was a lot of stuff coming out about Boy Scouts and church and things of that
nature.”