STATE COLLEGE, Pa. As if cued, the sea of light rose as one. More than 10,000 white wax candles held high, tiny flames flickering against the night sky.

With all eyes and attention fixated on the podium atop the steps of Old Main, the mass motion coincided perfectly with the tender words sung by Andrew Adamietz.

Lights will guide you home,

And ignite your bones,

And I will try to fix you…

As Adamietz’s voice flowed through the final chorus of Coldplay’s ‘Fix You,’ his classmates, faculty and Penn State University supporters carried him through, with thousands of voices singing in unison.

And when his final note tailed off, the emotion of the moment and the evening as a whole shone through. Adamietz replaced his blue and white Penn State winter hat upon his head, turned to face the rest of the Blue in the Face A-Capella group and broke down. Tears fell softly from his eyes while he and his group mates came together in a joyous yet heartbroken embrace.

‘It’s a message that you’re trying to convey when you sing, and Penn State really needed a strong message,’ Adamietz said. ‘And we wanted to be able to contribute our part, and that was our little sample of what we wanted to do for the college.’

In the strongest image from an event that unified a campus ripped apart by a horrific sexual abuse scandal, Penn State took the first collective step toward healing with a student-organized ‘Candle Light Vigil for Abused Victims’ at 9:30 p.m. Friday on the Old Main Lawn.

The event, created by senior public relations majors Jess Sever and Kyle Harris, drew more than 10,000 people and honored the victims of the scandal.

The vigil brought together the State College community at a time when Penn State was in desperate need of positivity. Guest speakers, including former All-American football player LaVar Arrington and student body president T.J. Bard, as well as musical performances united the audience.

‘I’m very moved, very moved,’ interim President Rod Erickson said. ‘I can’t express how proud I am of our students.’

On Nov. 5, a grand jury report was released charging former PSU defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky with a slew of sexual abuse charges. The resulting whirlwind week of negativity for Penn State culminated with the firing of university president Graham Spanier and legendary head football coach Joe Paterno on Wednesday night.

Riots ensued, along with death threats directed at wide receivers coach Mike McQueary, who initially informed Paterno back in 2002 of an alleged molestation he witnessed involving Sandusky and a young boy.

One of the proudest universities in the country crumbled to pieces, but Friday’s vigil began what will be a long and difficult restoration process by showing unconditional support for the victims of the abuse.

***

Sadly, Sheffy Sodhi is the middle ground. That she’s experienced both ends of the spectrum is horrifying, and that it would somehow apply to her university as a whole is as unbelievable as it is repulsive.

Yet as she took the podium to be the first guest speaker at Friday’s vigil, she held nothing back in sharing her experiences. And in a strange, wonderful way, the gathering of thousands on Old Main Lawn provided the perfect setting.

‘This is really hard to speak up here because I can relate to both sides,’ Sodhi said. ‘I can relate to the children, and I can also relate to the people who saw something horrendous and didn’t say anything about it.’

Sodhi revealed to an audience of her peers, faculty and community members how she was sexually abused as a child. And she also told of how she witnessed a loved one committing other sexual abuses but didn’t speak up about it right away.

It gives her a unique connection to the scandal currently hanging over the heads of everyone in the Penn State community. She can sympathize with the young boys molested and hurt by Sandusky, yet she also has compassion for McQueary and Paterno in their decisions not to pursue as many avenues as were available.

‘As a kid, as a child, it’s confusing, it’s painful, it hurts,’ Sodhi said. ‘But at the same time it feels OK because somebody you trust, someone you know and somebody you love is that person who is abusing you, so it doesn’t feel like abuse until years later.’

When a victim or observer doesn’t speak up, Sodhi said it’s a ‘fear of changing the system that we trust so much.’

Perhaps that’s Paterno, who trusted Sandusky as a member of his coaching staff and a figurehead within the PSU football program. Perhaps that’s McQueary, a Penn State-lifer who witnessed unthinkable acts by a man that coached him within a program he bled for.

And from that middle point, Sodhi viewed the thousands of candles as a way to help restore some of what was lost during those heinous acts. The vigil, she said, was a way to give back.

‘What I’m not proud of right now is that there are a lot of important people that we looked up to that I looked up, that I believed in that represented negativity and they took the light away from the children,’ Sodhi said. ‘And right now, I see us in the best way I can, giving that light back to honor that moment.’

 

***

When Dustin Yantzer was little, good behavior resulted in a night spent at Penn State with his mother, who was then a member of the word processing department.

‘It was a reward for being good,’ Yantzer said.

So when it came time to apply to colleges, he had only one school on his mind: Penn State.

‘I didn’t have any safety schools. It was just Penn State and that was all,’ said Yantzer, who graduated from PSU in 2007.

At Penn State, where he was studying to become a social studies teacher, Yantzer said he learned how to care for children and keep them safe.

At Penn State, children mattered more than anything else.

‘So you can understand why I’m personally so upset with the charges that are currently facing Penn State,’ said Yantzer, a middle school teacher at Young Scholars of Central Pennsylvania Charter School.

But that positive focus on children that Yantzer knew so well at Penn State has taken a negative spin amid the sexual abuse scandal.

Yantzer said the events that have unfolded throughout this past week give the Penn State community a chance to learn a lesson.

‘Even a good person can fail to live up to their own ideals,’ he said. ‘And it doesn’t mean that their ideals are flawed, it just means that we have to try to live up to those ideals for them. It means that in the real world, even heroes can fail.’

Although those within the Penn State community didn’t commit the crimes, Yantzer said they have an obligation to do what is right.

‘That’s part of what makes us human. Nothing has changed here because of what’s happened,’ he said. ‘It’s just shown us the consequences of what happens when we fail to live up to our obligations.’

Still, Yantzer is not heartbroken over the scandal. The heartbreak comes if the victims are forced to face the burden of the crimes on their own — something that was not at all their faults.

He reminded the victims — while fighting back tears — that the more than 10,000 at the vigil Friday night were there to help them through this tragic time.

‘We are Penn State, and we are hurt,’ he said. ‘But the only thing that matters right now is that we are here for you.’

***

This former victim goes unnoticed. Somewhere among the crowd outside Old Main is a girl who debated taking her own life after being sexually abused more than 150 times.

Can you see her? Probably not.

In the four years she was abused between the ages of 12 and 16 there was only one individual who noticed something amiss. And he saved her life.

‘As we stand here and hold a candlelight vigil, look around you and realize that not everyone is who they look to be,’ Jess Sever read aloud during the vigil from an anonymous letter. ‘I am currently standing among you, but would you know it if you saw me? Or do you look around you but not really see what is in front of your face?’

Sever shared with the audience a heart-wrenching letter submitted by someone who attended Friday night’s event. In painstaking detail it shared the abuse she suffered from someone within her own home.

At school, she tried to keep it a secret. She never had friends over and never spent time at someone else’s house. Yet no one noticed her withdrawal.

‘No one knew anything else that was going on,’ Sever read. ‘I started to think about suicide, because I cannot stand what was going on in my house.’

When the young girl plucked up the courage to tell a resource officer in high school, he laughed in her face and called her a liar. That prompted a desire to hang herself or slit her own throat, the letter read.

But eventually, someone caught wind that things didn’t seem right. Within three days of meeting a nameless boy, the hell was over.

Child protective services, the assistant district attorney and five different lawyers showed up at the school to save her after the young man made a few calls.

She knows firsthand that it only takes one person to save someone, and that was her lasting message by the letter’s conclusion.

‘I ask one thing of you,’ Sever read. ‘For every one day that you live, look around you and see what is there. You never know whose life you could save.’

***

Walking to the podium atop the historic stairs of Old Main, LaVar Arrington looked larger than life. But perhaps the two-time Penn State All-American linebacker wasn’t bigger than the situation facing his alma mater.

‘I know it’s rough, it’s been long,’ Arrington said. ‘I dropped everything I had going on to make sure that I could get up here and be with my brothers and sisters. This is tough, very difficult for this to have happened.’

Arrington, a three-time Pro Bowl selection with the Washington Redskins, told the thousands gathered on Old Main that the news of the past week is just a call to action—a challenge for the entire Penn State community.

‘The worst crime to commit here right now is to leave and forget what happened,’ said Arrington, referring to the alleged sexual abuse.

Cases of sexual abuse happen all the time and it is much too prevalent in society, he said. Arrington called on those gathered to restore the pride of the old Penn State, one which set the standard for the entire country. The Penn State community has always done what it has needed to do and this situation is no different, he said. A challenge waiting to be conquered.

‘This is a call,’ Arrington said. ‘It’s our time and it’s our duty. … If this isn’t enough to wake us up and get motivated and look at one another and be a protector of one another — if this isn’t a good enough wake-up call — then I don’t know what is.’

Arrington said he would be more committed and vigilant than ever before to battle the sexual abuse case hanging over Happy Valley. None of the victims deserve to live in the prison they have been placed into, Arrington said, adding that Penn State must band together as one to fix this problem.

‘And tonight, let this be the start of the greatest story ever told,’ he said. ‘That a challenge due to the evil acts of an evil person and evil people, the challenge has been issued. Now let it be known that we waged war as Penn State to make a difference.

‘ … Leave here tonight with a resolve and an understanding that you possess the power to change things. And I will be there with you and we should all be here with one another.

‘Because we are …’

‘Penn State,’ the crowd screamed before breaking into applause.

***

T.J. Bard, Penn State’s student body president, spoke last at the vigil and told those gathered how disturbed he was by the recent events.

‘Like you, I’m appalled on the events which have come to light and on behalf of the student body, I offer my heartfelt sympathies to each of the victims and their families,’ Bard said. ‘Our top priority is and will be the well-being of the victims and closure for all involved in this tragedy.’

Bard said the united Penn State community will support the victims as they try to move forward with their lives. The university will also continue its efforts in the prevention of child abuse in the future, he said.

Although no pride can come out of the developments of the past week, the community can help guide and support those who need it most, Bard said.

‘This has been a trying time, but no matter the pain, no matter what sorrow and what anger we feel, it pales in comparison to the pain of those victims and so many millions of victims of child abuse across the world and we must never lose sight of that,’ Bard said.

But the amount of people in attendance at the vigil encouraged Bard. The image of the community packed onto the Old Main Lawn is the vision of Penn State the world should see, he said.

‘We cannot let the actions of a few define us,’ Bard said. ‘We are the ones that will unite with compassion for the victims and their families. All of you here tonight are what Penn State represents.’

Right as Bard finished, the bell of Old Main began to chime, marking the start of a moment of silence. The thousands gathered held the silence — with their candles raised high in the air — through all 10 rings of the bell.

The moment was followed by the Penn State Blue Band playing the alma mater, to which those in attendance swayed from side to side embracing the person next to them while singing the song symbolizing the tradition of Penn State, which became tarnished by last week’s events.

***

‘Alright, so here we come to our conclusion,’ said Sever. ‘I can’t thank you enough how much it means to me that you’re all right here. I’m sure you do know, because you probably feel it for one another but you truly — I cannot express how much you guys mean to me. You are my Penn State family.’

And as the vigil ended, the crowded started a ‘We Are Penn State’ chant, repeating it several times. The booming chant echoed into the State College night and provided the community with some positive noise it has been without for the past week.

Friday night was about the victims of the scandal. The name Sandusky was never uttered, while Paterno’s name spoken only once. There were no riots. No overturned news trucks. Just thousands of Penn Staters holding their candles underneath the stars of the November night.

As members of the crowd began to leave the vigil to continue their Friday nights, hundreds of students left their candles in a group on the sidewalk in front of Old Main.

One last act of togetherness after a week of separation and division, perhaps leaving light to guide the Penn State community home.

 

When you’re too in love to let it go,

But if you never try you’ll never know,

Just what you’re worth…

 

mjcohe02@syr.edu

jdharr04@syr.edu

Published on November 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm