One of the greatest enemies to a coherent society and to shared human rights and dignity is the obsessive pursuit and defense of pride. Many try to instill a sense of self-confidence in our children. But self-confidence is not the same as self-obsession. You can readily tell the difference by the way that the self-obsessed are so intent on defending their pride that they believe they cannot be wrong, they cannot make mistakes, and their pride is more important than their society.

Excessive pride can be one of the more destructive forces among human beings, with the idea that some may believe that they or their group someone have superior rights, superior value, superior importance, and superior dignity than others. We cannot be individuals or a society which works towards equality and social justice when we are burdened with a preoccupation regarding pride.

In many cultures, pride is even viewed as a sin. In Judaism and Christianity, Proverbs 11:2 states that: “When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.” Catholics view pride as one of the “Seven Deadly Sins.” In Hindu cultures believers are warned in The Gita, XVI. 4, that pride and arrogance belong “to him who is born to the heritage of the demons.” Pride is rejected in Buddhist cultures. In Islamic hadiths, Allah Ta’ala states “Verily, Allah does not love the proud ones.” Much of the world’s religions reject pride as something that undermines their values and peaceful society.

But to those cultures and philosophies where we believe that we are the most important part of the universe, pride is promoted. In the long run, such pride is self-destructive even in those cultures. Pride keeps some from recognizing and admitting when they are wrong or have made mistakes. Pride enables some to believe that they have a “right” to be superior over others. Pride gives false confidence to others that they deserve their personal pleasure and whims to be catered to, even if it means the suffering of others. Pride ultimately leads to societies based on endless wars among its members in the endless quest for MORE – even at the cost of undermining the very Earth itself. To some, there is nothing more than pride and seeking MORE.

Even in ancient Greek cultures, however, such obsession with pride was viewed as a societal sickness. One of the grave crimes in ancient Greece was the crime of hubris, and the view that one could believe that they were so superior to others that they had the right to abuse weaker individuals. One of the examples of the crime of hubris in Greek culture was the raping of young boys.

This brings us to the case of the Pennsylvania state University (PSU), my alma mater. My alma mater is where so many have been preoccupied with Penn State Pride, seemingly above all else.

The reports of raping of young boys at the PSU football facilities have sickened me as they have sickened sane individuals across the nation. The scandal is revolting and disturbing to all people with any decency. What is just as troubling are the cases of those within the PSU leadership who reportedly failed to do everything they could to stop such abuse of children. That institutional scandal has been unimaginable to me as an alumnus.

This too is part of the problem at the Pennsylvania State University. My horror and shock is partly due to my respect for my father, who struggled for 10 years to get his college degree there. My father was a symbol of a man who would sacrifice for his family and his community. His story of working his way from a janitor to becoming an engineer, by taking part-time classes at the Pennsylvania State University was one of the great success stories and profiles of courage in my life and in my family. My father – he was a living symbol of Real Courage. His courage and his tenacity to help his family and his society were guided by his years of accomplishments at the Pennsylvania State University. Financial difficulty and health problems never took his educational accomplishments away from him. When my father died in November 2010, it was like someone tore out half of my heart from my chest. I have continued to live and work, but it has been a deep struggle for me. One of the things that kept me strong was his lifelong example of courage and commitment to do the right thing, and remembering my father’s example of courage.

So it was a double blow a year later, when the PSU child rape scandal appeared in the national press in November 2011. Penn State was one of the accomplishments that my father and I held dear to our hearts. Penn State was a place where we had many special moments; it was in a part of my heart where hope, dignity, and happiness had their brightest days.

We had seen things changing over the years. In his final years, father and I had gone to football games at the Pennsylvania State University. He was beginning to lose mobility in his legs. We had to arrive at the campus very early in the morning to get a parking space in the handicapped parking lot. This was not because of the many handicapped attendees, which were less than 10 percent of those in the parking lot. It was because of the groups of youngsters with minivans, SUVs, and trucks who used other people’s vehicles with handicapped stickers to get choice parking spots in the handicapped lot near the stadium to host their tail-gate parties and drinking binges. Yet my father, step by halting step, walked with his hands on my shoulders and my arm around his waist as we took a few steps and then stopped, then took a few steps and then stopped, and took a few steps and then stopped. All the way. We had to be there at the crack of dawn for a parking space, so that my father could struggle like this. My father wanted to have a last few chances to cheer for the Penn State football team, as an excuse to visit the campus and for a few days remember the good old days where he struggled as a young man and student to get a college degree. What an accomplishment. A college degree.

As we sat at Penn State’s Beaver Stadium, surrounded by young people, the game began with the Blue Band playing the Alma Mater song… and the dirty secret that few of us spoke about, how many, many of the youngsters sang “we don’t know the God D*** words” (and laughed), as we tried to sing our alma mater asking “let no act of ours bring shame,” as my father and I shook our head, and just let ourselves believe that some of the kids there were drunk. No they weren’t, but it made us feel better to think that way. My father, who I nearly had to carry up the concrete steps of Beaver Stadium, step by step, just to be there with fellow Penn Staters, who couldn’t imagine the sacrifices and the struggle that he made for his college degree, including vulgar, spoiled youngsters who didn’t deserve to be in the same room let alone sit beside my father.

But that is the pain of my loss still speaking, and the struggle I too have made so much with the sin and social evil of pride. It is the same struggle I have had with pride that has made this scandal so difficult. It has been a sense of disgrace of my alma mater, when the facts are that my alma mater is no different than anyone else’s alma mater, and when the facts are that every college, educational institute, and organization will have bad apples, criminals, and those who will fail in their social responsibility. Still the weight of our alma mater song “May no act of ours bring shame, To one heart that loves thy name” still feels like a ton on my heart. Our pride led us to believe that Penn State was somehow different, somehow a last resort of dignity and honor. Our pride blinded us to the youngsters who would disgrace singing the alma mater song, and who would later be the type of students who would riot in the streets. Our pride refused to let us see what was clearly in plain view. We ignored a culture that continued to grow at Penn State, where football became too important in the Penn State community and culture. We could see it, but we didn’t do anything about it.

We were wrong. Our social responsibility, not our Penn State Pride, is and must always be our first and foremost priority. As a PSU alumnus myself, I want to publicly apologize to all those and to all those children who suffered as a result of the culture of blind pride that allowed some to believe that they could look the other way at the alleged crimes of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

To the Penn State alumni, our alma mater has gone from its brightest days to its darkest nights. There will be those who debate actions or individuals. There will be those who will seek to point fingers and who will seek to deny accountability. But in the brightest day and the darkest night, we need to learn from our mistakes and grow as individuals and communities from our mistakes. We need to challenge ourselves as individuals and as a group. But we can’t begin to change, when we can’t begin to admit our mistakes and reject our pride that has caused so much damage. To those who seek to defend those that cannot admit mistakes, you too need to think about whether perpetuating the past will help us overcome our tragic mistakes to grow and change in the future.

My father, God love him, loved the Penn State community, no matter how decrepit and damaged it had become. He loved how it represented the opportunity for change and second chances for people to grow above their current station and be a positive contribution to society. I would like to say I have the decency and love of my father, but the truth is I do not. He had more decency in his finger than I have in all of me. To those of the Penn State community who would defend those that who looked the other way while little boys were raped, if it were just me, I would reject you and the Penn State community in disgust and shame.

But it is my blessing that I still have my father’s hands on my shoulders even today to guide me in the right direction, no matter how difficult the journey, and no matter how impatient and temperamental I may be. So I know that the right thing to do is to seek forgiveness for all. The right thing to do is to pray for the health and healing of all. I know that the right thing is to call for change in the Penn State community, not by turning my back on it, but by engaging with the Penn State community to seek positive change.

Change begins with apologies. If “We Are Penn State,” then we are also all those who looked the other way during all these years of this disgraceful scandal, because we enabled a culture that let it happen.

We Are Penn State, and We Are Responsible.

We need to end the dialogue of PRIDE and begin the dialogue of RESPONSIBILITY for our society and our community.

We need to stop talking about what we “deserve,” and about what we can do to help others.

We need to stop obsessing over those in Penn State that some alumni feel have been slighted, and being working to change a community where the football team became so important that so many were willing to make such morally compromised decisions. The past is the past. They were wrong, we were wrong. Our pride was our downfall. We must not let the past to define our future.

Instead of being Penn State Proud, we must choose to be Penn State Responsible.

Choose Love, Not Hate.  Love Wins.