How a society treats the most vulnerable among us most certainly defines our collective soul. The revelations at Penn State are a clear example.

That the nation should be outraged is one thing. Child abuse in any form is abhorrent. And there will be many who will find it convenient to prick the reputation of one of those major university football powers that we thought "did it the right way." Others are simply sick of the premature anointing of Joe Paterno as a living saint.

For those who have been involved with universities or any institutional setting where the primary purpose is to provide services to vulnerable persons, the circumstances are particularly stressful. Here we find that although some persons lived up to the letter of the law (i.e., reported through the chain of command), others did not. But we do know that even of those who did their legal duty, most did little more. Perhaps nothing more.

One of the perspectives that has been spoken about extensively is the Penn State community itself. How is it reacting? I've read that people are hurt, and angry, and maybe bewildered. Some rally around the coach, but no one can imagine that the children should not have been more central to the decisions that were (or were not) made so many years ago. In a community where there was such a self-conscious sense of decency, how could that occur? How could the formal leaders of a "great" institution be so careful to do the minimum, if that?

Perhaps the answer is that the very culture that developed around graduating a large number of football players created a cocoon that protected not the children, but the idea that the moral leaders of Penn State could never make an error in judgment. Joe Paterno was described by one commentator as the moral compass of that community. If so, how does one imagine that the moral compass might ever point in the wrong direction? If the community allowed itself to believe that true, then everyone's first reaction to the situation would have to be disbelief.

In that context I think about the 28 year old adult who observed sodomy in 2002. Clearly the event concerned him, however, not in a manner that caused him to intervene or report to the police. Maybe it was his personal relationship with the family of the accused that caused him to sneak out of the shower. In the end he reported the event to his father and then Joe Paterno. Maybe in his mind going to Paterno represented the best way to resolve the problem. Paterno was the moral compass. Paterno would handle it properly. By going to Paterno, maybe he thought he had truly done his duty.

We have for many years suggested that quality management is no one person's responsibility. It is not just Joe Paterno's responsibility, nor just the President's responsibility, nor just the responsibility of the police. It is everyone's responsibility. When we cede so much of our moral duty to one or a few people, perhaps we have no right to be angry at anyone but ourselves.

Keep in mind that whatever the apparent goodness of Penn State's football program in comparison with others around the country, every program exists in the context of the BCS bowl dollars that will attach themselves to the most successful program. All programs, even Penn State's, exist in a world where they have become the "minor league" for the NFL. (Think about it, the most profitable of all sports leagues -- unlike baseball and hockey -- refuses to provide an alternative venue for the development of players who do not want to attend college.) Many programs also exist is the small town world where a smaller community of elders often controls thought and access to small town rewards. In other words, there are systemic issues that would likely have affected how all the principals might react to what should have been moral outrage of child sexual abuse. (In these first few days of the news, one of my first reactions is Henrik Ibsen's play, An Enemy of the People, only in this case no one ever chose to play the role "the enemy".)

As this process moves forward, we should ask ourselves the following question: If Penn State football and campus leadership could cave to the pressures of the BCS, the NFL and the social environment in which it exists, should we not look at this as an opportunity to ask some fundamental questions beyond the immediate problem of who should have done more? If all that college athletics might cause is an errant circumstance where a player trades a jersey for a tattoo, so what? But if the complex mix of sports, education, community and culture can allow a child to be raped in a shower, we all have to consider whether it is the system that is also sick. (Presently there seems to be a groundswell of opinion blaming the 28 year old as the immediate cause of the injustice. Why didn't he immediately intervene? In retrospect he should have; but to focus attention on that element of this sad story is the equivalent of finding the rank-and-file employee closest to a disaster and blaming him for the consequence.)

In the end, whether a university, human service organization, or General Motors, we need to create systems where everyone feels responsible not to the system, but to the moral compass to which the system points. And that moral compass must reside in all of our souls. It is only in that circumstance that we have a right to expect the ordinary among us (i.e., the vast majority who are not destined to be heroes) to succeed in protecting our most vulnerable citizens.