Uh, upstater, you brought up the analogy to capital punishment to support the notion that the act was so horrendous that "a penalty is not a deterrent." See quote your below:
My post points out that if an economic penalty is significant enough it is very likely to be effective. The Ford case is a well known example real world of how that would work. There the egregious behavior was deciding the cost of a relitively low number of deaths was less that making a small cost repair on a big number cars. Deaths, and the inevitable law suits that would follow, became an acceptable 'cost of doing business' to Ford. Here the decision was that leaving a pedophile at large, and even allowing him access to university, while denying access to other what a better economic choice then allowing the university's reputation to be sullied. Children being victimized became an acceptable cost of doing business to the university as long it was not linked back to PSU. A huge financial penalty, whether in the form of a post season ban over a number of seasons, or some other form, would almost certainly change the calculus for other institutions facing a similar situation. This is a much closer analogy than the effectiveness of the death penalty, don't you think? It shows that the severity of an action, or the bad press that springs , from its discovery is less of a motivator than an enormous economic penalty. The more I think about it the more I think is that is exactly what needs to happen here.
