Seeing all the media coverage of Penn State's sex abuse scandal in recent days has reminded Kosmo of another recent scandal locally involving the hazing incident at Walled Lake Western.
To Kosmo there are plenty of differences and similarities between the two incidents.

Differences
Obviously, the crime is much more heinous at Penn State than at W.L. Western. Having a kid tied to a pole is nowhere near as appalling as sexually abusing children. The main perpetrators involved in the Penn State scandal are adults who acted like ignorant kids. The perpetrators in the W.L. Western case are kids. At Penn State, people lied in front of a grand jury. At Western, people just haven't been talking much. Also, the cover-up at Penn State was years of ignorance. In defense of Western, everything happened so quickly that it didn't have a lot of time to react. One final difference is that a grand jury has released the evidence of the Penn State scandal. The Wixom Police Department still hasn't released anything regarding Western.

Similarities
For one, there's been blame towards media and accusations of a "mob mentality" at both places since the victims have seemed to be secondary to preserving the institutions that are the football programs. At Penn State, students rioted when Joe Paterno got fired. At W.L. Western, parents attended a school board meeting to voice their support for an assistant coach and the team. In both cases, many didn't have the victims as first and foremost on their minds. Another big similiarity is the level of the cover-ups. It was bad in both cases. Again, both places seemed more concerned about protecting the football institutions instead of putting the interest of victims first, and thus were not honest about what really took place. It made both look MUCH worse. Further details of both incidents will probably continue to come out in the future.