Penn State | Candlelight vigil draws thousands, unites university community

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.

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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."

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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.