Ohio State’s scandals reveal systemic failures in institutional power, donor control, and athlete protection across U.S. higher education
Original framing: “Ohio State reels from multiple scandals amid wider crisis in higher education” — The Guardian - World
Research in sports psychology (e.g., Mountjoy et al., 2016) confirms that high-pressure athletic environments correlate with increased rates of abuse, particularly in male-dominated sports like wrestling and football. Studies on institutional betrayal (Smith & Freyd, 2014) show that victims of abuse within hierarchical organizations are less likely to report due to fear of retaliation and institutional loyalty. The Ohio State case aligns with these findings, where the athletic department’s culture of secrecy and loyalty to ‘the program’ enabled decades of abuse.
Ohio State’s scandals are not anomalies but symptoms of a higher education system that has internalized neoliberal values: athletic programs as profit centers, donors as unaccountable stakeholders, and students as expendable labor.
The crisis intersects with historical patterns of institutional betrayal, from Penn State’s Sandusky case to South Africa’s #RhodesMustFall movement, where elite institutions prioritize prestige over people. Marginalized voices—Black athletes, Indigenous scholars, and survivor-activists—have long warned of these failures, yet their insights are sidelined by a media and academic elite invested in the myth of institutional benevolence. The solution lies in dismantling the extractive university model, replacing it with systems rooted in restorative justice, labor rights, and Indigenous epistemologies. Without this, the cycle of abuse will persist, masked by the hollow rhetoric of ‘excellence’ and ‘tradition.