"Paterno," Once Ubiquitous at Penn State, Is No Longer Uttered Patrick Smith/Getty Images There are fewer flowers and signs at the former site of the Joe Paterno statue, which was taken down in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Every week now there are fewer flowers on the berm where Joe Paterno's statue once stood outside the football stadium at Penn State. When the statue came down in July, 12 days after a scathing report accused Paterno and top administrators of covering up the early signs of Jerry Sandusky's crimes, flowers marking the site grew into a mound several feet high. The plastic-wrapped roses, violets and carnations are mostly gone or withered. The berm itself has been sloped and manicured to blend in, not to call attention to the statue that used to be there. Make no mistake, Penn State will not forget Joe Paterno; many in State College, Pa., would still consider it a privilege to stand the disgraced statue in their backyards. But as the football team was ending it first postscandal season this weekend, Paterno had noticeably retreated as the emblem of a campus. In the Penn State community these days, if you ask people to talk about Paterno - to re-examine his decisions, to retrace his successes and failures, to rethink his motives and behavior - the response is increasingly no response. The topic once on everyone's mind is no longer on everyone's lips. If there is a consensus, or a most common response to a reporter seeking further reflection on, or examination of, the once legendary coach, it is this: Penn State is moving on without Joe Paterno. Not un-remembering him, just not summoning him, or his contested meaning, very much. The onetime king of Pennsylvania is like the statue that represented him: stored away, out of sight and, if not totally out of mind, in a dark recess waiting for an ultimate fate to be determined. "Some people at Penn State still want to discuss every detail - what did Joe know and when," said Christian M. M. Brady, dean of the Penn State Schreyer Honors College. But most here are done with that. They are tired of it. There is compassion for Jerry Sandusky's victims and a passion to raise our awareness. There is a fatigue for the rest of it. Larry Backer, head of the university's faculty senate, conceded that in recent months, positions in the Paterno debate had hardened, changing the discourse. Paterno is still a saint to many in a region known as Happy Valley, and he is a sinner to others in the same community. People know which side of the debate they stand on, and minds are made up. What is the point of discussing it? "So there hasn't been much talk about the former coach at all," Backer said, choosing, in a first reference at least, not to use Paterno's name. Paul B. Harvey, head of the classics and ancient Mediterranean studies department, interacted with Paterno over several years because Paterno and his wife, Sue, financed multiple undergraduate scholarships in his department. Harvey now rarely recounts his dealings with the Paternos. "People have stopped talking about Joe Paterno here because they are indeed ready to do just that - to move forward, to move on," Harvey said. But we've been told that when our students leave campus to interview at graduate schools or for jobs in the marketplace, they feel it is necessary to bring the scandal up even if it wasn't brought up by the person interviewing them. That is telling on the grander scale. At Penn State, the Paterno T-shirts that were once big sellers and prominently displayed in the windows of crowded apparel shops on College Avenue are now at the back of the store, and Paterno-themed souvenirs are far from the front-line attractions they once were. The investigation of Penn State's handling of Sandusky, led by Louis J. Freeh, the former head of the F.B.I. and a onetime federal judge, damned Paterno and other senior university officials, as well as the "football first" culture that suffused the university. Paterno had not only failed to act to stop Sandusky from sexually abusing children, the investigation found, but had actively worked to hide his crimes. "He's gone, and I'm sorry about that," Harvey said of Paterno. But we are not resurrecting the nuances and details of the case any longer. We know the harm that was caused, and no one shies from that. But there's also sympathy for the Paterno family. Discussing it - bringing him up again and again - is only making it harder on them.