It would have been too easy to acknowledge the events of this year with a brief sentence buried in an an otherwise self-indulgent senior column.

News of the child sexual abuse scandal broke with more force in State College than anywhere else in the country. There were certain obvious ways in which this happened. The aftershocks from this fall continue to reverberate around Happy Valley, however, and the worst may be yet to come.

Here's what I think we need to remember now more than ever.