Traces of the Joe Paterno statue have been detected in the “We Are” sculpture in addition to the portions of the bronze used for the Rodney A. Erickson Food Science Building. Integrating parts of Paterno’s statue into the sculpture allows the beloved coach to keep one eye on his old stomping grounds at all times.

You may be wondering what took so long for this discovery to be made – after all, the statue has been in place since 2015. The answer lies in the university’s own metals research, a part of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

As part of MATSE 425: Processing of Metals, students were tasked with observing metal statues around campus in various weather conditions in order to make note of how various treatments react and age differently.

A pair of seniors who requested to remain anonymous for fear of administrative repercussions were the first to raise the alarm.

They found that the entire smiling face of Coach Paterno became visible when you observe the “We Are” sculpture from the correct angle at sunset. They immediately brought this to the attention of their professor, who urged them to remain quiet with the information.

The two simply couldn’t remain quiet and reached out to Onward State to share their findings. We’ve contacted the Materials Science department for a comment, but to no avail.

We’ll update this post as more information becomes available.