Joe Paterno got fired last night for his inaction in response to the rape, abuse and molestation that allegedly occurred under his jurisdiction.

This is not ground upon which I am comfortable treading, and for that I suppose I should be thankful. Nothing in my 30-plus years of life experience has prepared me to understand what would make someone do the things that Jerry Sandusky supposedly did, nor what would make anyone else protect someone they knew did those things, nor the unspeakable trauma endured by the victims. It’s all way beyond my scope. Sorry if that seems like a copout. All I know is that it’s awful.

But I can add a short footnote, perhaps, in qualified defense of the demonstrating Penn State students widely reviled as idiots.

They are, in large part, most likely idiots. Of course. They’re people, for one thing, and people are in large part idiots. And flipping over news vans in defense of a coach fired for keeping mum about child rape is idiotic behavior, no doubt. Even if you believe Paterno was been made a scapegoat, as they apparently do, it’s just not the most productive way to get your point across. Doesn’t make you look like you have reasonable things to say.

Life at a four-year college offers — to most with the means to attend — a weird, isolated terrarium in which to pass some of our dumbest years free of real-world repercussions. Students drink heavily and make out with strangers, and blow off responsibilities and experiment with controlled substances. There are costs to all those actions, obviously, but generally they’re college-level costs, all of which can be chalked up to the learning experience.

And I know that’s not the case for every student, and I know plenty of 18-year-olds in this country and every other one never get the opportunity. I’m not saying any of it is the way it should be. But it is that way: Some significant portion of this country’s teenagers get shipped off to institutions where they are allowed to spend four years doing moronic things mostly free of adult supervision before they graduate and get body-slammed by vicious reality.

That shouldn’t excuse every stupid thing every college kid does, of course. It’s hardly black-and-white. Plus, they’re still subject to the law, and throwing rocks at cops and indiscriminately starting fires are bad ideas at any age. But if you went away to college, think about some of the things you did there before you scold the undulating masses of chanting morons at Penn State for their behavior. Think about the misguided political stances you took, the pretentious performance art engagements, the spring break indiscretions. What would Twitter have said about you?

To say that the college kids are offering tacit approval of the atrocities Sandusky committed is very likely attributing to them a thought process that does not exist.

They’re college kids. College is a confusing time full of overreaction. Their school and their school’s football program, toward which they clearly feel a lot of loyalty, is in crisis. They’re overreacting. And I’m near-certain they’re chanting whatever stupid things they’re undoubtedly chanting because they haven’t yet found a rhythmic cadence to accompany chants like, “I don’t know why I’m angry at my parents!” and “Every day I grow more suspicious that I don’t matter!”

And you can bet a lot of them just want to go outside to see what all the fuss is about, and then some portion of those just get swept up in the nonsense.

I should note, for the record, that our man Devon is among the rare precociously reasonable college students, and he’s on the ground in State College tweeting reasonable things. Give him a follow if you’re interested in the student’s perspective.