SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY -- Tents have been set up on the Quad and out-of-state license plates line Marshall Street.
It can only mean one thing – Syracuse University graduation is days away.
Sunday, proud students and parents will fill the Carrier Dome – capping off a school year clouded by a sex abuse scandal surrounding the basketball program that calls that stadium home.
First – two former ball boys accused fired assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine of molesting them as children.
Then, they filed a defamation of character lawsuit against head basketball coach Jim Boeheim and Syracuse University.
“You can't miss it, it's in the news so I did see it,” said Peter Carlson, in town for his son’s graduation.
“We followed it pretty closely,” said Andrew Carlson, a senior at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at SU.
But students and their families say it hasn’t overshadowed their experience on the SU Hill.
For some – it just got old.
"(At first) it was a big shock,” said SU senior Angela Laurello. “Then it kind of trickled away to something I'd read up on every so often.”
“I did have to answer questions from my friends on Facebook but, I don't think it really put a damper on anything,” Andrew Carlson said.
And SU seniors and their parents said the scandal surrounding Bernie Fine doesn’t make them second-guess their decision to attend Syracuse University.
Students said the school has set them up for success after graduation.
“I think it's a very separate thing, the university has a basketball team and it's not about its academics whatsoever,” said Angelo Laurello.
"I'm really not worried about it, in fact -- I'm extremely proud that she's graduating from Syracuse,” said Angela’s mother, Renee Laurello.
Proud parents and proud students, ready to put the scandal behind them.
