Like it or not, Rick Santorum is one of Penn State’s most famous living alumni. Santorum served for twelve years in the United States senate, ran for President of Iowa, and even has a noun named after him.

They say you can judge the importance of a man by the number of emails that he sends — or in this case, the amount of personal documents that he accumulates. One could assume that a man of Santorum’s stature would result in a plethora of personal documents that would be valuable to archive for historical record, right?

Wrong.

In an interview with the National Review, Santorum claimed that he tried to donate a collection of his personal papers to Penn State but the University denied his contribution. “I don’t know where they are now,” Santorum told the National Review. “Off in a warehouse or something. They didn’t want ’em.”

As the article notes, the University Library keeps an extensive collection of documents related to Penn State in its archives. Even UPUA legislation and documents are properly cataloged and archived in the library collections, and we all know how important those are.

Penn State spokesperson Lisa Powers responded to Santorum’s claim. “In early 2007, our library was asked about the possibility of archiving Senator Santorum’s official materials,” Powers said. “Discussions never got beyond this initial phase. We did not turn down his papers.”

The fine readers of the National Review Online had this to say about the situation:

“Penn St. can’t keep a pedophile off their campus for the better part of 20-years, but they can keep Rick Santorum’s papers off the campus,” commenter Scott Wilson said. “Good to know they have their ‘priorities’ straight.”

“Would you expect anything less from the institution that enabled and covered up Sandusky’s pedophilia for years?” added a reader who goes by Hamiltonian_Conservative.

If only we all shared the moral immaculacy of the National Review.

Santorum has been in the news several times over the last year for remarks about his alma mater, most recently for his criticisms of the Freeh report (Thousands of Penn State fans just went “Oh shit…I agree with Rick Santorum”).

Santorum was also heavily criticized for his comments last year when he said that his grades were docked at Penn State by liberal professors who penalized him for his conservative views. It also came out last February that Santorum owns at least five apartments in State College that he rents out to students.

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