r Editorial Opinion The HUB is no Watergate complex, and Jeff Glazier and Steve Matt bear no resem blance to Richard Nixon. After all the .allegations have been made, the abuses that president and vice president of the Association of Residence Hall Students, Glazier and Matt, were supposed to have committed, though regrettable, are not impeachable offenses. Glazier’s and Matt’s records could never be considered unblemished. Their records have been marred with misuse of privileges and responsibilities which were entrusted to them by the students living in University residence halls. But although it would be easy to condemn Glazier and Matt as the University’s own William Calley, in the end, nothing would be ac complished. Because like Calley, who was by no means blameless, Glazier and Matt would become scapegoats when the i t Newsworthiness An open letter to Mike Mentrek News Editor The Daily Collegian I am curious as to the Daily Collegian’s policy in selecting newsworthy stories. It pleases me to find that a philanthropy is received as a newsworthy item in your paper. I am referring to the picture of the Beta Theta Pi “Rock-a-Thon.” The Betas, Tri-Delts, and Chi-O’s are exemplary of the great efforts put forth by the entire Greek system'. Back in early September, Mike, if you will recall, I requested news coverage of the Sigma Phi Epsilon “Plan thropy.’’ ,At this .time you toiid.me it would be impossible to cover it because it would set a precedent for the Collegian to cover every organization’s fund raising affairs. I was told that the only philanthropy projects given coverage are those with competition and pageantry. Although the “Rock-a-Thon” is truly a great effort for an equally great cause, I fail to see the competition and pageantry you stated was needed for Collegian coverage. •Our “Planthropy” raised over $6OO for the American Heart Association. Moreover, every member of Sigma Phi Epsilon devoted a large amount of time and effort toward helping the Heart Association. It is this spirit that is present in the entire Greek system, and it is this spirit that should be rewarded by the media. News coverage is a pat on the back to every organization, and each group deserves it for their efforts Mike, I think you have set your precedent No beauties On page 9 of the Oct. 3 edition of The Daily Collegian, there was an article entitled, “Agriculture Queen to be elected Oct. 7.” Roy Prescott, Ag Hill Festival chairman, explains that “the evening’s highlight will be the College of Agriculture’s queen contest. Unfortunately, Roy is still holding onto past tradition. The contest to be held this coming Saturday is not a beauty contest or.a queen contest or even a princess contest. Officially, this contest is called the Ms. College of Agriculture Contest. There are representatives from 13 Ag Hill organizations in the contest. The qualifications considered are the contestant’s effective representation of her sponsor club, her knowledge of general agriculture and the College of Agriculture, her involvement in activities at the University, her leadership qualities and her communication abilities. Although the contest is very traditional, changes are being made to update it this year, unlike past years, there won’t be I USED TO 86 In! "THE MEvUSRbREK GAME MvtSEL F...! * Lay off essence of guilt lies in the system in which they are involved. Glazier and Matt should not have issued the floating meal tickets nor should movie co-op money have been mismanaged as it was. But if the potential for abuse is inherent to the ARHS system, as it seems to be, censuring these two would be as useful as removing a spot from a house painter’s overalls. It was evident that Tuesday’s and Sunday’s ARHS meetings were some of the most productive meetings the organization has ever had. The call for their resignations, seen by Glazier and Matt as a vote of no confidence, should be taken no further. The point has been made the two have been reprimanded. Now it is up to ARHS and its officers to put aside any ill feelings and work effectively with Glazier and Matt at the helm. The next step should be a Larry M. Shrager Sigma Phi Epsilon, President 12th-premedicine and psychology Letters to the Editor long gowns, crowns and walking down the aisle. Hopefully, next year the contest will be for both females and males, and the winner will carry the title of Representative of the College of Agriculture. Options It is encouraging to learn that the Centre Regional Council of Governments will be involved with a study on rental housing problems in State College. , , 5 .,, As a new graduate student, this issue is fresh in my mind since I encountered a number of misfortunes in my housing search. The initial outlook for my housing preferance was dim; the University’s information indicated apartments were available to registered full-time married graduate students living with a spouse and-or a preschool child; residence halls were for single graduate students. As a single professional person, I looked on these housing options as being discriminatory. Did I not have the right to choose or decide on my own housing needs in a specific en vironment? Instead, I was limited to one of these options since I am single. Hasn’t the University recognized as yet that life styles have changed and that individual differences do exist in making housing choices? This dilemma is complex, I am sure, for'both the community and the student body at large. Therefore, I highly encourage and support the development of a task force that will study the rental housing situation from a variety of perspectives. Perhaps the day will come when students will be free to choose from an assortment of options when deciding upon a place to live. Male restraint I am amazed at Joan Volker’s letter of October 3 . . . “Citizens are ruled ... by the majority.” I, too, can come up with statistics to support any side I’m on. Supposedly, adoption is a preferred alternative to abortion, and we’ve all heard about the long waiting lists. What we do not hear about are the even-longer lists of non-white babies, babies that will be waiting for a very long time because no one wants them. Where is the consistency in the rhetoric of right-to-lifers who take the stance of a threatened church hierarchy and its right wing supporters, including those who oppose all kinds of social programs that would make abortion less frequent sex more thorough investigation of the allegations to find what it was in the system which allowed the abuses. Then crack down on things like poor bookkeeping policies and lax enforcement of rules requiring residence hall association officers to submit a yearly budget. One suggestion to prevent further abuse of the system was to have an administrator co-sign all purchase orders for ARHS, to keep a check on the use and amount of money spent. This would solve nothing. Such a requirement would say, in effect, that student government can’t work without having the administration constantly looking over its shoulder. A student organization with a past which proves its potential for the future like ARHS should not be scrapped out of frustration with abuses which, if any lesson has been learned, will soon become nothing more than an un pleasant memory. Betty Brockett lOth-agricultural engineering Ms. College of Agriculture ’7B Oct. 3 Mary Kalymun graduate-home economics education Oct. 1 Rock reflects Seventies' blandness Pete Townsend, guitarist for the Who and elder statesman of rock music, lamented in an interview last spring that rock no longer holds the significance it once did. Rock, he argued, had always been something outside the mainstream of society, a musical form which spoke to a select few and was careful to remain at least at the periphery of popular taste. As Townsend saw it, rock had now been integrated into society and, as such, had little more to say. It would thus seem that Townsend misses the days when rock music served to articulate the concerns of the late sixties and early seventies. At the time of his comments though, while America wallowed in the apathetic backlash which grips us to this day, much of what had been counterculture in the unrest of the sixties had been assimilated and was now standard fare. Pot smoking was as accepted a fact as the three martini lunch, a new (if somewhat nebulous) “free morality” ruled the day, and rock had escaped the countercultural closet. The only missing ingredient was a grasp of the ideology that had prompted such change, the sense of which had vanished. The hard rain had fallen, the storm passed, and education, child care, and contraception? The same Penn sylvania legislature that “echoes” the will of the majority, voting to override Shapp’s veto of a bill to prohibit use of state funds for abortion, “echoes” the will of that same majority when it overrides a veto of a bill which would reinstitute the death penalty. The status of woman is insignificant, as usual, when she is not even considered, and the real concern is the “right” of the unborn fetus —which may be male (or gay!). Capitalists have used the so-called sexual liberation to further control women, and to increase their own profits, manipulating fears of sexual inadequacy and desire for sexual ecstacy to see items like cigarettes, cars, and airplane tickets. Men have taken advantage of the sexual double standard of old, to enforce sexuaj chastity; on women,.and now, they-Jake advantage of the mythical single standard to pressure women who will not go along with their demands. The right-to-choose is not a duty to choose abortion, nor is it a duty to choose pregnancy. Most pregnancies are unplanned and unintended, but not necessarily unwanted. The prime mover remains man, legislating, doing the research that keeps women relying on dangerous lUD’s and hormonal pills, if she would control her own body. Why hasn’t something been developed to control the fertility of men? Men can solve the abortion “problem” at the source, if they can restrain themselves. No action Recently, a new girl in McKee Hall asked me why McKee was not locked at night like most dorms on this and other college campuses. I told her that a group of students in the dorm who were interested in locking the doors could not get any serious action taken. I also told her the residents voted last Spring to have all doors locked after midnight while residents would be issued keys. Although residents voted to lock the doors over five months ago, action has yet to take place. There are a number of reasons for locking dorm entrances at night. Locked doors can aid in deterring rapes, vandalism, theft and vagrancy. Locking doors will result in increased dorm security and an increased feeling of safety among dorm residents. For example, a girl living in McKee last year was so frightened she refused to go to the bathroom at night without a can of mace. Living in fear is unfair and unnecessary. Will it take a vicious crime to lock the doors? Is it too much to ask students to use a key after midnight? Carol Byrd-Bredbenner doctoral candidate Oct. 4 rock’s role as standard bearer for an angry generation disappeared. In Townsend’s mind, the future of rock music, having lost what he sees as its underlying design is at best, uncertain. There is indeed little doubt that over the past several years rock has suffered a sort of identity crisis, as it has sub divided into more distinct categories such as progressive rock, classical rock, heavy metal, soft rock, jazz rock, album oriented rock and pop rock. Through it all, what stands out most clearly is the constant mreging towards a central point along the rock music continuum. A.M. and F.M. are at a point where, in just a short time, formats may be almost indistinguishable. Long gone are the days when success in one listening audience precluded success in another. Tom Butch Such movement towards a central ground in music reflects the continuous reciprocal interplay between music and society, for parallel to music merging to an amorphous midpoint is the societal movement towards the same. The in- Jean C. Guertier ex-president, Homophiles of Penn State Oct. 4 dividualism that marked the sixties has faded to the point where, once again, anyone who falls outside a neatly designed set of behavioral parameters is seen as a threat to our homogeneity. The death of such social dichotomies as “freak” and “jock” has contributed to our movement to that same cloudy point towards which music is now traveling. Rock, in the Townsend formula, has little business here. Enter disco, the first musical form sufficiently decadent to adequately reflect the sheer blankness of the late seventies. It should surprise no one that disco, initially seen as a passing fad, the latest version of the Nehru jacket, has not only survived, but gone on to per meate American society. Disco, pure musical saccharine that it is, is here to stay —■ at least for the time being and accepting this fact may yet become an imperative to sociocultural survival as disco more firmly establishes itself as a social institution. The music scene, with the increased popularity of disco, was thus ripe for revolt. Punk rock, aimed at taking rock music back to the roots from which it had strayed was, however, more revolting than revolt. The roots of rock 4 licN£© Priorities This letter is in response to Debra Mohry (4th-liberal arts) and those like her who feel they need to squawk about the in door sports complex. You people are going to have to realize that at Penn State we have our priorities. The varsity teams are important here. It would be too much to have them practice in the cold, when all that’s at stake is the convenience of a few clubs, organizations and the general student body. As for the money, what’s a few hundred grand here and there? By the time the bills come due, we'll all have forgotten about the decisions and who made them. t ,If you’re npt on a ,varsity team, I can see why, you feel>- cheated, but come 1 ori, sacrifice a little, for the good of our players and PSU’s image. Keep in mind that we have competent, capable- ad 1 ministrators up there making these decisions for us. Let them determine the priorities. Nay! Bob Ewing proclaims that he should “have the right to be protected by an adequately equipped police force.” However, I would like to ask him, who should protect us from this adequately equipped imitation police force? The thought of these characters carrying guns sends such shivers down my spine, that I just want to get on my bicycle, and leave this campus as fast as I can. But my bicycle is unregistered, and I have a much lesser desire to get “blown away” for this offense. On the issue of “Should ’the Campus Police carry weapons?,” I cast my vote nay!!! -Collegian Judy Stimson: Judi Rodrickty Business Managers Letters should be brought to the Collegian office, 126 Carnegie, ; in person, so proper identification of the writer can be made, - although names will be withheld on request. I Dave Skidmore Editor Even Keith Moon, before he died, had • been worried about growing old. ... Tom Butch is a 12th term social fare major. K-riikg. \wg?> Nick Mueller State College resident Oct. 4 Siward Ypma lOth-political science Oct. 4 were not, as punkers assumed, primal; yelping and single-chord guitar thrashing, and punk made it quite clear that rock was and is severely ill. In the end, the feeling expressed by. Townsend reflects not so much a loss purpose for rock. Rather, they address trends which are parallel both in music and in society as a whole. No single movement has prompted the changes in the role and status of rock which he, addresses. It is simply the dynamic nature of a dry-look society which, at" present, seems content to stumble along 1 the road towards sheer blandness it has constructed. *' In a world where Travolta-esque disco’ dandies gyrate incessantly ta prefabricated music and such sensitive lyrics as “boogie oogie oogie” and . “shake your booty,” where one cry df. “Woody is a Pecker” muffles thev collected shouts of every campus protest • or activist movement of the last several - years, rock as it once was must take a back seat. lie
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers