opinions editorial opinion Meeting the challenges of change 1951. Penn State’s first Encampment for University administrators, faculty and stu dents. Encampment began the tradition of meeting in an informal setting to discuss the problems facing Penn State. At the time, Penn State freshmen were being reprimanded for ignoring the cus toms rules of carrying Bibles, wearing black bow ties and name cards while walk ing on campus. University President Milton S. Eisenhow er was faced with the problem of declining enrollment. The student population dropped 8 percent to 11,463 for fall semester. Eisenhower also announced the Student Union fee would remain at $7.50 for the semester. And a crowd of 15,000 spectators was expected to attend the football season opener with Boston University at Beaver Field. The issues have changed over the years, but the tradition of providing a forum for students and administrators to discuss key topics has continued. The University has made tremendous progress in keeping up with the times. But' Encampment 1984, “Challenges of Change,” showed the entire University community that Penn State has many new problems that must be solved. This year’s Encampment, like those in the past, provided an informal setting that gave students a chance to get acquainted with busy administrators without the stuffy setting of an Old Main office. Likewise, administrators and faculty had the opportu 7 nity to meet students and hear their opin ions. Moreover, members of the State College community were able to bring their ideas and knowledge to the forums, as well as hear the concerns of students and adminis trators in the problems facing town and gown. Faculty members from the Universi ty’s various colleges brought fresh, new ideas to some old problems. Working along these lines of inviting a diverse group of administrators, faculty and students, the Encampment committees Columnist applications are still available in 126 Carnegie and will be accepted through Sept. 1. One of our best hopes for creating rich and satisfying lives Editor’s note: Below is the commencement address delivered by R. Dean Mills, direc tor of the School of Journalism, to the University’s summer graduates. Becaue of space limitations, sections of the speech have been edited. The occasion abounds in ironies, There is first the irony of niy appearing before you at this, moment. Here you are, ready to be graduated. It has taken several thousand of your and your parents’ dollars to get you to this point. You have endured a score or more of all-nighters. You have been quizzed, tested, graded, harassed, hassled, and harangued. Even, on occasion, made to think. You have slept through pardon me, SAT through, nearly endless numbers of nearly endless lectures. You have been semester converted. You have plowed your way through your final final. forum Now you sit here, perceiving light at the end of the tunnel. Champagne sits iced, waiting to pop. At least I hope it’s waiting. The mood, in a word, is celebratory. You have much to celebrate. And what does Penn State give you as a reward? Do you get what you deserve, as speech, say, by Eddie Murphy? Do you get Harrison Ford? Rick Springfield? Ronald Reagan? Ger aldine Ferraro? No such luck. So we’re all just going to have to get through this as best we can. I said the occasion is rich in ironies. Here’s another: My subject today is mass communica tions a largely twentieth century phe nomenon that is probably more important to our daily lives than any other institution, with the possible exception of politics and education. I am myself a former practition er in the field, as a newspaper reporter. And I come from a branch of the liberal arts, communications, which educates young people for careers in mass communica tions. , The irony is this: My background is in the field. I make a living teaching about the • « • in the future should invite more students and faculty from throughout the Common wealth system. Their ideas often shed light on difficult problems and are helpful be cause the problems faced by University Park often concern those students and staff at the branch campuses as well. Each forum presented at Encampment was enhanced by the group of resource persons who offered their specialized knowledge of the problem at hand. With their information and the audience’s ideas, the entire group was able to discuss the problem and review the progress being made by the University. However, University Trustee Marian U. Coppersmith was right when she said Penn State cannot rest on its laurels. The ideas and plans discjussed last week need to make it beyond the informal discussion of En campment Some problems such as the quality of teaching assistants in the classroom have been debated and discussed at great lengths beyond Encampment. The University has made some progress in this area, as well as academic advising and minority retention. These advances, however, were realized because people were willing to work throughtout the year and find a solution. But other problems, such as sexual ha rassment and alcohol abuse at Penn State, have been ignored too long and need to be confronted more often not just for two days in August. While no one claimed to hold all the answers to these problems, the willingness to work to solve the problems was evident to everyone who participated. And this spirit of cooperation needs to be remembered in the coming months and years at Penn State. If the spirit of Encampment is put away on the shelf until next August, the status quo at University Park will continue. But if this spirit is taken off the shelf and implemented in the offices throughout Penn State, our University will grow and truly meet the challenges of change. field. We in communications education help prepare young people to go out into the world and, as it were, commit mass com munications. Yet I come today to warn you about mass communications. You will notice that I did not say “warn you against mass communications.” If I have not come to praise the mass media, neither have I come to bury them. I do not believe the mass media are intrinsically evil, not even that massest of media, tele vision. More than that, I believe that in mass communications lies one of our best hopes for creating free and rich and satisfying lives. From the time of the first mass medium, the printed book, the mass media have been closing the physical gap which isolates one human being from other human beings. Printed journalism, for example, has been a key component of American democ racy since before the beginning, when a bunch of scrappy amateur journalists like Madison, Franklin and Adams used the printing press to argue for revolution. Electronic communications media have drawn humans ever closer together for more than a century and a half so much so that most of us take them for granted. A few are old enough to remain in awe. • •• The point is that the mass media can be powerful forces for the better in our lives. We know, most of us, the essential role they play in the exchange of information and the stimulation of debate in a free society though we may want to forget it when the imformation displeases us and the debate annoys us. We understand, intuitively, the aesthetic power of the mass media when we watch an elegant play in a professional football match or experience the visual oomph of an Eisenstein film. The mass media can give us better lives. They help us to examine, critically, the world in which we find ourselves, and to wish, always, for a a better world. They connect us to th'e rest of humanity. And they offer us aesthetic pleasure. My message is this: Modern mass media are not by nature evil. But they are powerful. And so we must make sure, as with anything powerful, that we use them and not they us. And one secret of keeping the upper hand, of making sure that humans use wisely the technology of modern mass communications, lies right in this hall. It depends on each of us, as individuals, and on all of us, as part of the human community. My message, in other words, is that the mass media are too important to be left to the professionals. That is why, though I speak as a former professional journalist, and as a professor who now helps educate future professionals in the mass media, I speak to all of you. We must answer, together, questions like the following: • In an age in which every human being on earth will be able to communicate with every other human being, will we have anything to say to one another? • Does a nation rich in communications technology have the right to beam its cul ture, by direct broadcast satellite, into countries poor in communications technolo gy? • To ask the same question from a differ ent set of assumptions: Should individuals in communications-poor cultures, rather than their governments, have the right to decide which signals to allow into their homes? • How do we assure that the fragile, but perhaps correct, voice of the individual is heard in an age in which satellites and mass circulation newspapers address millions? • The mass media give us ever more information about our world. Does the infor mation help us lead more rational lives? Or does it, as French philosopher Jacques Ellul argues, overwhelm us, so that we can make no rational decisions at all? • American judges and juries, reflecting perhaps a frustration over their sense of the power of the mass media, have been punish ing newspapers and broadcasters with mil lion-dollar libel judgements. Will journalists be priced out of their role as watchdogs against public and private wrongdoings? I have no immediate answers to these questions. I don’t expect you to. Think of them as take-home exams that you and the rest of us need to answer over the next several decades. You go out into a world that has more and more powerful mass media than at any time in history. Next year it will have more yet, the year after, more yet, and so on. At the same time we, all of us, think little about how the media influence our lives. And to ■ , ; tf WEST* Remind voters Reaoan has appeared ]n dozens of Carter in even/ third sentence. Promise to bKHn tfcmbinp m five minutes; iarpete Should include Moscow, Newibnc, v.C.... Q wpHSEr daily Collegian Tuesday, Aug. 28,1984 ©1984 Collegian Inc. Alecia Swasy Editor The Daily Collegian’s editorial opinion is determined by its Board of Opinion, with the editor holding final responsibility. Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of The Daily Collegian, Collegian Inc. or The Pennsylvania State University. Collegian Inc., publishers of The Daily Collegian and related publications, is a separate corporate institution from Penn State. Board of Editors Managing Editor: Marcy Mermel; Editorial Editor: Ron Yeany; Assistant Editorial Editor: Dan Levine; News Editors: Brian Bowers, Lori Musser; Sports Magazine Editor: Greg Loder; Sports Editor: John Severance; Assistant Sports Editors: Matt Michael and Ron Leonard); Photo Editor: Paul Chiland; Assistant Photo Editor: Bill Cramer; Arts Editor: Diane DiPiero; Assistant Arts Editor: Jeff Bliss; Campus Editor: Ann reader opinion No students During the semester break an ad ran in the Centre Daily Times encour aging people to shop downtown. Prominently displayed as a heading for the ad was the title “NO STU DENTS” in bold letters. To me this represented a blatant Susan M. Melle Business Manager disregard toward the character of all students. It seems to represent an exploitation of the students. On the one hand, the students’ absence for the break was looked upon as favorable by the downtown merchants. On the other hand, now that the Fall Semester has begun, the show windows downtown are plas the extent we as individuals do not think about that, and think about it in the critical way you have learned at this university, our lives are being shaped for us. And to the extent that we do not think about the ques tion as a society, we are in danger of yielding up our futures to forces we not only do not control but do not even recognize. Does anyone doubt the power and the pervasiveness of mass communications? • • • In the average American home, the tele vision is turned on an average of 6.5 to 7 hours a day. An American high school graduate has spent 22,000 hours in front of a television set, 12,000 hours with a teacher. By the time he or she is 17, the average American child has seen 350,000 commer cials. And here’s something, as a parent, I found particularly unnerving: In one survey, researchers asked children four to six years old whether they preferred television or their parents. Twenty percent said they preferred TV over Mommy. For ty-four percent preferred it to Daddy. But of course television is primitive tech nology. Just wait till Mommy and Daddy have to compete with projection television, high-resolution TV, interactive video, video tex, direct broadcast satellites, computer data bases, and the rest of the new commu nications technologies that were dreams yesterday and are household furniture to day. How will we cope? Again, I emphasize I am not knocking mass communications. I love a gadget as much as the next American. I prepared these words on my personal computer, after research aided by my telephone modem hook-up to the library. As I worked at the computer, I listened to Mr. Mozart and Mr. Beethoven through one of the four sets of stereo speakers in my house. This was possible because a New York radio station bounced signals to a State College cable service wired up to my house. If I got bored with that, I could have switched to my own audio cassettes or records though not, alas, to a digital disc player which I desper ately need, though my wife can’t under stand why. We have, of course, not just a television set but a video tape recorder to back it up, and the usual asssortment of radios throughout the house. I am not about to trade all of this for the battery-operated radio I listened to, when we could pull a station in, on the lowa farm I 1M STRATEGY SOUTH 1 - Sound traditional themes 1 Civil War Remind wtena of iondales membership on ’•rteral Commission. Matturro; Assistant Campus Editor: Gail Johnson; Town Editor: Mark DiAntonio; Assistant Town Editor: Brenda Bogut; Features Editor: Anita Yesho; Graphics Editor: Tony Ciccarelli; Copy Editors: Karen Nagle, Chris Kay, Anita Katz, Sharon Taylor, Teri Wells; Weekly Collegian Editor: Laura Dunhoff. Board of Managers Sales Manager: Michael E. Mey ers; Assistant Sales Manager: Beverly Sobel; Account ing Manager: Mary T. McCaffrey; Office Manager: Kathleen E. Connolly; National Advertising Manager: Marianne Smulski; Assistant National Advertising Man ager: Laura Helbling; Layout Coordinator: Corinne Sala meh; Marketing Manager: Valerie Plame. About the Collegian: The Daily Collegian and The Weekly Collegian are published by Collegian Inc., an independent, non-profit corporation with a board of directors.composed of students, faculty and profession als. Students of The Pennsylvania State University write and edit both papers and solicit advertising material for them. The Daily Collegian is published Monday, Tues day, Thursday and Friday during the summer, and distributed at the University Park campus. The Weekly Collegian is mailed.to Commonwealth campus students, parents of students, alumni and other subscribers who want to keep abreast of University news. grew up on. Or for the total isolation my father suffered when he grew up on an lowa farm, until a crystal radio set in the 1920 s brought him crackly voices from Chicago. No, the danger is not the technology itself. Or, even if it is as some theorists, like Ellul, argue the technology is here. Somehow we have to deal with it. And this brings me to the final irony of this occasion. I am talking today about communications technologies which are changing our lives. Let me say that again: I am TALKING about technologies. We have the technology to have videotaped this speech. Or we could have printed out a copy for each of you, complete with snappy graphics. We could .have taken the diskette from my Apple computer and had the whole thing typeset immediately, using new print technology. Or, perhaps better yet, if you all had com puters as you all will, and soon we could have just zapped the speech into your electronic mailbox, along with a message indicating you had or had pot been grad uated. Why, then, do we bother with this antique ritual? Why do we wear this medieval drag as we go through it? Why, in other words, are we going through a ceremony which, except for a few electronic enhancements, would be at home in the 1300 s, before Europe had even discovered movable type? We do it because there is a part of us that realizes the importance, the magic, of cere monies. We are in part embarrassed by the ceremony of these funny costumes, so out of character in this overly-rationalist age. And yet in part our spirit likes them, cherishes this remnant of ritual in an age that is so barren of ceremony. So this final irony is itself a form of mass communication. These gowns we wear com municate to us, if only unconsciously, the importance of the university an intellec tual haven which has always promised,, if not the answers to our questions, at least a place in which to discuss them. I suggest that a university, a great university, can help us find the answers to the important questions we have about mass communica tions. The American philosopher John Dewey once said: “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.” He was not talking about “I Love Lucy” or “The Young and the Restless” or “General Hospital.” Continued on page 9 The Daily Collegian Tuesday, Aug. 28, 1984 Uv' f'H - ' ■’ /,* \ V\^x \x - s \ \ w%^ ! ■ tered with a myriad of “WELCOME BACK STUDENTS” signs. In essence, I feel that the running of this ad constituted blatant hypocrisy on the part of the party responsible for running the ad. ‘ Richard P. Stringer, senior-telecom munications Aug. 24 ■ ' ■ opinions One of our best hopes for creating rich and satisfying lives Continued from page 8 He was talking about the kind of mys terious process by which humans, talking to one another, discover what it is to be human. They generate, in communication, the mean ing which gives life its meaning. John Dewey pointed out that it is no accident that commu nication and community have the same root. For it is by communication that we form and maintain community. And it is only in com munity that we become human. In the Western world, as ever more domi nant technologies have transformed and retransformed life on the outside, universi ties have tried to maintain the tradition of that kind of communication. Universities have tried, sometimes successfully, some Only you can ] foPEN EARLY. OPEN P ARE YOUR INTERESTED IN?: prevent forest fires. I ' , A MAJOR in the Social Services field I KINKO'S business day starts early and ends late, I A structured supervised/practicum EXPERIENCE as part of your college training ■ SO we're here when you need US most! a degree from a nationally ACCREDITED Social Work program y»—v I ! 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This is why we like to call ourselves communities of scholars. It is the community to which you have belonged for the past few years, and to which we hope you will come back, either figuratively or literally. And the university community, it seems to me, can provide hope that mass communica tions will be used wisely. The university can help in three ways: First, it can provide the kind of strong, liberally-based professional education that assures'that competant, ethical, and respon sible young people continue to enter jobs in mass communications. SKAMNOri'PETOV N PM V X S V z AX' A HUB BALLROOM ihj o a ©l3d. \% ■ %v \\ O % £ p o o Second, the university can insist that all what good universities have always done, students not just those who plan to become whatever the subject matter they were teach mass communications professionals have ing. They have provided their students with a an Understanding of the role of mass commu- critical spirit and the intellectual tools to nication in modern societies. Every student exercise it. I hope we have given you some should have an introduction to the vast thing of that spirit, and some of those tools, amount of knowledge accumulated through during your stay in the Penn State commu research on communications. Any course nity of scholars. I hope you will continue to could begin with the following lesson: On use both after you leave, every television set, on every radio, on every Of course, you shouldn’t think of this as the computer, there is an off switch. end of your relationship with Penn State. Third, the university can provide a forum Think of it, instead, as an intermission. Or in which members of the public and profes- perhaps an interruption in your mail service, sionals of the mass media can discuss ideas Up to now you’ve been getting letters from for ensuring the information and debate the bursar’s office demanding that you pay essential to a free society. your tuition fees, your dorm bills, your li- All three points, really, go to the heart of brary fines. From now on, you’ll be getting . X Y v a v z RlO3 II O N W V X ' -1 * ~ X o^° s e<' eS . *«&*s*&&>* • V" 6 , W 5, . cSP-ffifc' dIW v so^ <e V ce S^V 6 ° veve^So^VtV' 0 The Daily Collegian Tuesday, Aug. 28, 1984—9 very politely worded letters from us pleading for donations to the university. I make light of what is in fact a serious point. We do need your help. Cash is fine, of course. But even more important, we need your help in supporting the CAUSE of public higher education, and of course the specific cause of Penn State. It is a great university. You have enriched it by your presence, by your participation in the Penn State commu nity. We hope you feel that you have been enriched by Penn State. We hope you will continue to be active members of the commu nity, whose other members are spread around the world. And we hope you will come back to see us now and then. Best of luck. Congratulations. illilllil c,e<' e * >*, '■' 6° „ . $6 •" : ,;O o'^ «"}//// e^V 0
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers