6 I FRIDAY, JAN. 15, 2010 r tii 1)\II Collegian Rossilvnne Skena Editor-hi-chic( Holly Colbo Bucincss Alanago About the Collegian: The Dail, Collegian and The Aeekl, Collegian are pub .ished bg Collegian Inc an noependent nonprofit corpo- ratoc with a board of direc tors :ornoosed of students. ..it arm professionals Pennsylvania State University students sate and edit both papers and solicit advertising :ar them. During the fall and spring semesters as wet as the second six-week summer session. The Daily Collegian publishes Monday through Friday. Issues are distributed by mail to other Penn State campuses and individual subscribers. Complaints: News and edito nal complaints should be pre sented to the editor. Business and advertising complaints should be presented to the business manager. Who we are The Daily Collegian's edito nal opinion is determined by its Board of Opinion, with the editor holding final responsibility. The letters and columns 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 publi cations. is a separate cor porate institution from Penn State. Editorials are written by The Daily Collegian Board of Opinion. Members are: Lexi Belculfine, Matt Brown Kevin Chilli, Adam Clark, Rich Coleman. Matt Conte, Caitlin Cullerot, Abby Drey, Katherine Dvorak, Michael Felletter. Matt Fortuna, Mandy Hofmockel, Allison Jackovitz. Phenola Lawrence, Andrew McGill, Dave Miniaci, Nate Mink, Elizabeth Murphy, Dan Rorabaugh. Erin Rowley, Heather Schmelzlen, Caitlin Sellers. Shannon Simcox, Rossilynne Skena, Kevin Sullivan, Jacquie Tylka, Alex Weisler and Bill Wellock. 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Noise proposal a logical move When a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does anyone care if it makes a sound? Similarly, when a bar is being loud and no one nearby minds, does it deserve a noise citation? Under current regula tions of downtown bars, no noise whatsoever is allowed to be heard ema nating from these facili ties. A new proposition from the State College Tavern Owner's Association chal lenges this and would benefit the community as a whole. Obviously, noise can always be heard outside bars. Considering the number of people who fre- ACT OF GOD _c( NPR program embarassing for PSU By Rich Coleman Ira, what have you done? Thanks to Ira Glass, host and producer of the radio/TV docu mentary series "This American Life," I feel uncomfortable about my rela tionship with State College. I say "rela tionship" because when you live in the same place for a significant amount of time, you unknowingly develop a relation ship with your surroundings. You get to know the location's habits, its idiosyncrasies, pecca dilloes, traffic patterns, where the closest ATM is and little things like that. But the relationship with State College isn't the same for all. I could always discern that living in this town as a resident and a student are probably two completely different experi ences. MY OPINION But I never really got a true feeling of that difference until listening to "This American Life's" recent episode titled "#1 Party School." That would be us. Glass and his team of produc ers (which includes local resi dent Sarah Koenig) documented a football weekend last semes ter. They interviewed and observed students in their natu ral environments while talking with local businesses, President Graham Spanier and other staff in order to get a feel for what it is like to be at a No. 1 party school. Turns out we're all just a bunch of destructive alcoholics. , OK, well, that's a harsh gener- quent these establish ments and the inclusion of bands and other enter tainment, it's expected. The proposal raises the legal noise level for bars to 62 decibels, which makes more sense than a rarely enforced zero toler ance law. This will not only be more realistic but also will help local businesses and give bars greater free dom. The proposal will also hand regulation cur rently handled by the Pennsylvania Liquor Con trol Board to the local police force. Such a plan allows for more localiza tion. Enforcement would be 3 ACT OF MMAN7 c , 35f `~~ alization. But when the resi dents here install motion sen sors around their houses to combat trespassing drunks or can correctly identify the sound of a stop sign being dragged across the ground, then we have officially become, at the very least, bad neighbors. If you're a student and haven't listened to this 70-minute exposé, I recommend doing so. You'd have to be living in some fantasyland of complacency to listen to this and not feel a tiny bit disgusted. Glass and Koenig begin the episode by simply observing drunken activity around Koenig's house. The amount of times they come across public urination and destruction of property in a mere half-hour on a Friday night is astounding. But hearing about this stuff secondhand from me won't result in any startling revelation. We all know that mostly every one's got the ability to be a royal schmuck when they're wasted. If you haven't been the sloppy drunk then you've at least been affected by one in some way. This is just one of those involun tary improprieties of the "We Are!" culture that are unfortu nately too familiar. But when you step back from everything and see how our dependence on alcohol and its effects must look to an outsider in this case through the eyes of a radio show host and his crew who mjake their living doc umenting different places and people you start to rethink things. Suddenly, the normalcy of binge drinking and pregaming turns into absurdity. In one segment of the episode, Glass goes to a fraterni ty party and asks one of the handled primarily on a complaint basis. Current ly, authorities only receive about 12 complaints a year about noise, so the plan wouldn't highly increase the need for law enforcement. The new plan is fair, with checks and balances for both businesses and local residents that would n't result in additional expenses. Having received support from both police and local bars, the plan seems more effi cient. Residents do not usually move in next door to bars expecting silence, but with the plan, they can still make complaints when necessary. brothers why he thinks this is so routine. "You can only do this stuff now when you're in college," he answers, "I wouldn't be able to do it six months from now" I can understand that senti ment but only because it stems from the mentality this town nurtures and fosters right from the get-go as a freshman: We're a drinking school with a football problem. I really hate sounding like an embittered curmudgeon who wants to permanently abolish fun. Trust me, I don't. But there has to be a point when you grow up and realize that getting wasted and pissing in someone's yard or destroying someone's property is just immature and reflects poorly on all of us. Besides holding a mirror up to ourselves, the most remark able thing about this episode is when Glass interviews people who have lived here for years: the neighbors who know a used tampon on their lawn means a used condom can't be far or the ones who can attest to once hav ing removed drunk, confused trespassers from their children's bedrooms. This behavior is just old-hat for them. And that's a sad fact. If Joe Dado's death and the sudden crackdown on alcohol use by fraternities haven't clued you in yet, then maybe you need to listen to this program to get a real outsider's view of Happy Valley Expect feelings of guilt mixed with nausea. Rich Coleman is a senior majoring in journalism and is the Collegian's Friday columnist. His e-mail address is rmcso74@pou.edu. THE DAILY COLLEGIAN Scholarship program doesn't help tuition cost problem In response to the Jan. 14 article, Wagner brings HOPE to PSU, - Jack Wagner has done what any idea-deficient politician would do he looked to another state for a proposal to copy. What he picked was "HOPE. - an ill-conceived scholarship program that was first implemented in Georgia. The program was a failure in Georgia and will be a failure here. HOPE is designed to increase college enrollment by providing scholarships to public universities for students with hie. school GPAs above 3.0. In Georgia, HOPE was unsuccessful. Total enrollment was unchanged, but more students shifted from private to public colleges. The result: more overcrowding in public colleges, while the private colleges become the increasingly inaccessible domain of the wealthy and the privileged. Meanwhile, high schools (eager to ensure their stu dents qualify for the program) will make their grading standards less rigorous, until having a "3.0 GPA' is meaningless. In fact, this is already a foolish criterion because different high schools have wildly different curriculums. That's why we have standard ized testing. You cannot fix the costs of higher educa tion by throwing money at the problem. The solution lies in identifying why the costs are rising in the first place. Our high er education system is inefficient, riddled with bureaucracies, bloated by state subsi dies and perpetually unable to decide whether to focus on research or teaching. Solving this will not require more money, it will require a smarter money. None of the Democratic candidates for governor seem to appreciate this, least of all, Jack Wagner. Samuel Settle sophomore-political science End history Young Americans for Freedom Tuition appeals to Sen. Casey not worth students' time Regarding the Jan. 14 article, "Students ask Sen. Bob Casey to lower tuition," with all due respect to the students who are appealing Sen. Casey for tuition relief. their time would be better spent appealing to members of the state not federal leg islature, which directly controls tuition lev els at Penn State. Unless of course this is all about Campus Progress lobbying Sen. Casey to vote for the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. I urge the students to real the bill: There's nothing in it that helps 75 percent of the students who attend Pena State. It does not lower tuition. It does net cut stu dent loan interest rates for most students. Alex Hamilton Washngton, D.C. Greek community shouldn't receive all blame for culture With all the recent publicity this pas', year regarding Penn State's No. 1 party school ranking and drinking culture, a lot of heat has been taken by our greek commu nity New policies have been put in place for fraternities in an attempt to limit alcohol consumption and make partying at Penn State fraternities a bit safer. However. fewer than 20 percent of sh.;- dents are even involved in greek life. So where does that leave the larger part of the student population? Surely greek life isn't all to blame for the partying that occurs. Why then is it only greek life that is looked at with scorn? Where is the regulation of partying in apartments and non-fraternity houses? The drinking culture is far larger than just greeks. Can You Dig It? For the second season in a row, a Penn State women's volleyball player was cho sen as the best athlete in the sport. Last year the honor went to Nicole Fawcett, and this year it goes to Megan Hodge. Hodge was awarded the 2010 Honda Sports Award in volleyball and was cho sen over other standout athletes includ ing Texas' Destinee Hooker, California's Hana Cutura and even teammate Alisha Glass. The senior outside hitter finished the season with 560 kills and averaged 4.67 kills per set, leading the Big Ten in both categories. Hodge also had a hitting per centage of .371 and tallied up 83 blocks. Read more from Can You Dig It? and the rest of The Daily Collegian's blogs at psucollegian.com. Snap, Crackle, Pop For lack of better word, my heart is filled with "Glee." I am glad to announce that "Glee" has officially signed on for a second season although I am not in the least bit sur prised The idea behind "Glee," a musically infused high school "drama," is genius and it seemed pretty obvious and even more obvious when the show was nomi nated for four Golden Globes that the show would stick around for a while. The soundtrack is addicting (and the best Christmas gift I received this year), and the realistically corny high-school drama is lovable. Read more from Snap, Crackle Pop and the rest of The Daily Collegian's blogs at psucolle gian.com. Kyle Dunleavy sophomore-biotechnology
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