I WEDNESDAY MARCH 24 2010 DOILY Collegian Rossilynne Skena Editor-in-Chief Holly Colbo Bu.viness Manager About the Collegian: The Daily Collegian and The Weekly Collegian are pub listed by Collegian Inc., an independent, nonprofit corpo ration with a board of direc tow composed of students, faculty and professionals. Pennsylvania State University students write and edit both papers and solicit advertising for them. During the fall and spring semesters as well 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 eclito ,ial 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 rial 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 Cinlli, Adam Clark, Rich Coleman, Caitlin Cullerot, Abby Drey, Kather ine Dvorak. Michael Fellet ter, Matt Fortuna, Mandy Hofmockel, Allison Jack- ovt, Phenola Lawrence, Andrew McGill, Dave Miniaci, Nate Mink, Eliza beth Murphy, Dan Rorabaugh, Erin Rowley, Heather Schmelzlen, Caitlin Sellers, Shannon Simcox, Rossilynne Skena, Kevin Sullivan, Jacquie Tylka, Alex Weisler and Bill Wellock. Letters We want to hear your com ments on our coverage, edi torial decisions and the Penn State community. ■ E-mail collegonletters@psu.edu ■ Online www.psucollegon.com ■ Postal mall/In person 123 S. Burrowes St. University Park, PA 16801 Letters should be about 200 words. Student letters should include class year, major and campus. Letters from alumni should include year of graduation. All writ ers should provide their address and phone number for verification. Letters should be signed by no more than two people. Members of organizations must include their titles if the topic they write about is connected with the aim of their groups. The Collegian reserves the right to edit letters. The Collegian can not guarantee publication of all letters it receives. Let ters chosen also run on The Dail Qnline and cation in The Weekly Colle gian. All letters become property of Collegian Inc. Altered proposal still unfair Let's say you throw a PartY You hang the balloons and streamers, prepare the Chex Mix, and by 11 p.m., everybody's having a good time. But one of the guests has his own personal stock of Riesling, and soon, he's getting belliger ent. He starts picking fights, so like a good host, you ask him to leave. He does, but right after he leaves, he begins punch ing someone in your yard. The police come and take him downtown. An officer questions you about what happened, and you tell him. Do you get fined? You shouldn't, but if Bor ough Council agrees to a second version of the Nui sance Gathering Ordi nance, you might. Rational anti-seating steps By Caitlin Cullerot THE first time I heard about sexting was in high school. A sopho more girl had skipped class to hook up with a senior guy in the back of his car, and the guy told his friends where and when the hookup was going down so they could doc ument the event. By the end of the day, even the girl's sister had seen the picture. I felt awful for the girl. People whispered about how "slutty" she was, while the senior guy got high-fives from strangers in the hallway. Back then, people chalked an incident like this up to typical teenage antics. lbday, this same act could brand you as a sex offender for the rest of your life. MY OPINION Sexting seems to be gaining popularity among teens and young adults. According to a study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and Cosmo Girl, 20 percent of teens have sexted. Even Disney sweetheart Vanessa Hudgens found herself in the midst of a sexting scandal in 2007 after a few private pic tures were leaked on the web. As the issue becomes increas ingly problematic, the question of how to punish those responsi ble grows more and more com plicated. 'frchnically, what the Even after changes, the Nuisance Gathering Ordi nance remains an unfair proposal. It would make party hosts shoulder the blame for offenses committed by their guests. Someone at your party urinates in public or commits vandal ism or an assault? If it happens close enough to your house or apartment, the ordinance makes you pay a fine for their behav ior. The fact that someone is hosting a party doesn't give he or she the ability to control a guest's behav ior. A host can request, beg or try to reason with rowdy guests, but he or she can't control how they act. A host also can't watch every guest all the time. Things happen. • When they do, they're the senior at my high school did could have landed him in jail for creating, possessing and distrib uting child pornography because the girl in question was only 15. And there's no arguing that sexting can have serious conse quences for the subjects in the photo last year, an Ohio teenager committed suicide after her ex-boyfriend forwarded nude photos of her to class- mates. And in December, a 13- year-old girl hanged herself after a topless picture of her cir culated her high school. Lawmakers are struggling to deal with the issue, but their solutions aren't always on tar get. For example, Wyoming County district attorney George Skumanick Jr. threatened to charge two 12-year-old girls with felony child pornography after photos of the girls in bras and one topless photo were dis covered circulating on students' cell phones. The prosecutor for the case explained that the boys who cir culated the photos did not face charges because "high school boys did as high school boys will do, and traded the photos among themselves." A lot of high school boys also sell coke, but I don't think anyone is going to chalk that up to "boys being boys." Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania stepped in on the girls' behalf and prevented Skumanick from pursuing charges However, Pennsylvania is tak ing steps to lessen the pull. h- fault of whoever commit ted the crime. Fbmishing alcohol to minors is different. Party hosts take it upon them selves to do that, so they deserve blame. That's very different from throwing a party in which two big, drunken dudes decide to fight each other. Borough Council is still deliberating the ordi- nance, and students have the opportunity to be part of the decision-making process, as they did with the first proposal. Though this version is an improvement over the last draft, it is still unfair. The ordinance makes party hosts guilty by asso ciation. Borough Council should be wary of painting with such a broad brush. encouraging ment for teens involved in sex ting cases. On March 17, the state House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would make it a misdemeanor rather than a felony for some one between 13 and 17 to send an explicit photo to another 13- to 17-year-old. The bill would eliminate the possibility of jail time for teens involved in sexting scandals and make it easier to expunge the crime from their records, so they're not permanently labeled as sex offenders. As serious as sexting can be, this is a step in the right direc tion. I like to think I was a pretty responsible high schooler, but I'll be honest. I very rarely con -sidered the long-term effects of my actions back then, and I'm sure sexting teens face the same problem. I'm not defending sexting, and the fact that young girls are committing suicide as a result of it is nothing short of tragic. That being said, I don't believe a 12-year-old can fully grasp that taking a picture of her friend in a towel amounts to child pornog raphy. It's obvious sexting is only gaining popularity among teens, and it's encouraging to see law makers like Rep. Seth Grove who is sponsoring the bill in Pennsylvania taking rational steps in dealing with the prob lem. Caitlin Cullerot is a senior majoring in journalism and is the Collegian's Wednesday columnist. Her e-mail address is cmcs2l7@psu.edu. IflTf IUItI!IILI Health care plan admirable but irresponsible financially Universal health care is an admirable goal, and one I would like to see one accomplished. That said, this bill i terrible for America's future and could not tn: come at a worse time. The economy is just finally snowing strong signs of coining out of the reccs. , :, that has left so many jobless and ot struggling. We need that growth to cootto ue, and throwing another 5940 billion ;,fl tul of our trillions of dollars of debt isn't g( to help get us back on track and cert isn't going to do anything to get us out China's pocket. We're just going to 11,i%: , keep borrowing all of this money Imo them and the rest of the world 11 ever decided to call in our debt, we could have no hope of paying and the dollo would be destroyed in the internati ' market. This doesn't have to be the politit., l l i that Barack Obama. DemocrLtt , Republicans and the media Li\ shouldn't be about party power stru , 2,g.t., whether this is what President (Man i , needs to cement his legacy We nt realistic with what we are act cially able to do right now. We . wrt. spent so much on borrowed n;ln...\ have nothing close to a 4:90 :mai( how to pay it all back n„: Republicans must win hack control, repeal health care We have been betra:ued overwhelming public disappro\ ai Democratic Congress h:rced an useless health care - retorni - American people. The bill does address rising health care i-ost,s. ing to empower individual ..\inerk!ai does nothing to reduce our h bureaucracy. The Democrats w this l);l1, tory But in truth. everyone lost IL American people have lost \‘li;_lt of their faith in this sured have lost their right to colt; own health care and will instead into Medicaid-like welhre Congress has lost the suppoort of mon people. And next Novernbcr Democrats will lose their inajorn Opposition to this bill will only that it has passed. Thirty-tlwee taken steps to challenge part f,;the "Obamacare - bill. and more v, populist outrage represented by Party movement will ewitinie to flour The crucial question: howe , . t.'r is Republicans will do price the:, House. They are far trout tauitiess. po Republican leadership brought Democrats to power in thc first Nevertheless. they have a great The bill passed without the stippi,rl a single Republican congres-rin woman. If the Republicans V. iillt to ina lasting majority and to rest (n the butt the American people. their ni-:sio!) e! they must repeal this hW sopiict c e I , Young Azrertc3n, Snap, Crackle. Pop When I think of authors I enk ,- .(ri an elementary school si :( '‘‘ names spring to mind - but foremost is undoubtedly Shel Many ldds love Silverstein's it's easy to see why --- most of his deal with real issues for the school bunch. For instance, wh,, forget Silverstein's ode t( leignin? in order to stay home from "Sick"? With afujoiqi* for \Oily woHoo. though, Silverstiitt,iDade even tilt young-minded topics applicable to ,Lie: readers. Silverstein died in 1999. but ilk lives on, as his second posthumous ry collection will be published in Entertainment Weekly's Shelf reports. The new collection will leaturt about 120 poems that haven't yet had t hE opportunity to light up our faces Read more from the arts blog Snap, Crackle Pop and the rest of The D. - A , Coiiegi:c at psucollegian.com/blogs Small World For a long time, the first thing pes)pit' used to say to me when I mention( I was going to France was. "Oh man, isa v'' the drinking age li 0 over there °' my susp n that this sen tence says more abo enn State cul ture in a sentence th ra Glass did in an entire radio progr ,my classmates were mostly right: Pretty much anyone can drink here. but you have to be 18 to buy alcohol yourself. I'm 21. I've been legal in the U.S. for a little over three months now and legal in France for a little over three years. and I am the only person I know in the entire ty of Europe who gets carded on a regu lar basis. It's getting a little embarrass ing now. Before we head out for a night on the town, my friends and I usually pick up a bottle of wine. After they waltz through the checkout line at the local Monoprix, I'll confidently plunk down my bottle of 6-euro white wine on t he count er, only to have the cashier peer curious ly at me and demand identification. Read more from the study abroad blog Small World and the rest of The Daily Collegians blogs at psucolleglan.com/blogs. :3nenuel;chit
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers