I TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2010 THE DAILY Collegian Elizabeth Murphy Editor in Chief Kelsey Thompson Business Manager About the Collegian: The Daily Collegian and The Weekly Collegian are pub lished by Collegian Inc., an independent, nonprofit cor poration with a board of directors composed of stu dents, faculty and profes sionals. Pennsylvania State University students write and edit both papers and solicit advertising for them. During the fall and spring semes ters as well as the second six-week summer session, The Daily Collegian publish es Monday through Friday. Issues are distributed by mail to other Penn State campuses and individual subscribers. Complaints: News and edi torial complaints should be presented to the editor. Business and advertising complaints should be pre sented to the business man ager. 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 corpo rate institution from Penn State. Editorials are written by The Daily Collegian Board of Opinion. Members are: Kevin Cirilli, Jenna Ekdahl, Bill Landis, Elizabeth Mur phy, Laura Nichols, Edgar Ramirez, Andrew Robinson, Heather Schmelzlen, Jared Shanker, Katie Sullivan, Alex Weisler, Steph Witt and Chris Zook. Letters We want to hear your com ments on our coverage, editorial decisions and the Penn State community. ■ &nail collegianletters@psu.edu ■ Online www.psucolleon.com ■ Postal mall/In person 123 S. Burrowes St. Ufiiversity 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 writers should provide their address and phone number for verification. Letters should be signed by no more than two peo ple. Members of organiza tions 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 cannot guaran tee publication of all let ters it receives. Letters chosen also run on The Daily Collegian Online and may be selected for publi cation in The Weekly Colle gian. All letters become property of Collegian Inc. Roads must be tolls' beneficiary Starting Jan. 2, travelers on the Pennsylvania Turn pike, including Penn State students and their family members, will have to pay more money to use the road. The turnpike commis sion voted last week to increase rates by 10 per cent for cash customers and 3 percent for those using E-ZPass. Though the turnpike has raised fares just seven times in the last 70 years, the commission has done so three times in just the last 18 months. The raises seem unavoid able, but the state, which will make an estimated $35 million more every u&nna iri FINANCIAL s REFORM _I ',ILL II 00,V 4 1 FLOM 19 PAY Fed, state tuition tug of war irritating By Shannon Simcox MUCH like other Penn State students, I opened up my tuition bill last week It was as if there needed to be a drum roll lead ing up to its release Between the Penn State Board of Trustees decid ing how much tuition to raise tuition and the state govern ment deciding to pass a budget without too much of a fuss, I for one was holding my breath. We all expected the rise in tuition. Penn State President Graham Spanier has been say ing we can look forward to these raises, so that was no surprise. The surprise for me came with an e-mail I received along with my tuition bill. Being one of the fortunate Penn State students who receive financial aid, including a Pennsylvania state grant, it was to my great surprise to see in my inbox an e-mail regarding this grant right alongside my tuition bill. The e-mail informed me of the following: "The 2010-11 budget for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was signed into law by Governor Rendell on July 6, 2010. This budget includes MY OPINION year from the increase, should not be the sole beneficiary. About two-thirds of all vehicles traveling on the turnpike already use E ZPass, according to Turn pike Commission spokesman Carl DeFebo, but this increase in fares is going to force those who don't use the technol ogy to think twice about doing so. As a result, more driv ers could begin switching to E-ZPass, lessening the turnpike's need to hire people to work in toll booths. With the money saved from cutting jobs, the state should make the needed improvements to Tape "While the federal government is increasing the direct loan program, the state is decreas ing state grants. This does not seem like a plan that meshes together." funding for the Pennsylvania State Grant Program. Based on the amount of these funds, it was necessary to revise your Pennsylvania State Grant award for the 2010-11 academic year" Not exactly the words of encouragement you need in order to open the tuition bill. By revise they mean lower. All I could think about when I see the state grant slowly declining and the Pell grants slowly rising is the complete tug of war between the state and federal governments when it comes to encouraging higher education. While the federal government is increasing the direct loan pro gram, keeping students on their parents' insurance policies longer and increasing Pell grant funding, the state government is decreasing the state grants and decreasing funds to Penn State. This does not seem like a plan that meshes together but instead seems like two entities that are completely repelling each other Why, state legislators, is high er education not on your agen da? I understand putting a state roads and bridges. Pennsylvania highways, specifically the turnpike and Interstate 80 the two most-traveled high- ways to get to Penn State are notoriously bad. Both are littered with pot holes and are showing sig nificant signs of wear. With the turnpike now providing funding to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, con struction jobs should be more frequent and, more importantly, quicker. With this increase in fares, the commission should have the meats to improve the roads for the people pay ing to drive on them and in a timely fashion. a Ei a 40 20k iv •11-1 . 14 r . 1 • • 0 0 .COM LET'S HOPE IT WORKS... budget together is obviously a difficult task (or why else would it take so long?), but the pursuit of higher education shouldn't be a financial burden. With such a large unemploy ment rate and the abundance of economic problems, people should be encouraged to go to school, not discouraged by ris ing prices and state budgets. 'lb the state legislators, Board of Trustees and even federal representatives: Please remem ber what it was like back when you were opening your tuition bills as you are making these tough decisions today. It is, in fact, your future leaders who you are making these decisions for. Students, don't lose hope. Eventually, as the gray hairs have taken over our heads and the pitter-patter of little feet have turned to thumps, those student loans will be paid off. Eventually Shannon Slmcox is a senior majoring in journalism and political science and is the Collegian's Tuesday columnist. Her e-mail address is scsso96@psu.edu. THE DAILY COLLEGIAN Despite no 'lO White House, PSU crowds will still be loud I agree that looking at our football sched ule for this year, it is a little on the dull side. Most of our big games this year are on the road (Alabama, lowa, and Ohio State), which will be a big test for our team, but I still have faith in our fans. The White House is a huge tradition for our fans and school, and I agree that it should be kept for only our big games. but you never know what will happen in college football. We could run the table and the Oct. 30 game against Michigan could be bigger then we think, or we could have another season like last year. You just never know. Whether we have a "White House" scheduled, our fans will bleed blue and white and we will rock Beaver Stadium. There will be tons of white, and our students will definitely bring the "White Out," and, if needed, maybe the rest of the stadium will follow Wanted: Web Intern The Collegian is seeldng a web intern for the fall semester to join its award-winning web team. This position offers a merit based $l,OOO scholarship per semester. We are diving into several new web ini tiatives this fall including a brand new website, and are looking for applicants with a working knowledge of HTML, CSS and proficiency in at least one of the fol lowing: Javascript, Flash, PHP, Perl, ASPnet, or C#. We are also looking into mobile applications, as well, so a knowl edge of or interest in learning about mobile development is encouraged hut not required. You will be working with the Web Editor, who also has a knowledge of these tech nologies. This position requires a flexible but steady time commitment. Your respon sibilities will vary based on your skills, but could include designing pages and/or interactive pieces for our site, writing scripts to parse and reformat old stories or communicate with public APIs (Twitter, Tumblr, etc), or designing back-end man agement systems, among other things. An interest in journalism and being a part of an independent student newspaper is highly encouraged, as well. To apply, send a resume and cover letter to Editor in Chief Elizabeth Murphy at editorinchief@psucollegian.com. Editor in Chief I put out a call to any and all interest ed editorial cartoonists just two weeks ago. We seem to have struck gold with our first response: Alex Donahue. Let me give you some back-story: The Collegian has never had much luck recruiting and maintaining quality car toonists. In previous years. we've gotten cartoonist applications with artwork that looks like I drew it (trust me, you can't run that stuff in a newspaper) and we've gotten cartoonists that can draw every twist and turn of the Eiffel Tower but don't know Sarah Palin froth Sarah McLachlan. And some years we've got ten squat absolutely no applications. So you can see why Alex is such celebri ty to us in the newsroom. The guy can draw the pants off any person in the room, and not only does he know how to spell Sarah Paliffs name, he !mows that she used to be Alaska's Governor! On Sunday, Editor in Chief Elizabeth Murphy sat down with reporter Kathleen Loughran, who wrote the July 11 Venues doubletruck story about the history of Arts Fest, "From paintings to parties, Arts Fest evolves over 44-year history" It's the second edition of Murphy's regular podcast series that gives readers the story behind the story with the reporter, photographers and editors who helped put the story togeth er. Read more from the Editor-in-Chief blog and the rest of The Daily Collegian's blogs at psucol legian.com/blogs. Footblog When the coaching staff asked Quinn Barham to switch from guard to left tackle after the Capital One Bowl, he laughed at first. "I thought it was a joke," Barham said, "but they said they wanted me to do it, so I'm ready for it." Barham played tackle in high school, so the posi tion switch isn't new ground for the red shirt junior. He said his short torso and long arms and legs make the tackle posi tion the right fit for him. To get back the feel for the tackle position, Barham has been sprinting and performing ladder drills. He'll need to be quick at tackle to keep up with the Big Ten's defensive ends, like lowa's Adrian Clayborn, whose picture is set as the background on Barham's phone for motivational rea sons. Barham said he has been practic ing to play left tackle. If Johnnie Troutman beats out DeOn'tae Pannell for the left guard spot, Pannell may chal lenge Barham for the starting left tackle position. But as of now, the redshirt jun ior seems entrenched at the left end. Barham doesn't believe there is much difference between left and right tackle besides protecting the quarterback's blind side. Read more from the football blog Footbiog and the rest of The Daily Collegian's blogs at psucol leglan.com/blogs. Mick Wancheck Class of 2009
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