4 I Friday, July 30, 2010
TH K Dili!
Collegian
Elizabeth Murphy
Editor in Chief
Kelsey Thompson
Business Manager
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Suites should be open to all
Penn State recently
announced it will be reno
vating South Halls to cre
ate about 70 new dorm
rooms. Some of these will
be suites a living option
that will include a kitchen,
private bath, lounge area,
living room and even air
conditioning. The Housing
and Food Services depart
ment said it is thinking
about moving smaller
groups like sororities and
fraternities into these
brand-new suites.
The creation of new liv
ing space is always a good
thing, especially when 500
upperclassmen were
turned away from on-cam
pus housing this year. It is
obviously a huge problem
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Sherrod situation deals journalism serious blow
By Matt Fortuna
Maybe there is someone in
the James Building I
really .
don’t like and
would like to see
fired.
Maybe there is
gossip in a class
room or at a bar
that I just can’t
resist from exploit
ing.
Maybe there is
someone I have
covered in my three-plus years here
who really rubbed me the wrong
way and now I have decided to use
my platform writing for this paper
to get my revenge.
No matter how delusional or jus
tified I may think I am in any of the
above cases, it would take an awful
lot for me to convince my superiors
to take action. And they in turn
would have to take a lot of time to
decide whether it warrants sending
someone packing or smearing
someone’s name and reputation
across campus.
They know the power of the pen.
They know not to move forward in
a potentially damaging situation
without thoroughly investigating and
researching all available evidence.
They are a few steps ahead of our
government, at least based on its
handling of the Shirley Sherrod
case.
when the school can’t
house everyone it takes
in. If each new suite
accommodated two peo
ple, it could create hous
ing for about 140 students.
It’s a step in the right
direction, making sure
more and more students
are secure in getting an
on-campus spot.
Also, it keeps Penn
State aesthetically com
petitive as plenty of other
schools around Pennsyl
vania are revamping their
living options and offering
suites to anyone willing to
pay a little extra.
What doesn’t sit well is
the fact that Penn State is
looking to allot these
suites to a certain group
“It’s embarrassing for the state of journalism in
general. There once was a time when it took real
work and reporting for people with power to react
the way the White House just did to a blogger.”
It makes the spineless way the
people in charge of this country
acted all the more troubling. And it
trivializes good journalism during a
time when as the saying goes
“everyone is a reporter.”
Is that really aU it takes to get
someone fired by the White House:
An edited video posted by a blogger
with a clear agenda one that was
not even investigated before the
trigger was pulled?
MY OPINION
Sherrod was forced to resign as
the Georgia State Director of Rural
Development for the United States
Department of Agriculture after
conservative blogger Andrew
Breitbart posted portions of a
speech Sherrod, who is black, gave
to an NAACP audience. The video
showed Sherrod saying she did not
fully help a white farmer 24 years
ago.
Sherrod pled her innocence, say
ing her comments were taken out of
context. The NAACP which had
condemned her originally—posted
the full 43-minute video. The farmer
Sherrod was speaking about pub
licly came to her defense.
And, just like that, the president
asked her to come back.
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of students. If the school
is going to build suites,
they should be offered to
anyone willing to sacrifice
their dollar to get a little
cool air and extra space in
their dorm before offering
it to groups of students
who already have housing
options with a sorority or
fraternity.
New suites and dorms
house more students find
the renovations keep
Penn State evolving and
changing, which is defi
nitely a good thing. Hope
fully, Penn State realizes
everyone deserves a shot
at these new spaces,
which sound like palaces
compared to the tiny, old
rooms in East Halls.
It’s an embarrassing injustice to
Sherrod, sure. But from a newspa
per writer’s standpoint, it’s embar
rassing for the state of journalism
in general.
There once was a time when it
took real work and reporting for
people with power to react the way
the White House just did to a blog
ger.
Just look at Watergate or, to a
lesser extent, Morgan Spurlock. Or,
in the case of sports reporting
the alleged “toy department” the
many revelations of steroid use in
athletics that were uncovered by
the San Francisco Chronicle’s
Lance Williams and Mark Eainaru-
Wada, both of whom were ready to
go to jail before revealing their
sources.
They spent the effort to make
sure the stoiy was right, unlike
Breitbart, who simply blamed the
liberal media for posting the video
that sparked the Sherrod saga. And
unlike Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack, whose knee-jerk reaction to
Breitbart asking Sherrod to step
down showed anything but lead
ership.
What has happened to doing
The Daily Collegian
SMALL WORLD
English major adapting to
Italianspeaking Todi
Along with 22 other Penn State stu
dents, I spent the first half of my summer
living in Todi, Italy, a small hill town nes
tled in Italy’s central region of Umbria.
As my first time traveling outside of the
U.S., my trip across the Atlantic Ocean to
that little country shaped like a boot has
left me with one of my best college mem
ories so far and a strong desire to one
day experience other parts of the world,
as well as return to Italy.
Since I am an English major, my life is
pretty much all about the English lan
guage. Needless to say. spending six
weeks in a house where almost no
English was spoken was a bit of a chal
lenge for me. Unlike most other study
abroad programs offered, this particular
one gave students like me the opportuni
ty to live with Italian families most of
whom did not speak any English.
Despite having had taken Italian during
my past three semesters at Penn State, I
was still really worried about being able
to communicate with Signora and
Signore Belli, our host parents. This
unease was intensified by the fact that
two of my roommates didn't know any
Italian and thus would be relying on my
other roommate and me to translate.
[...]
In Todi, things were very different. As
the only Americans, we stuck out like
sore thumbs. In fact, people were not
above staring at us while we made our
daily trek up the hill and our attempts at
speaking Italian were actually required
in order to communicate. We were also
able to experience the everyday work
ings of an Italian household, where our
host mother took on all the household
duties, refusing our help with even the
smallest of tasks including washing our
own clothes or dishes. Our house did not
have a computer or Internet, and our
host parents did not have a microwave
or clothes drier....
Read more from the rest of The Daily Collegian's
blogs at psucollegian.com/blogs.
Wanted: Web Intern
The Collegian is seeking 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 faU 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,
ASEnet, 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 but 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,
Himblr, 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
edttorlnchlef@psucollegian.com.
homework and not reacting to
every piece of trash thrown to the
wall before we even wait and see if
it sticks or not?
Granted, this may sound a little
self-serving coming from a journal
ist, but we are also the same breed
of people who are trained not to
believe anyone who tells us today is
Friday before we whip out our cal
endars and make sure of it our
selves.
Or to not believe our mothers
love us simply because they tell us
they do.
So why did the left cower to the
right the minute something poten
tially damaging surfaced, with
absolutely no fact checking done?
Who knows? But let’s look, of all
places, to Sunday’s season pre-
miere of “Mad Men,” a show set in
the 1960 s that offered an interesting
quote one we should all keep in
mind before we ever go to press
with something we write about
someone else.
The morning a not-so-flattering
profile of the character Don Draper
runs in Advertising Age, Don asks
Roger Sterling why he has so many
copies in his office.
Roger’s reply?
“I wanted to get them all before
everyone else did.”
Matt Fortuna is a senior majoring in jour
nalism and is the Collegian’s Friday colum
nist. His e-mail address is
mjfs2l7@psu.edu.
Alaina Gallagher
Reporter