I Monday, Aug. 9, 2010 TII K D \ 1 l. 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. ■ E-mail collegianletters@psu.edu ■ Online www.psucollegian.com ■ Postal mail/ln 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 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. Office mistake finally corrected The University Park Undergraduate Associa tion (UPUA) is making progress for students by officially closing the door on its failed Downtown Student Center. The 130 E. Beaver Ave. office, which opened last year, became an embar rassing blemish on UPUA’s reputation. Mis managed from the start, the office cost $5,200 to lease. But UPUA President Christian Ragland is ready to close the door on the mistake, and he demonstrated great lead ership in admitting failure 'TtietiertS&pfcrQHc unwcagle^^^^^^ Despite travels, Philly is still home By Aubrey Whelan For someone who defends her hometown with a ferocity that defies logic, I talk an awful lot about my time spent else where. Cut me some slack. I spent last summer in Manhattan, last semester in Montpellier, France and nine months out of the year in the collegiate par adise that is State College. Frankly, I don’t tell stories about the City of Brotherly Love because I’m not actually there all that often. MY OPINION My parents both grew up in the city (for my mother, the phrase “In West Philadelphia, born and raised” actually means something) and promptly moved to [insert generic suburb here] once they married. Like every child of suburbia, I never tell people I really live outside Philadelphia unless pressed. And though my parents took us down to the city for day trips and French classes and the Christmas light show at Macy’s (if you’ve never seen it, you haven’t lived), I spent so much time following my dad as he took shortcuts and led us down back streets that I never really paid attention to the city on my own. So coming back to Philadelphia after a semester and taking steps to cor rect it. It’s also another cam paign promise that Ragland is following through with even though the year hasn’t begun yet. He’s focusing on better initiatives to improve stu dent relations with the downtown and UPUA will have more time to devote to these* initiatives without having to maintain an office. One initiative of consid erable importance is UPUA’s attempts to get a non-voting student mem ber on the State College “Philly has no claim to Manhattan’s sophisti cation or Europe’s grandeur, but I can’t help but love it, like a wayward relative or an exas perating friend.” abroad was a sort of consolation prize for me. I had an internship at the Philadelphia Inquirer waiting for me, and I figured that in between covering stories I’d finally get a chance to spend some time in a city I regularly wax poetic about to strangers. People talk a lot of smack about Philly. Some of it’s true: Our sports fans are loud- mouthed, uncouth louts, our streets aren’t exactly sparkling, and our public transportation system is a special kind of hell. And I expected that, after Europe, life in a city whose chief export is a heart attack on an Amoroso roll would be a bit of a letdown. But the minute I saw that sly line on my first day of work was like coming home. Over the course of the sum mer, I’ve covered ghost hunts in Manayunk and snapped photos at storytelling competitions on South Street and accosted col lege kids for man-on-the-street interviews in University City. I’ve gotten lost more times than I can count and eaten embarassing numbers of cheesesteaks. And along the way, I’ve finally seen this city through my own eyes. Philly has no claim to Borough Council. This could significantly increase the student voice at council meetings. UPUA should learn from its mistakes and exe cute more planning when making such expensive purchases. UPUA should extensive ly research such projects and understand that stu dents in a tough economic environment are funding them. UPUA must continue to focus on improving down town relations and with $5,200 extra in its budget, UPUA is off to a solid start. Manhattan’s sophistication or Europe’s grandeur, but I can’t help but love it, like a wayward relative or an exasperating friend. Underneath the violence and the dirt and the urban blight, there’s real beauty here in places like the Magic Garden, an enormous sculpture of found items, or the tree-lined streets in Old City. It’s in the row homes in Mayfair and the com munity gardens on South Street and the murals everywhere you look. It’s in the crowds spilling out of the ballpark after Phillies games and the cheerful drunks bar hopping on Chestnut Street It’s in the Inquirer building, a white behemoth on Broad Street that’s withstood years of layoffs and budget cuts and bankrupt cies and still puts out a paper every morning. Philly might be dwarfed by New York and outshone by Pittsburgh, but it hums with a fierce pride all its own. And, more than anything else, I’m grateful to it for proving, once and for all, that there really is no place like home. Aubrey Whelan is a senior majoring in journalism and French and is the Collegian's Monday columnist. Her e mail address is ajwSl39@psu.edu. The Daily Collegian PSU’s previous No. 1 ranking caused strict bar supervision I am going to have to unfortunately dis agree with the letter “Lower party school ranking of no concern to Penn State” on The Princeton Review dropping Penn State from the No. 1 party school to No. 3. As a Penn State student who has grown up in the area, I think this is good news. A lot of students do not realize that the high level of partying in this town has led to strict supervision from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Local restaurants and bars are the ones that are suffering. They are being fined and even closed down for days at a time, or in certain cases like Tony’s Big Easy, shut down for good. I work at a local bar and because of the high levels of partying in our town we are forced to be a lot stricter when it comes to serving alcohol. Bars are constantly worry ing about getting fined or even shut down by the liquor control board, especially on holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween and the made up holiday of State Patty ’s Day. We are forced to schedule extra staff on these major drinking days because some of the students in our town, unfortu nately, do not know how to handle them- selves in a mature manner. This costs extra money and puts added stress on everyone involved. As far as the survey to determine the ranking, there really is no other way to determine how much students at each campus are drinking. I do agree that this survey is over hyped, but, unfortunately, the liquor control board pays attention to the results. Don’t get me wrong, I like to have a good time as much as the next Penn State stu dent, but I do not go around trashing my hometown like a lot of students do when they drink too much alcohol. Hopefully by Penn State dropping in ranking it will take a little of the focus off of our university and put it on one of the schools ahead of Penn State. I say students pay a little more atten tion to how their behavior affects the whole town. Kendra Yearick junior-human development and family studies 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 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, PHR 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, Ttunblr, etc), or designing back-end man agement systems, among other things. To apply, send a resume and cover letter to Editor in Chief Elizabeth Murphy at edltorinchief@psucollegian.com. FOOTBLOG Indy to host first title game Though divisions have yet to be made for the expanded Big Ten, the confer ence announced Thursday night that Lucas Oil Stadium is the proposed site for the 2011 Big Ten Football Championship Game. The inaugural championship game would be held in December of 2011, but the Big Ten now enters a 30-day negoti ation period to seal the one-year agree ment. Once the agreement is taken care of, the conference will look toward other venues in hopes of finding anoth er site or sites for the following champi onship games. “We felt at this time it was important to identify a site for the first champi onship game and then spend more time with other cities and venues with respect to both our basketball tourna ments and the football championship games in the future," Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said in a press release posted on the confer ence’s official website. Though venues such as Soldier Field, Lambeau Field and Ford Field expressed interest in hosting the event, the conference will perhaps give those sites a look after the 2011 agreement is sealed. With the goal of participating in a more thorough process to find the next site, many professional football stadiums will surely continue pitching their facilities. With Lucas Oil Stadium having a retractable roof, it’s too early to know if the game will truly be played indoors. The Indianapolis Colts’ home seats 63,000 people and with the Big Ten bas ketball tournaments being hosted in Indianapolis at Conseco Fieldhouse, for the time being it at least gives the Big Ten title game a place to start. Read more of The Daily Collegian's blogs at psucolleglan.com/blogs Audrey Snyder Football reporter
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