I Wednesday, Sept. 22,2010 pMNfIHMHHpr j o 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 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 or Collegian Inc. Collegian Inc., publish ers of The Daily Collegian and related publications, is a separate.corporate institu tion from Penn State. Members are: Lexi Bel culfine, Caitiin Burnham, Paul Casella, Kevin Cirilli, Beth Ann Downey, Amanda Elser, Zachary Feldman, Ashley Gold, Stephen Hennessey, Allison Jackovitz, Kevin Kline, Samantha Kramer, Bill Landis, Andrew Metcalf, Nate Mink, Elizabeth Murphy, Laura Nichols, Michael Oplinger, Edgar Ramirez, Heather Schmelzlen, Caitiin Sellers, Laurie Stem, Katie Sullivan, Jessica Uzar, Aubrey Whelan, Alex Weisler, Somer Wiggins, 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 mall/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 Dally Collegian Online and may be selected for publi cation in The Weekly Colle gian. All letters become property of Collegian Inc. System should reward, not inhibit Thursday night’s presi- about athletics outside of dential roundtable focused football Saturdays is a on the issue of the Penn good initiative by the ath- State Intercollegiate Athletic department and the letic Department and its university. However, we relation to students. would like to see “Roaring A topic discussed at the Awards” turn into a pro roundtable was a pro- gram that awards dedicat posed new program that ed Nittany Lion fans with would work to bring atten- out penalizing ticket hold tion to the non-revenue ers who are merely exer sports. It will tentatively rising their free will to be called “Roaring attend a game or not. Awards,” and would be Though implementing similar to an attendance an attendance reward sys policy with an awards pro- tern has been proven to gram. We believe that a push to get students excited TO I fec&w aseONCfie TOJA f.! SI HSItCN. R mm. ! / ; Good to see dictionary has embraced technological lingo without an LOL By Jessica Uzar B romance (n.) informal, a close but nonsexual relationship between two men. Origin-early 21st cent.: blend of brother and romance. No, that’s not a definition from the Urban Dictionary web site. And yes, school teachers everywhere are having panic attacks. Bromance, though my spell check doesn’t realize it yet, has officially made its way into a prestigious English dictionary. The newest release of the third edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary, first pub lished in 2001. The words are taken from Oxford’s 200 million English word database, but this same database is also used to decide which words make it into the much older and original ref erence book, Oxford English Dictionary. The database records every time a word is used, in written or spoken form (in speeches or broadcasts) and the context it is used. This database is how defi nitions are developed. Words that stem from the technology and pop culture boom keep appearing in this database bromance, defriend, hashtag and BFF just to name a few new ones. Editors decided for the September 2010 update of the American dictionary that many of these new words were being used often enough that they needed to be defined and added to the dictionary. work at other schools, like Villanova with the popu larity of their basketball mu wm eeeDW S: :B# il v Sr^"' T *'l* f-Jl’Eg-. 1 i L -nj-*t ;,,, "'J f,V| ■ i |?3 iijei.l t~ .sj£ .£■.■ JOU [ :v; •i•* rrrr 1 ■ - ••, ■'— H S'p T ; ,j B£."Oi. L ;_r- ■ jj fiGO. PtSSITOH w For example, it was decided that defriend and unfriend were both acceptable verbs for removing someone from your list of friends on a social net working site. She broke up with her boyfriend, but she hasn't unfriended him. The definition, however, does leave out the cultural implica tions how serious an action this could be. There are also old words that were granted definition addi- Heart: (v.) like very much; love: I totally heart this song. Cougar: (n.) an older woman seeking a sexual relationship with a younger man. This is concrete proof that the new generation our genera tion, Generation Y (a new entry) is one that bases many of its trends on technology and media. We are so used to computers, the Internet and smartphones where basically everything we need is at the tip of our fingers and available almost instantly. My 4-year-old cousin is almost as efficient as I am at using the computer. For this new technology we need new words to describe it. Many English teachers and par ents are afraid that this new, shortened form of communica tion or informal language will hurt our use of vocabulary, in school and in life in general. I completely disagree. First, students are not using LOL in their English class papers. Come on, give us some credit. That’s saying that we aren’t as smart as previous gen erations, which is not true. Second, previous generations had to come up with new terms to describe the new develop- team, we don’t think a sys tem like this would work here at Penn State due to the size of the university and because of the dispar ity in the capacity of our sports venues. Overall, we believe the athletic department’s heart is in the right place and we look forward to see how “Roaring Awards” progresses in implementation. Depend ing on how it is mapped out, it has the potential to shed light on the less acknowledged sports on campus. r r ' ments in their lifetime. Cell phones and computers have not always been a part of the English language. We are adding more meaning to lan guage, not removing it. Third, texting is turning many students into great note-takers because they now have devel oped their own version of short hand. I will be the first to admit, I am no technological genius. Twitter is still foreign to me and I don’t know what HTML is or how to deal with it. Even ANGEL is a challenge at times. I only joined the smartphone world this weekend with my new Droid. It has taken some getting used to, but I like having my e mail, Internet and other enter tainment (Paper Toss, anyone?) all together in the neat little black package of my phone. I have apps (finally, a techno logical word my spell check rec ognizes) now like USA Today and Twitter where I can get instant and breaking news right on my phone. With e-mail sent to my phone, I can answer that e-mail sent by Mom instantly. Fbr those long, boring lecture classes, I now have entertain ment after I finish that day’s Sudoku puzzle. I think new technology is a great thing and the new devel opment of the language is a nat ural progression, not a “dumb ing down” of society. Technology will continue to get faster and continue to improve communications and quality of life. Jessica Uzar Is a junior majoring in journalism and polical science and is the Collegian’s Wednesday columnist. Her e-mail is Jlul2s@psu.edu The Daily Collegian Ending of combat in Iraq war recognizes soldiers’ sacrifice With our combat mission in Iraq recently ending, thousands of troops are heading home eager to integrate back into society. Most will return to their families, schools, jobs and their lives; however, many others will not. Never forget the sacrifice these men and women made by taking up the uniform to serve our country. They each made a commitment to our nation that many of us would never consider. Yet, it is a necessary sacrifice for Americans to live freely. Regardless of our individual feelings concerning our troops' most recent mis sions, we must take time to appreciate and recognize their sacrifices. When fighting, these patriots put their lives on hold. They say goodbye to loved ones, unsure of seeing them again, and venture straight into, for lack of a better word, hell. They were met with ruthless and cowardly hostility from civilians brain washed to despise Americans. They coura geously fight a moral-less, barbaric enemy that hates you, me and every other American citizen. They fight to keep terror, hate and violence off our soil, and away from our lives. They don't serve for our thanks nor do they serve for acknowledge ment, but they undoubtedly deserve both. To all the soldiers who fight, or who have ever served to defend American values, I humbly say, "Thank you.'' Not ‘Russian’ her time If this was a week-long vacation to St. Petersburg, I would have had to explore the city at a breakneck pace. I would have rushed from museum to museum and cathedral to cathedral; I would have hurriedly walked down Nevsky Prospekt, slowing down only to take the obligatory photograph in front of statues of Catherine the Great. Alexander Pushkin, Vladimir Lenin, etc. I would have to decide which tsar's summer palace I most wanted to see and aban don the others, leaving myself just enough time to buy a matiyoshka doll and a music box shaped like the Church on Spilled Blood. But since I'm lucky enough to have been given four months (only three left!) to explore the city. I’ve been taking my time.l've been to the Hermitage, but only for about 45 minutes (not nearly enough time to see the thousands of works of art it contains) and I've had a guided tour of the Russian Museum, which houses only Russian art, but I want to go back soon and explore on my own. There are dozens of other muse ums in SPB. some dedicated to people (Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, poet Anna Akhmatova) food (chocolate, vodka, cof fee) and other aspects of Russian cul ture and history. My program has already hosted some fantastic excursions. We took a four- hour bus ride to Novgorod, one of Russia’s oldest cities and a bastion of old (we’re talking 11th century) reli gious architecture. The doors of white washed buildings with tiny windows and modest onion domes open to reveal extravagant murals, ikons and relics. We also visited Pavlosk, a suburb of St. Petersburg which houses the gorgeous park and opulent palace of murdered tsar Paul I. But the grand-daddv of extravagant palaces in a place teeming with extrava gant palaces is Peterhof, which is locat ed about 45 minutes outside of the city. Photographs can't do justice to the gor geous fountains, gawdy gold statues and the giant yellow palace, all of which overlook the Gulf of Finland... Freshman rises to top Her collegiate volleyball career is just four weeks old, but freshman Deja McClendon is already being recognized as one of the top players in the confer ence. McClendon the 6-foot-1 outside hitter on the Penn State women’s volley ball team was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Week, conference offi cials announced Monday. It is McClendon's second honor of the season, as she was the co-winner of the award in week two. The Louisville, Ky., native shined this past weekend as the No. 2 Nittany Lions swept three opponents George Washington, Princeton and St. Johns in the Rockvale Outlets Classic at Rec Hall McClendon was second on the Lions with 25 kills and posted a team best .525 hitting percentage. Michigan’s Alex Hunt was named the Big Ten Player of the Week while Ohio State’s Mariah Booth garnered Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week honors. With the non-conference portion of its schedule finished, Penn State will kick off Big Ten play Friday with a trip to Illinois. Check the Collegian throughout the week for more coverage. Emily Kaplan Women’s volleyball reporter Read more of The Daily Collegian's blogs at psucollegian.com/blogs. Andrew Chansky senior-science Erin Rowley Small World blogger
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