I Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2010 I II 1 Daii. a 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. culty 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 complaint? 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, Caitlin 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, Caitlin Sellers, Laurie Stern, 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 mail/ln person 123 S. Burrowes St. State College, 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. Decision should be for majority The State College Plan ing Commission has balked at a proposal by Hemy Sahakian to rezone a plot of land occupied by former Kappa Sigma fra ternity house, 254 E. Beaver Ave., in order to erect an apartment com plex with a commercial level on the first floor. The area is currently zoned for fraternity hous ing, single family dwellings, elderly housing, churches, daycares, com munity centers, offices, nursing homes or private ' ' ' :c SI~ CkAffAlT/ Seating discrepancy affects both sides By Jessica Uzar Student seating in Beaver Stadium will always be an issue of debate. Students want whatever is best for them. A legitimate claim because after all, this is a school. Without student ath letes, there would not be a football team. The athletic department wants to balance the wants of students and other stadium guests mostly returning alumni while still minding its underlying goal of making a profit. Both sides will never be happy at once. Though students will always want more tickets to be allotted to them, I think that the amount of tickets allotted is a fair num ber. It allows those students who want to attend the game the most, purchase tickets for the game. Alumni are a very important part of the crowd and they deserve a fair chance to get tick ets. After all, they were once students here. But what group is it that is on their feet for the entire game? Current students. And who is the loudest group in the stadium? Current students. A stadium full of more alumni and less current students would be quite boring. But what group is there from the beginning to the end of the game? Alumni schools. But given its loca tion just north of the stu dent-dense Beaver Canyon, none of these other options seem plausi ble. Sahakian’s proposal to convert current student housing into more student housing seems to be the most sensible and eco- nomically sound plan. The planning commis sion and borough council must remember that they live in a college town and they should make deci- sions based on what’s And, yes, many students as well. But looking up from the field last game, I noticed that our stu dent section was not filling up. In fact, I’m not sure it ever entirely filled up. At first, I was a little disap pointed. But after thinking about it, I realized that half of those students were probably too drunk to attend the game and the other half were faithful friends making sure those drunks got to bed okay. Is that an excuse for not attending the game? I don’t mind really. It was still an early season game (granted, not an easy game like we would’ve liked). Aren’t we a school known for our football culture, including the sometimes heavy tailgating that is taking place outside? It is a much better option for those students too drunk to function to make their way home instead of risking an underage or arrest by entering the stadium. Some alumni complain that, we are not supporting our team. When it comes down to the important games, we are all there. Fbr a white out game, the student section is filled before kickoff. And as a student, I also have one small complaint. The ticket enforcers that are located throughout the student section go a little overboard. I entered one game with four or five friends, and was the only one to receive q seat ticket that began the next row. I did not want to sit in that seat while my friends are at the other end of best for* the town and the majorit y of its residents. As th e university contin ues to add more students, more s tudent housing will be needed, and more rev enue c an be made by pro viding it. Though the council and comm unity members fear the ini,flux of more student residents in Beaver Canyon will lead to behav ioral issues, it is hard to justify foregoing the opti mal u:se of the plot simply as a preventative meas ure. EXHAUSTED the row/ in front of me. No one asked me to move, but I was ready to fight if they did. Some students say they would like a “free-for-all” ticket system where they could sit wherever they like, with whatever friends they want. Despite my past experience, I still know that would be crazi ness and utter chaos. So if you want to sit by your friends, meet up with them before the game and enter with them. If you have a friend in a different class line than you, then sit in the underclassmen section. It’s a privilege to sit in the upperclassmen section, earned by the students. It’s a privilege to sit in the upperclassmen section, earned by the students (though there is at least one easy way to get around it, but I won’t mention that because I don’t want them fixing that problem, too). If students could choose wherever they wanted to sit, the lower sections would be crowd ed and our student section would look even smaller—not the impression the number one student section wants to make while on TV Tllough there will always be discrepancies, I think the ticket system overall is fair. The major ity olf fans seem very content on game day, and we should all focus on supporting our team rather than the seat we do it from. JessHca Uzar is a junior majoring in journalism and political science and is the Daily Collegian's Wednesday columnist. Her e-mail is Jlul2s@psu.edu. The Daily Collegian LETTERS Alcohol causes untimely deaths Just as the epidemic of obesity destroys lives due to tragic addiction, alcohol contin ues to destroy lives of many from case to case. From Joe Dado, to convicted drunken driver Anthony Torsell (serving time for vehicular homicide), the power of the bottle and the consequences of bad choices are relentless and unforgiving. No human deserves to die of unnatural causes. Responsibility is at the core of every bad choice. In the recent case of deceased Los Angeles Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart, who was struck by a drunken driver in April 2009 following his first win as a Major League pitcher, the man behind the wheel, Andrew Gallo, was found guilty of second degree murder of Adenhart and two others. The reason for the murder con viction was the fact that Gallo was a repeat DUI offender. What is most disturbing is that his lawyer, Jacqueline Goodman, commented that his conviction was a “miscarriage of justice.” She is also on record defending her client, saying that his bad decision was attributed to intoxication hindering his judgment of the possible consequences of drinking and driving. Both of her state ments are insensitive, egregious and unin telligent Explain to the affected families that we should pass on murder because alcohol is an acceptable excuse to forego mature decision making. To my fellow Penn Staters, do not ruin your lives in order to get trashed on a Saturday night. Do the right thing. Be around the right people and stay responsi ble. By the way, Andrew Gallo is looking at 50 years in prison for his bad choice. Is it worth it? Greed results in empty seats Since the implementation of paperless ticketing for football games, there have been noticeably fewer people in the student section. On Friday afternoon, just a few hours before the 5 p.m. sale deadline, there were more than 150 tickets on sale for $69 and hundreds more for cheaper. And that’s before the $1.95 processing fee, and the $29 more it would cost to validate a guest ticket (that’s $99.95 for a guest). Anyone who has ever been to a non-con ference preseason game here knows that there are hundreds of tickets being sold before the game for equal or less than face value. No student who knows anything would waste $70.95 on a ticket when it would be easy to find one for $4O on game day. The face value for a student ticket is $29. To ask for $6O for a Kent State ticket is just greedy. As price increases, quantity decreases. That’s how elastic supply and demand works. Don’t be greedy Befl your ticket for $3O or $35 dollars to cover the pro cessing fee that you paid on your season tickets. Plus, wouldn’t you rather have those $35 dollars than the zero you will get for listing your ticket at $6O and having no one buy it? Finally, something should be done with unsold tickets. Students should be given until midnight on Friday to “reclaim” their ticket from the exchange, if they plan to use it. All tickets left listed should be sold at the door, start ing at kickoff, for $35, and $2O of that should go to the student who listed the ticket (min imum listing price), and the rest can be claimed as a processing fee. Whatever the plan, something needs to be done. Mike Kalserlan senior-mechanical engineering Gamers as bad as tailgaters In response to Diesday’s letter “Ticket holding students need to tailgate less, sup port the team,” Andrew Smith confronted students who chose Vlady and Natty Light tailgates over the game, but my observa tion is about the students who did attend the game. Predictably, as Temple took the field, the Penn State student body booed. When the outcome of the competitive game was determined, someone thought that break ing into a chorus of the dated and insipid “Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Hey Goodbye” chant was a good idea. Forget that it’s a Penn State letterman who has revived a team that had been kicked out of a confer ence for stinking. Then go ahead and ignore the fact that Coach A 1 Golden’s kids as well as ours played inspired foot ball on a beautiful day. Keep booing and singing stupid songs. I learned a lot about hospitality, life and football a few weeks ago in Tuscaloosa. Adults and students invariably welcomed us, conversed, invited us to join them, bought drinks and complimented our coach and program. That won’t happen when they visit next year. One student will sicream at some family with kids. Another will spill Nacho cheese on one of their fans, like I saw a drunken kid do to an lowa fan last year. With apologies to our courteous students, which are still the majority, I’m embar- I'assed already. We’ve always been proud of the fact that we act as if we’ve seen the end j tone before. Poor sportsmanship shouldn’t be an option. If it continues, just remember to iremove the “Success with Honor” banners •after the season. Lions still have winning record In response to Monday’s letter “PSU football not worth the price,” Joseph Korsak complains about Penn State’s coaching, saying the program is “out of touch with mainstream college football” Since 2005, the Lions are 54-14, including 4-1 in bond games. If this is out of touch, let’s stay there, please. Kyle Greenwood Class of 2001 Robert Biscontlnl Class of 1974 Paul Levine Class of 1969
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers