I Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010 TII i I) \i I \ Collegian Elizabeth Murphy Editor ill C hief 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 wnte 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 , tonal 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. Caitlin Burnham. Paul Casella. Kevin Cinlli. 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 Oplmger. Edgar Ramirez, Heather Schmeizlen. 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. 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. Crime reflects drinking culture Given State College’s reputation as one of the safest cities in the coun try, the recent stabbings at the 797 Lounge and Knights of Columbus came as a surprise to the area’s residents. But we believe Penn State’s reputation as a drinking school may be partially to blame. Both incidents involved alcohol, students and peo ple from out of town. Large events, such as Homecoming and Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, attract many . <r \' Education should be election issue By Michael Oplinger Rarely does the resigna tion of a school district leader make national news. ^ — Yet last week jliHiV when Michelle Jp> \ Rhee ann- flsfcjfihl ounced she was stepping down as chancellor of the Washington DC public school system, the news MY OPINION appeared on multiple major news outlets. While the departure of the con troversial yet successful Rhee may have negative effects on the turnaround of D.C. schools, it has fueled an important national dis cussion about one of the coun try's biggest yet ignored issues the need for education reform. In her three years as chancel lor, Rhee tenaciously pursued reforms that led to increased test scores and the end of decades of declining enrollment. But Rhee, an alumna of Teach for America, employed controversial policies to get the results. She closed dozens of underperforming schools and fired ineffective teachers, after persuading union leaders for the power to do so. Rhee’s disregard for the politi cal implications of her actions represent the attitude needed to truly make changes to the educa tion system. It’s a movement that calls for devoted, driven pioneers to shake things up and refuse to quit. Her personality has given her publicity as one of the leaders in the movement to fix public edu cation, including a spotlight in the recently released education documentary “Waiting for non-students to State Col lege because of the party atmosphere these events create and encourage. When these people visit, they seem determined to drink themselves out of control in order to keep up with their perception of Penn State students’ habits The incidents show that Penn State’s reputation as a place to drink heavily may be getting too big for the town. Many visitors talk about drinking excessively as the highlight of their ;d^. v ) ■ ; .. .J j\ .4 -' BROKE. 'Vi Superman." She also collaborat ed with educators from across the country to release a mani festo called "How to fix our schools," which was printed in the Washington Post. In it, the reform leaders call for recruiting better teachers, equipping them with the best technology possible and making public charter schools a more viable option. Others have suggested pa\ing teachers more to lure the top students into the profession or training current teachers to con tinually improve classrooms. No one can be sure what reforms will work, but at least a conversation has been started among the public even if Congress has rarely discussed it. Education reform has long been a campaign promise from candidates of both parties. But like many other campaign promises, it has rarely been delivered, as evidenced by the failing school system in the city where laws are made. Politicians argue for smaller class sizes while also promoting a smaller budget for social pro grams such as education. Like many other things politicians say, this seems contradictory, unless they simply want fewer kids to go to school. To make things worse, this year, it seems to be absent from debates completely. I recently watched a debate between candi dates for U.S. Representative for my hometown 15th district, cov ering much of Allentown and the surrounding area. During the hour-long debate, not one of the three candidates mentioned education once, unless they were bragging about their own academic work. Though they’re competing to weekends in State Col lege. Given other incidents at the bar, 797 Lounge should look into increased security measures to avoid becoming a place known as unsafe and prone to violence. While the incidents are rare and State College is still a safe town, these recent occurrences could be a reflection of what Penn State has become a university with a large portion of the student body proud of an unsafe drinking culture. fo y /4 > T) "\ V ‘ / Y represent a district with a rather large disparity between the poor urban schools and wealthy sub urban schools, the candidates bickered childishly about who supported bank bailouts, stimu lus packages and health care reform bills. While important to note, those issues are things of the past. Instead of focusing on how to bet ter the future, politicians have spent most of their time looking back and attempting to point fin gers. But education reform needs a forward-thinking mindset. An issue as important as this can’t afford to wallow in the mistakes of the past. Education is supposed to be the great equalizer. In theory, all students are supposed to have access to quality education, no matter what background or area the kids come from. If the United States hopes to regain its status as a leader in industry and innovation, it must make sure it utilizes its natural human resources. To fail to prop erly train all students could waste enormous potential. In a country billed as the land of opportunity, education is the true provider of opportunity. Education opens the doors for students to realize their potential and provide a better future. To continue to keep those doors closed for some students because of disparities between school quality will leave many children behind. And the country will stay behind with them. Michael Oplinger is a senior majoring in media studies and political science and is The Daily Collegian's Tuesday columnist. His e-mail is mjoso7l@psu.edu. The Daily Collegian Lion ‘turnaround’ is unlikely In response to Monday’s article “Mid-sea son turnarounds can be done,” I am sorry but you are comparing apples to oranges. How old was the head coach in 1964 com pared to 83 year old JoePa today? Also, we currently have a completely inept offensive coaching staff that just cannot put together a game plan to allow the players a chance to succeed. Should there be a turnaround it will solely be the result of player talent, not the coaching staff. Watch any college game and look at how involved and in control the head coach is. JoePa is just there. He is unable to perform the tasks that the job requires such as recruiting. How long would you last on your job if you could not perform the require ments of the position? Start the national search now for a new head coach and staff while the program can be salvaged. Waiting one more year is going to mean two years of lost recruiting and require several years to turn it around. Yes. JoePa is an icon and thanks for everything, but that is history. If he has the right to dictate when he is going to leave while we watch the program flounder than I have the right as a season ticket holder to expect reimbursement for the inferior prod uct that I am paying for, not to expect to pay more. Come on President Spanier and Tim Curley, it is the typical elderly person that cannot make such an important decision so it is up to you to do what is in the best inter est of the future of Penn State football and make the decision for him. After all, it is your job. Face-to-face is also cathartic In response to Monday's letter "Defriending solves problems," the writer mentioned how "defriending" someone on Facebook could be a cathartic act, some thing that would purge your life of the annoying people who are in your world. Those who are leaving the snarky com ments on your Facebook page should be punished by having one less friend on their iEgos. But at the risk of sounding snarky myself, a better solution would be not to judge your life by the amount of people you barely know in a list. Try going out and speaking with people, then consider deleting your Facebook account. Trust me, it would be much more cleansing to get that constant need of validation off of your back. Timothy Rinehart Class of 2008 Front page should be diverse In response to Monday's article “Community wears pride," as happy as I am for "Lady Gay Gay" in winning this years drag show. I really question the newsworthi ness of the event and the necessity to put a large photo on the front page of The Daily Collegian. In fact if I did not know any better I would think the only thing that happened on campus the past week were Coming Out Week events. Most of these were positive events that benefit the LGBTQA communi ty and deserve a fair amount of press, but when a drag show where contestants go out into the audience and give lap dances while 400 other people laugh at them is the best news article we can come up with over a three-dav period it really makes me find more value in The Onion and Phroth then in this newspaper. I know I do not have to read The Collegian, but then where am I expect ed to get my crossword that I do each day during class” INCOGNITO Words from the web team Welcome to the Collegian’s web staff blog. Incognito. My name is Andrew Metcalf, and I'm the Web editor here at the Collegian. It's been a hectic couple of weeks since we launched the new site, and though things are coming together there are certainly still several parts of the site that remain unfinished. The site transition hasn't been smooth the whole way, and some parts of the site have taken longer than we anticipated. We’re getting it together, but you'll probably notice the odd broken link or missing story for the short term. I’d like to talk a little bit about why we made this blog. First, the Collegian's web staff more than tripled in size this year,jumping from two to seven, so we felt we had enough people to keep a blog like this going. We may occasionally use this blog as a soapbox for whatever’s on our mind, but we ll try to mostly keep it rele vant to the Collegian’s web presence. Second, we have put a lot of new func tionality into this site, and we wanted the chance to explain it all. Plus, we’ve still got a ton of new features yet to debut, and we may preview some of those here. Finally, we wanted to have a good forum to solicit ideas and feedback, an effort that we regret to say has been slightly scattered up to this point. We want your feedback on anything about the site complaints, sugges tions, confusion, whatever. We ll attempt to respond to any substantive com ments left on this blog. Read more of The Daily Collegian’s blogs at psucollegian.com/blags. Rick Herman Class of 1975 Kevin Nichols senior-finance Andrew Metcalf Web editor
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers