Honors colleges offer the resources of a large research university and the community of a small liberal arts college. See any honors college brochure for a similar pitch.


Over 70 such establishments have appeared throughout the country, and their numbers have grown quickly since the mid-1990s, says the Chronicle of Higher Education.


The South Carolina Honors College ranks among the best in the nation. Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, a university dean, explains that the honors college “really attempts to focus on providing that elite, liberal-arts-college experience.”


South Carolina honors students live in a separate dormitory, complete a senior thesis, and enroll in seminar-esque honors courses. This neatly parallels our Schreyer Honors College, my personal favorite among such institutions.


According to the National Collegiate Honors Council, most honors colleges use the “best of both worlds” recruitment pitch. Such a pitch rings true. The Schreyer Honors College makes an excellent Penn State education even better.

ARHS and UPUA have accepted the fact that Penn Staters drink. With the help of new information cards, they’re striving to get students home safely.


The cards display phone numbers for three taxi services, the number for the campus escort service, and a miniature CATA bus schedule. The front and back are shown here.




Steve Roberts, associate vice president of Association of Residence Hall Students (ARHS), conceived the idea of the cards in light of the recent State Patty’s Day. We contacted Mr. Roberts for an explanation of these cards.

“The cards are printed on cardstock and thus are durable. Additionally, they are not in the traditional format of a flyer or larger piece of paper which would typically be thrown out. The cards are about the size of a normal business card and slide easily into your wallet or purse so that when students go out it’s not a hassle to bring it with them.”

In addition, he says that several bars and apartments have already requested information cards to distribute to students.


At my floor meeting last night, my RA passed around a stack of these cards. My floormates agreed that while the front side may prove useful, the reverse side is laughably illegible due to the minuscule font size.


This initiative is a great idea, and I hope it succeeds. However, a bit of advice for the lost drunkard in need of transportation: call a taxi, don’t wait for the bus. It’s highly probable that you can’t decipher the font.

Late last week, we asked if the pendulum was swinging on State Patty’s. Our answer? A loud, albeit slurred, “NO!”


State College police handled roughly 365 calls related to State Patty’s Day. University Police dealt with another 55 calls. This wasn’t your average Saturday.


Penn Live reports that the arrest count doubled from last year, jumping from 80 to 160 arrests. Between 6 pm Friday and 6 pm Sunday, Centre LifeLink EMS responded to 58 calls.

As you may know, the 36th annual Movin’ On is happening on April 17. As you may not know, the musical festival has a rich history starting in the yonder year of 1974.


Back in the day, the East Halls Residence Association held a primordial Movin’ On at the fields by Beaver Stadium, where students jammed to area bands and watched W.C. Fields and Marx Brothers movies. The event was then called “Good Feelings ‘74,” a name which I definitely dig.


In 1975, the event’s organizers joined the Association of Residence Hall Students (ARHS) and tremendously expanded the festival. Each day of the week, a different group of dorms presented a day of activities, collectively known as “Penn State’s Greatest Week of Entertainment.” The week culminated in the epic day-long Movin’ On concert (for the record, the phrase “Movin’ On” acknowledges the seniors who are “movin’ on” after graduation). Eventually the week-long event evolved into a two-day audio extravaganza.


The organizers extended Movin’ On to a two-day concert in 1976. A local radio station played a live broadcast of the acts, and Movin’ On raised money for the Volunteer Service Center for the second year in a row. Orleans played in ‘77; Gregg Allman played in ‘78.


Again, Movin’ On outlives The Spill Canvas and The White Tie Affair. Check out the Facebook event, and get ready to “move on” this April.

On their website/newspaper/blog, the Huffington Post recently launched a “College” section, where they publish the work of selected college media outlets. Why am I telling you this? Because they selected Onward State as a partner!


Our “THON in Review” article appeared on the Huffington Post yesterday, much to everyone’s delight. To get hyped for this new affiliation, we’ve added a HuffPo widget on the right side of our page.


This new phase of our bloghood is big news for us here at Onward State. @Writers, we’ll have to step up our game. Davis’ so-called “duopoly” has erupted into a monopolistic competition, so we’ll have to differentiate our product in order to succeed. @Readers, post exemplary comments; the whole world may see them!


In case any of you fine folks really dig the Huffington Post, answer their call for citizen journalists. They’ll be recruiting “about 30 students, both photojournalists and videographers, to cover college issues…. There will be weekly assignments, training events, crowdsourcing projects, and most importantly, daily access to HuffPost editors.” If interested, click here to apply.

In 2007, the National Study of Student Hazing found that 68 percent of women in Greek life experience hazing before joining their sororities. Penn State is not immune from this barbaric behavior. Serious reports of hazing have recently been reported at Penn State Altoona.


ABC News reports that “Joanne” pledged a Penn State Altoona sorority and suffered from severe hazing. Her potential sisters made her clean the kitchen floor with her fingernails. They screamed about her worthlessness, threw her against brick walls, and forced her to drink black, dirty water. When Joanne finally quit, the girls keyed her car and left scathing messages on her Facebook profile.


Along with most colleges, Penn State Altoona strictly prohibits hazing, yet it happens nonetheless. Hazing frequently includes labeling areas of fat on girls’ bodies with marker and “boob ranking,” in which girls are rendered topless and ordered by their breast sizes.


Obviously, this is awful behavior, and the fact that it occurs causes me to question the decency of my fellow college students. Hazing has probably occurred for a long time, but why have young women recently become so violent and hateful? I look to overzealous feminism and the bawdiness of reality TV for answers.


Sororities should bond through unity and accomplishment, not mental trauma. To any hazers out there, remember the moral pillars that support your establishments.

In 1986, Gene Baur took a stand against the exploitation of our fellow animals. He founded Farm Sanctuary, an organization which promotes animal welfare laws, rescues farm animals from slaughter, and shelters these animals in upstate New York and northern California.


Mr. Baur recently authored Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food, a national bestseller.


He and his organization strive to improve conditions in factory farms and slaughterhouses. They recently won legislative victories in California, which has since banned various confinement systems and outlawed the force-feeding of ducks and geese to produce foie gras.


A dynamic orator, Gene Baur will speak tonight at 7 pm in the Kern Building. See the Facebook event for more details. Herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores alike should attend this event. You may gain an ethical perspective about what’s really on your plate.

A quartet of wealthy alumni just donated $2.5 million to the Penn State University Libraries. This gift set a new donation record and will support the Pattee Library’s new Knowledge Commons.


A major upcoming renovation, the Knowledge Commons will act as an information technology center within the library. Jeanette and John R. McWhirter and Ann and Peter G. Tombros are the generous donors behind these funds. Read the Penn State Live article for the details regrading their fascinating (and financially rewarding) career trajectories.


In addition to the joint gift of $2.5 million, the Tombros couple has offered $1.4 million to improve the University Libraries’ collections of Classics and Greek Literature.


This fortunate turn of events is excellent news for our libraries. May the manifestations of these gifts expand our knowledge as university students.

Those of you who read the Collegian on Tuesday probably read about Dennis Shea, head of the Department of Health Policy and Administration and staunch objector to State Patty’s Day. For you devout Onward Staters, you may know Dr. Shea better as the prolific commenter “GTWMA.”


To the average college student, GTWMA may seem like a stringent fun-sucker beamed to the future from the temperance days of yore. But when compared to the shamrock-covered sloppy messes drunk at 10 am, the enlightened Dr. Shea wins the allegiance of many.


Dr. Shea has gained a following; the End The “State Patty’s Day” Tradition Facebook group has amassed over 1,185 members (although the “official” State Patty’s Day group has 9,390 members, roughly a quarter of the student body).


Read on for more.

The audience roared with applause and offered a standing ovation to the sextet, who graced the stage once again for an encore. The touring Monterey Jazz Festival performed in Eisenhower Auditorium last night, and they delighted the audience with intricate, energized melodies.
The sextet included singer Kurt Elling, guitarist Russell Malone, violinist Regina Carter, bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa, drummer Johnathan Blake, and pianist Kenny Barron, recently dubbed a “Jazz Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The six musicians arranged themselves into various solos, duets, trios, quartets, and quintets throughout the performance. However, the group performed best as a full ensemble, particularly …

Advanced Placement tests offer a number of advantages to high school students, including weighted GPAs and college credit. More students take AP tests these days, but more students fail them.


According to USA Today, AP enrollment jumped from 704,000 to 1.7 million students between 1999 and 2009. However, failing scores, defined as a 1 or 2 out of 5, rose from 36.5% to 41.5%.


Students’ performances have shifted unevenly. Scores for AP Physics have generally increased, while scores for AP English Literature have dropped (reflecting the world’s new infatuation with math and science).


Geography may also affect the high fail rates. In the South (roughly Texas to Delaware), nearly half of all AP tests earned a failing grade. This represents a significant statistical difference from the rest of the country.


New Mexico, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia contain the lowest scoring test-takers. In those four states, AP test-takers failed between 55% and 70.3% of all exams. Yikes.


AP credits fulfill many general education requirements and can improve one’s college career immensely. Fewer gen eds can equate to early graduation and thousands of saved dollars. Fewer gen eds can also free up precious college time to take fascinating yet semi-irrelevant courses of one’s choice.


The rigor of AP courses surely differs from high school to high school. However, an AP test fee is a great investment—as long as you pass the test.


See Penn State’s AP course equivalencies for more details.

After millennia of a male-dominated world, women have finally risen to the top. But some college admissions officers suggest that they’ve risen too high.


Women now outnumber men applying to and graduating from college. They comprise 57% of college populations, and they may face discrimination for being too eager for a college education.


The College of William and Mary accepted relatively equal numbers of men and women for the most recent freshman class. However, 7,652 women and 4,457 men applied. Crunch those numbers, and you’ll find that the college accepted 45% of male applicants and only 27% of female applicants.


The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently caught wind of this inequality, and they’re seeing if universities are deliberately discriminating against women to maintain an equal gender ratio.


The phenomenon of female-dominated universities has yet to strike Penn State. Men represent 54% of the student body, while females represent only 46%. Penn State may be an exception due to its respected College of Engineering, one institute that oozes testosterone.


In any case, discrimination against college-bound women is intolerable. Rather than slackening standards for male applicants, colleges should alter certain structures to increase male enrollment. (Adderral dispensers in the library? Free ESPN Insider accounts for all students?)


But seriously, alternatives to blatant discrimination surely exist. (Although, as a man, a high female-to-male ratio is fine by me.)

The 2010 Census is upon us, and five Penn State students are determined to count every man, woman, and child in Centre County.


Laura Peck, Jennifer Wallington, Emily Franklin, Kate Wiedie, and Emily Simmons formed “Count Centre County” to compete in this year’s Public Relations Student Society of America’s National Bateman Competition. They’re especially targeting groups with low return rates, namely rural populations and college students.


Count Centre County, a community outreach organization, will host informative events during the month of February to maximize the county’s participation in the Census this year. The group will make appearances in the HUB and residence halls, so be sure to participate.


Students comprise roughly three quarters of State College, so a lack of Census participation on our part could drastically alter the results for Centre County.


Check out the group’s Facebook and Twitter pages for more details.

You may have spent your Friday night drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana while on the lookout for those pesky police. They’re always trying to spoil your fun, right?


To get a policeman’s perspective, I tagged along with a university cop while he made his Friday rounds. For security’s sake, I can’t mention names or places, but here’s what happened on my journey to the other side. As students, you may expect police officers to be gruff, handcuff-happy jerks, but Officer X was a wonderful guy. The police don’t go out of their way to bust people; they merely strive to keep the students safe, even if that means slapping citations onto a few unlucky law-breakers.

Rachel Petkac, 19, passed away on Monday night after sustaining severe injuries from an automobile accident. A commuter, Ms. Petkac was driving back from Penn State on Friday, January 8 at the time of the accident.


She lost control of her vehicle in the snow on Route 550. Her car collided with a utility pole. After 18 days of hospitalization, she died at Geisinger Medical Center. See this CDT briefing for more details.


Ms. Petkac was a Schreyer scholar majoring in Community, Environment, and Development. She graduated from State College Area High School in 2008. She was a member of the Good Shepard Catholic Church and planned on joining the Peace Corps after college. For more information, see her full obituary and commemorative Facebook group.