After serious disagreement over a subsection of a Faculty Senate resolution, Christopher Mullin of the College of Agricultural Sciences used the last option at his disposal. With no time limits on the debate and not enough votes for cloture, Mullin just started talking... and talking... and talking... for the next 24 hours. His filibuster, which lasted from Tuesday night to Wednesday, concerned a specific provision of the Faculty Senate resolution establishing a Faculty Senate Music Festival.
The overall resolution has widespread support in the Senate, but the provision in question has raised the hackles of many Senators. It seeks to have the Festival in the Fall, instead of the Spring, the traditional Penn State Music Festival season.
The mission of the FacSen Music Festival (its working title) is to spread awareness about the role of the Faculty Senate on campus. Often referred to by students as "the UPUA but for old people," the Festival seeks to correct such misinformation. While the Festival is an example of wasteful spending, which puts it right up UPUA's alley, Senator David Babb of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences was quick to note that "we actually do a lot of important stuff too." When pressed to divulge some of what those things were, Babb just scratched his head.
For more details on this measure, read the full post.
In a surprise move last night, the UPUA Election Commission disqualified election winners Christian Ragland and Colleen Smith for unfairly playing the experience card, as well as runners-up David Adewumi and Devin Weakland for not playing the inexperience card. Echoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, outgoing President Gavin Keirans has forced through legislation that will allow for him to stay on as UPUA President for a third term, despite his impending graduation.
Keirans stated in an interview last night that, "I'm looking forward to coming back next year and hopefully actually accomplishing something. We've laid the groundwork over the past two years that I've been President, but frankly, I didn't think that the two candidates would be able to make anything of it. I'm very much so looking forward to 'telegoverning' from my job in corporate America. I feel that with today's advances in communication, I'll really be able to keep a good pulse on the student body through Penn State Live."
Read on for the full scoop.
In an effort to crack down on marijuana use in State College, police are taking a rather unorthodox approach to crime-fighting by using the popular food-ordering website Lionmenus. A spokesman for the State College Police said of the new initiative:
We were brainstorming the other day, and we thought, what do people who smoke weed like the most? And the answer was easy-- food delivered straight to their door. So we partnered up with Lionmenus and obtained their records of delivery orders, and the results are promising so far. We already have over 5000 suspects that order from Lionmenus on a daily basis.
Police say establishment targets of interest include Wings Over Happy Valley, Insomnia Cookies, R U Hungry, and Philly Pretzels. There are others, but due to the secrecy of the operation, police have declined to give any more details about which restaurants they're targeting.
After the jump: more details on this new police strategy.
Last night, leadership of Onward State met with senior Google Executives Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt to close a deal many months in the making.
Google approached Onward State in December with an offer of $1.2 million in cash and an additional $3.7 million in shares of the technology giant. After much wheeling and dealing, Onward State staff convinced Google to also implement their new 1GB high speed internet project in State College.
Dorm residents will unfortunately continue to face slower-than-molasses internet speeds and the same download/upload limits as you did before. Only residents of State College will benefit from incredible internet speeds.
Read statements from Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Onward State Publisher Davis Shaver after the jump.
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(More after the jump!)
With a look of disgust permanently frozen onto his face and @OnwardState's Twitter feed resonating from his desktop, Graham Spanier announced from Old Main yesterday that the social networking site would no longer be accessible from anywhere on the University grounds.
Read on to find out what happened...