Today, during the hearing on bail conditions for Jerry Sandusky, Onward State staffers in Bellefonte used the hashtag #PSUcharges to classify their tweets of the coverage. #PSUcharges was the hashtag created by local media sources when the charges against Jerry Sandusky AND Tim Curley and Gary Schultz were made public on November 5th.

Some who follow Onward State wanted a change in the hashtag to #Sandusky, presumably because of the prevailing thought that Jerry Sandusky “does not represent Penn State”. We sent out four tweets explaining why the hashtag was used as it has become an all-encompassing place for outside news media as well as those who are inside Centre County and across the nation to follow every development of the scandal that has rocked our university.

As we said above, the hashtag has been used for the charges brought against Sandusky, Curley and Schultz, but it has also been used in our coverage of the dismissals of Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier, the “gathering of students” downtown after the Paterno/Spanier announcement, any news connecting The Second Mile to Penn State, and so on and so forth.

When you consider all of the players having a part in the goings-on of the past three months and beyond, it would be naive to think that this is not a Penn State scandal. This is the main reason why #PSUcharges has been used for our coverage.

But we do listen to our readers. Onward State has always been a place to foster discussion and your comments are not taken lightly. Some of our editors and other journalists associated with the LazerPro brand weighed in on the situation and we believe since #PSUcharges has become the norm for covering all things related to this ordeal, we will continue to use the hashtag. It is not a matter of being offensive, but rather getting news out to as many people as possible.

We sincerely thank you for your thoughts on the situation.