Penn State news by
Penn State's student blog
Penn State news by
Penn State's student blog
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.
