Posts filed under ‘Alumni Association’
Mr. O’Brien Goes to Washington
He signed 21 autographs. He posed for 68 photos. He shook 101 hands.
That was the tally—part of it, anyway—for Bill O’Brien Tuesday night in Washington D.C., on the fourth stop of the Penn State Coaches Caravan. For about 40 minutes—from the time he entered the ballroom at the Washington Hilton until the time he excused himself to make his way up to the stage—I watched O’Brien stand at the front an impromptu receiving line and greet Penn State alumni and fans. For those 40 minutes, I tracked every interaction O’Brien had.
Washington seemed the right place to document the most campaign-like aspect of the caravan, and O’Brien’s role in it. I joked before I stepped onto the bus Monday morning that I felt a bit like a reporter embedding with a presidential candidate; seeing O’Brien address the handshake line for the fourth time in two days—knowing how many more hands he’ll shake, pictures he’ll take, and autographs he’ll sign in the coming days and weeks—only reinforced the analogy. (more…)
Watching Bill O’Brien
I’m doing double-duty of sorts on this Penn State Coaches Caravan bus trip, which left State College bright and early Monday morning and continues on tonight in Drexel Hill, Pa. I’m doing this, obviously—blogging and tweeting when the WiFi cooperates to share the scene as Bill O’Brien and the other coaches on the trip get out and meet Penn Staters. But I’m also mindful of the O’Brien profile I’m working on for the July/August issue of The Penn Stater.
In watching him at a handful of press conferences, interviewing him one-on-one in his office a few weeks back, spending a few days with him this week on the bus, and in at least one other unlikely interaction I’ll share at some point, I’ve gotten a pretty good picture of how Bill O’Brien comes across. He is blunt, but he also can be very funny. He’s heard enough of the same questions dozens of times over the past few months, and you can tell which ones he doesn’t mind answering, and which he’d probably rather not hear again. But as me made clear at lunch Monday in Philly, he sees the value in answering them all.
He met with reporters for 15 minutes before the lunchtime gathering at the Doubletree on Broad Street, then took most of the questions (Char Morett and Patrick Chambers joined him onstage) from alumni after lunch. Throughout, O’Brien was on message—and I don’t mean that as a bad thing. His is not the sort of job in which one can focus only on one thing, and certainly recruiting and keeping tabs on his current team keep him busy enough. But he is clearly and impressively focused right now on converting the masses of Penn Staters to his cause. He insisted, as he will again and again, that academics matter. That integrity and respect will be words associated with the program as long as he’s in charge of it. And while he made no promises, he certainly talked about winning football games.
Bill O’Brien has been making a great first impression for four months now, and he looks likely to keep that up for the next couple of weeks. The games will come in the fall and results will largely determine how he’s received; for now, he’s doing all he can to show Penn Staters, in his always blunt, occasionally funny way, that he’s one of us. “I’m no longer an outsider,” he said Monday, talking about the welcome he and his family have received in Happy Valley. “I feel like a Penn Stater now.”
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Bill O’Brien Hits the Road
The arrival of our May/June issue means we’re well into work on our July/August edition. Among the features we’re working on is a profile of Bill O’Brien, who just wrapped up his first spring practice. I’m in the midst of reporting that one, a task that so far has included a 6:30 a.m. interview with O’Brien in his office; anyone who knows me knows the scheduled time must’ve been his idea.
Busy as he’s been, O’Brien has found time to do plenty of interviews. He’s spoken repeatedly since his hiring about the importance to reaching out to Penn State alumni and fans, and making himself available to reporters is only part of that plan. Starting next week, he’ll take his show on the road.
On Monday, O’Brien will lead the Penn State Coaches Caravan on a nine-day, 18-city tour throughout Pennsylvania and surrounding states. I’m fortunate to have a spot on the bus for the first leg of the caravan, which starts next week with a Monday lunch gathering in Philadelphia and includes stops in Drexel Hill, Pa., Baltimore, Washington D.C., Richmond, Va., and Harrisburg. And that’s just the first three days; the next two weeks will include stops in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, and elsewhere in Pennsylvania.
I’ll be blogging from early stops on the caravan, which will feature O’Brien at every stop and appearances from additional Penn State coaches. If you’re not already signed up for one of the stops, you can register and find more information here. A few are at capacity, but tickets are still available for most of the events.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Alumni Meet the Board of Trustees Candidates
Editor Tina Hay took this photo of the Meet the Candidates event. A steady stream of alumni attended during the two-hour session before the Blue White game.
There was a guy with a clipboard taking notes. A few people who drove to campus for Blue White Weekend not to attend the football game, but to ask questions of some of the 86 candidates for the three open alumni seats on the Board of Trustees. And 60 of the candidates themselves, talking Saturday morning about issues facing Penn State, everything from the state appropriation to the treatment of Joe Paterno to the fact that a particularly important job that the next Board of Trustees will soon undertake is hiring the university’s next president.
I spent the morning at the Alumni Association’s Meet the Candidates event at the IM Building, and I came away impressed by the dedication of the candidates. (I tried to talk to each of them; I may have missed a few.) There were a lot of ideas in the room, and I’m hoping that although there will be 83 candidates who won’t join the board, that there’s a way to harness that energy and willingness to serve.
Many of the candidates said that reconnecting with other alumni—either to discuss issues or remember old times on campus or to simply explain how to request a ballot—has been a particularly valuable and enjoyable part of the process, which of course started because of dissatisfaction and dismay over how Penn State and the trustees handled the Sandusky scandal and aftermath.
The event attracted about 250 people–including Board of Trustees chair Karen Peetz and vice chair Keith Masser, who stayed for the entire time. About 37,000 more have read the candidates’ responses to our Three Questions project, which will remain available through the election. Voting is continuing through May 3, so there’s still plenty of time to make your decision.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Peetz, Erickson Answer Questions from Alumni Council
Six months after the Sandusky scandal broke, there are still questions. Lots of them. And, as Penn State president Rodney Erickson told Alumni Council, “There may be some questions we’ll never have answers for.”
That said, Erickson and Karen Peetz, chair of the Board of Trustees, answered as many as they could Friday afternoon from members of Alumni Council. They touched on everything from the relationship between the trustees and the president (something they agreed is not well enough understood) to what Peetz called “the super-positive of the enduring spirit of Penn Staters.” And they fielded several questions about Joe Paterno, including one that’s been asked at just about every opportunity: When and how will Penn State honor its late football coach?
Peetz said, as she has previously, that Penn State must wait until the Freeh report, more formally known as the findings of the trustees’ special investigations task force, before moving forward on plans to honor Paterno. She called the upcoming report “the ultimate in transparency.”
Former FBI director Louis Freeh was hired by the trustees just weeks after the scandal and charged with looking into all of the issues surrounding the scandal since. His findings—which Peetz said will not be edited by the board—are expected in August or September.
The task force does not have subpoena power. But Peetz said she spoke with Freeh’s investigators for three hours, that more than 200 people have been interviewed, and that Freeh is working with the state attorney general. “These people are not kidding around,” she said. “This is the FBI incarnate, and I don’t think anyone’s lying, I’ll tell you that.” (more…)
Yes, That was a Mule on the HUB Lawn
A constant flow of visitors peering from the Bell Tower, tug-of-war outside Old Main, and a mule grazing the grass of the HUB lawn.
It was a unique day at Penn State, indeed.
Wednesday was the annual Old Main Open House, a day to celebrate Penn State’s history. The event — which also featured free food, arts and crafts and guided tours of Old Main — was hosted by the Lion Ambassadors. When I stopped by at 3 p.m., there were about 75 visitors mulling around the area, taking in the partly sunny April afternoon.
As visitors waited for their guided tours — highlighted by a trip up to the Bell Tower for a scenic view of campus and downtown — they munched on free popcorn and frozen ices.
At 4, President Rodney Erickson opened his doors for a one-hour office hour session. Students could stop by to talk about anything — or just get to know the president.
Visitors also participated in tug-of-war, cider scrap, and push ball scrap — better known as scrap games. It’s OK if you don’t know what scrap game are. I needed a brush up on the term, as well. Between 1885-1916, freshmen and sophomores would duke it out for bragging rights in a series of competitive games. Among the visitors who seemed to enjoy the revival of the competitions was the Nittany Lion, who apparently participated in a few games of tug-of-war before I arrived.
This year’s Open House featured some new surprises — notably Boomer, the soon-to-be 6-year-old mini mule who hung out by the HUB and was impersonating Old Coaly, Penn State’s first mascot. She and her handler made the 3-hour, 45-minute drive from Butler County the morning of the event.
After I said hello to “Old Coaly,” a tour group walked by. What appeared to be the younger sibling of a prospective student turned to his father and asked, “Do they always have a mule hanging around here?”
Emily Kaplan, intern
Three Questions for the Board of Trustees Candidates
How on earth do you differentiate among 86 candidates for the three open alumni seats on the Board of Trustees? I had been asking myself that question for a while—even before I knew the final number of people on the ballot. It seemed like every time I picked up a newspaper, someone else was declaring his or her candidacy. I lost count of how many.
By the time the final number—a record, by far—was determined, I thought I had a good handle on what the candidates thought about the trustees’ handling of the Sandusky scandal. The media coverage—understandably—focused on it. And when the official position statements (which you can find here), were released, most of them dealt primarily with the scandal and its aftermath, too.
That wasn’t enough for me. As a journalist, a Penn State alum, and a Penn State employee, I had more questions. Penn State has other large issues it must confront in the coming years—particularly the annual fight for state appropriation dollars and the steady rise of tuition. I think it’s important for the Board of Trustees candidates to address those issues, too. We brainstormed for a bit at the office, and we crafted three questions we thought could add to the discussion.
Sure, we’d love to hear all of the trustees—not just the ones currently running for the board—address these wider issues. But alumni can vote only for the nine alumni seats on the board, and only three are up every year. We decided to focus where we could shed the most light—the candidates in the most prominent trustees election in Penn State’s history.
So we emailed the three questions to the 86 candidates. We weren’t sure what to expect, but a week later, 72 of them had responded. That’s 83.7 percent. In the research world, they call that a “robust” response. We’re thrilled.
We are presenting the responses to you exactly as the candidates wrote them; click here to read them, either by candidate or by question. If responses exceeded the 250-word limit, we trimmed them, and if something was particularly unclear, we contacted the author to clarify. Otherwise, their responses are unvarnished and unedited.
The candidates raise many important points, and they float some interesting solutions. It’s a lot to digest, we know. But we hope you’ll take some time to learn about the candidates before you vote, and we hope you’ll let us know what you think, too, in the comments below or on our Facebook page.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
P.S. This is just one of two initiatives that Alumni Association is doing to help alumni make an informed choice. There’s a Meet the Candidates event from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 21, before the Blue-White game, and we hope you’ll be able to attend that, too. You can find out more about the event here.
A Small-World Story
You will either find this tale to be very boring or very cool.
We’ve been getting a lot of calls about our new March-April issue, which is a commemorative issue about Joe Paterno. One such call I fielded today was from a reader in Richmond, Va., who had just gotten the new issue and who wanted to buy two more copies. I put him in touch with our Alumni Store and went back to whatever I had been doing.
A few hours later, he called me back, saying he wanted me to talk to his wife. She had lived in Somerset, Pa.—my hometown—for a number of years, he said, and she knew my family. Naturally I was happy to have him put her on the phone.
Her name is Jolinda Myers, and she knew her stuff: She told me that my brother (a professional photographer in Somerset) had done family portraits for her, and that her daughter had briefly taken a ballet class from my sister. She also knew that my best friend in childhood was Richard Critchfield.
Then she described the location of the house she had lived in—at the corner of Clover Hill Road and Felgar Road, just up the hill from my house. And I said, “You know, I have a childhood memory from that house. Or maybe it was the one next door….” So I told her the memory:
Richard and I had occasion to be at that house for some reason one summer day when we were maybe 9 or 10 years old—I don’t remember the reason, but Richard and I went everywhere on our bikes. I vaguely think I might have been helping him collect on his paper route that day. Someone at that house had a brand-new baby—a boy—and I remember thinking (more…)
Signs of Change on State Patty’s Day
Since its inception in 2007, State Patty’s Day has become synonymous with excessive drinking, alcohol-related hospital visits, and public displays of bad behavior.
But there are plenty of Penn State alumni and students hoping to change that.
The Alumni Association’s Committee on Excessive Drinking Issues, formed in 2010 and made up of students, alumni, and Alumni Association staff, has been working to learn more about the issue of dangerous drinking. Along with several year-round initiatives, the group has teamed with the State College Police Department to discourage local bar and restaurant owners from advertising the “holiday” with drink specials and merchandise.
More students are taking the anti-State Patty’s stance, too — and encouraging their peers to do the same. Senior Tyler Changaris is asking students to sign a pledge, posted online here, promising to abstain from all State Patty’s Day festivities. And more than 100 students are planning to spend the day participating in an alternative holiday, “State Day of Service,” by doing volunteer work throughout campus and Centre County.
In a Feb. 10 column in The Daily Collegian, popular sociology professors Sam Richards and Laurie Mulvey ’94g ask students to boycott State Patty’s Day in light of the Sandusky scandal — “in honor of lives and communities that are forever changed by what has happened.”
Though we’ll have to wait until this weekend to determine the full impact of these efforts, there’s already been one very encouraging development: More than 20 downtown bars and restaurants — twice as many as in 2011 — are modifying their hours or alcohol service, some closing entirely, on what would be one of the most profitable days of the year. StateCollege.com offers a list of the establishments and their plans for Saturday here.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
Alumni Ask Questions; President Erickson Answers
Rodney Erickson and moderator Patty Satalia took questions from Pittsburgh-area Penn State alumni for about 90 minutes on Tuesday night.
Rodney Erickson promised “openness and communication.” He promised them twice, in fact, during his opening statement Wednesday night at a town hall meeting with alumni in Pittsburgh. He called those values his “guiding principles and watchwords,” ones he learned growing up on a farm in Wisconsin, and he said they’ve served him well during his career in higher education, the past 34 years at Penn State and the past nine weeks as the University’s president.
“I know there’s a perception that we at Penn State have not always done as well as we could to be open, to respond to questions and to be as transparent as possible with all of our constituencies—alumni, faculty, staff, our students, and the public and the media who report on our great university,” he said. “We will do better in the future based on those guiding principles of openness and communication that I just stated. I’m here this evening to begin to demonstrate these values.”
He promised, also, to listen to whatever the more than 600 alumni who attended the town hall had to say about the Sandusky scandal and its aftermath. (And anything else.) Those alumni took Erickson at his word. They were polite, but they didn’t hold back.
The first speaker introduced herself by saying that she’d brought her baby daughter and son home from the hospital in Penn State sleepers “because (more…)
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