Posts tagged ‘Daily Collegian’
From One Veteran Among Many, A Reminder To Say “Thanks”
As part of its Veterans Day coverage, Wednesday’s Daily Collegian profiled local World War II vet Joe Tomczuk. He’s not a Penn State alum, but he’s part of our extended family, and we just had to share.
Joe’s wife, Kay, is a colleague of ours—often the first voice you hear or the first face you see if you call or visit the Hintz Family Alumni Center, and just flat-out one of our favorite people. Their children are Joan Schweitzer ’82 and Paul ’85, and I’m sure they join us today in thanking their dad, and all the other veterans of wars past and present.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Penn State Honored for Educating Military Members and Veterans
Penn State has been recognized by the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education for its work in educating military members and veterans. The Daily Collegian reports on the honor—the Ray Ehrensberger Award for Institutional Excellence in Military Education, awarded by the AAACE’s Commission on Military Education and Training—which is given annually to just one school in the nation. The commission stressed the University’s long history of educating future and former servicemen and women, and the accessibility of Penn State’s World Campus program.
You can read more about the award’s criteria and see a list of past winners here.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Just Another Friday in Happy Valley…
Hardly. Campus is buzzing for tomorrow’s nationally televised visit of Ohio State. Penn State-OSU games increasingly feel like a Really Big Deal, both because they’re often such close games, and because the Big Ten championship is often on the line. The league title isn’t exactly up for grabs tomorrow—somebody will have to knock off somehow-still-unbeaten Iowa first—but it’s still huge for both teams’ hopes of a BCS bowl berth.
The buzz this week has been kicked up a few notches by a mini-controversy surrounding some student-designed T-shirts mocking Ohio State QB Terrelle Pryor, the Western PA prep legend who spurned Penn State as “too country” for his taste. Pryor took his team’s home loss to Penn State last year particularly hard—as he should have—and his postgame emotion inspired a Terrelle “Cryer” shirt that was being sold on campus this week. The ensuing uproar led to the shirts being pulled, but won’t do anything to diminish the mood among Penn State fans (and especially students) when Pryor steps onto the field Saturday afternoon.
Speaking of not diminishing the mood: Paternoville was shut down Thursday night due to the weather—the wind chill here made it feel like it was in the 20s overnight—but the students are back out today. Not that these kids need any help getting fired up for game day, but just in case, one of their own, Jeff Lowe, put together this hype video for the occasion…
Two more things to know about this one: It’ll be the first football game—not this season, or even in college, but first ever—that anyone in Jack Crawford’s family has been able to see the sophomore defensive end play in person. The Daily Collegian has the details.
And… Ryan Seacrest will be at Beaver Stadium! Or so he Tweeted yesterday…
Hey any of you going to the penn state ohio state game in happy valley? I will be there sat!!
Apparently his dad is Gary Seacrest ’68. Wikipedia tells us that the younger Seacrest briefly attended the University of Georgia, but it’s good to see he has his football priorities in the right place.
Ryan, if you’re reading this, feel free to stop by our tailgate.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
A Funny Moment with Howard and Karl
The politically polarized nature of any discussion on American health care was on display Tuesday night at University Park, when Republican strategist Karl Rove and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean debated the topic at Eisenhower Auditorium. The event, part of the Student Programming Association’s Distinguished Speaker Series, provided some entertaining moments. Tony Madonna, a Penn State undergrad and aspiring photographer, captured this one: the moment when Rove, apparently disagreeing with Dean about the costs associated with reform, pulled out a prop to emphasize his point.
Entertainment value aside, the debate doesn’t appear to have solved anything. As one student told the Daily Collegian afterward, “I thought it was a circus… there were no winners, just varying degrees of loss.”
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Laura Wexler on Storytelling
The Collegian Alumni Interest Group blog has an interview this week with Laura Wexler ’93, who spent more than three years on the Daily Collegian staff and is now a writer and editor in Baltimore.
Laura is one of our favorite freelancers; she’s done a bunch of articles for The Penn Stater over the years, most recently the profile of Penn State grad student Scott Robertson, who has Asperger’s syndrome, in our May-June issue. (You can download a PDF of that article here.)
Laura also is a senior editor at Style magazine in Baltimore, and teaches writing at Johns Hopkins. But what she’s getting the most attention for these days is something she helped launch called the Stoop Storytelling series, in which several hundred people gather in an auditorium to hear people tell stories in seven minutes or less.
The Collegian AIG blog also did an interview a month or so ago with our own senior editor, Lori Shontz ’91, who talks about her move from daily newspapers to an alumni magazine.
Tina Hay, editor
Joseph Dado is Missing
An 18-year-old Penn State freshman is missing, and the concern seems to be spreading throughout the campus by the hour.
Joseph Dado, a native of Latrobe, Pa., lives in East Halls. He was last seen leaving the Fiji fraternity house on campus around 3:00 a.m. Sunday, according to Penn State and media reports. He hasn’t been heard from since, and hasn’t responded to telephone or e-mail messages.
By noon today a state police helicopter was circling the campus, seeming to spend a lot of time hovering in the vicinity of the Fiji house, and as I write this (5 p.m.) the helicopter is still rumbling low overhead. The Collegian reports that police dogs are involved in the search, and that police even checked the utility holes in the roads around Fiji.
Anyone with information about Dado is asked to contact Penn State Police at 814-863-1111, or use the “Silent Witness” program by calling Centre County Crime Stoppers at 877- 99-CRIME (877-992-7463) or visiting www.police.psu.edu/witness.
Tina Hay, editor
How Daryll Clark Spent His Saturday Night
There’s a good article at statecollege.com today about what Daryll Clark did after Saturday’s win over Temple. Basically he drove to Bellefonte and … well, maybe I should just let you read the story. It’s a nicely told tale.
The author is the managing editor of the Web site, Terry Casey, who also is a Penn State journalism student. He was editor of the Collegian last year.
Tina Hay, editor
No More Questions About the Puppy, Please
I just came across an entertaining first-person piece at todaysmama.com by Beth Vrabel ’01. She tells of going to the vet to pick up the family dog after it was neutered and having to explain way more of the particulars to her 6- and 2-year-olds than she would have liked. It’s pretty funny.
It turns out that Vrabel is a correspondent not only for the SmartMama Web site, but also for its companion print magazine, called Smart. Both are projects of the York (Pa.) Daily Record/Sunday News and are honchoed by another Penn Stater, Kara McConnell Eberle ’00.
Eberle tells me that there are 16 former Daily Collegian staffers at the York paper! The Collegian Alumni Interest Group did a story about their blue-and-white newsroom back in March.
Tina Hay, editor
Jay Paterno Is Writing A Column (Again)
Jay Paterno ’91 Lib just posted his first column on StateCollege.com, and the Nittany Lion quarterbacks coach promises to address topics other than football. His debut features thoughts on President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren and his own pre-natal “memories” of the minor controversy surrounding Penn State’s 1968 meeting with Syracuse. As Jay reminds us, it’s not his first foray into writing: In addition to his oft-updated Twitter feed and that book we hear he’s working on, Jay was, briefly, a columnist for the Daily Collegian—almost 20 years ago.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Joe Paterno on Family & Politics
The Big Ten’s annual preseason media days took place a week ago in Chicago, but the guys at the Daily Collegian were holding onto a gem, which they shared yesterday on their PSU Footblog. Titled “A Brief History Lesson With Mr. Paterno,” the post recounts a question one of the Collegian writers (not sure which) asked Joe Paterno near the end of the media session: What did he think of his son (and assistant coach) Jay’s possible political future? His answer, a cool bit of Paterno family history, begins like this:
When I was a kid growing up, a teenager, after Mass on Sunday, my mother would start cooking and all Sunday we sat around and ate. My old man would get a bottle of homemade wine, put it on the table and everybody, all the kids in the neighborhood, would come in. They taste it, sit around and my dad would agitate everybody. ‘What do you think of what Roosevelt is gonna do? What do you think about this?’ He was always trying to get us to think, what’s going on.
Check out the link to read the rest. And for the Twitter-savvy among you, you can follow the Collegian Footblog here, and Jay Paterno’s Twitter page here.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
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