This morning I walked to Brit Shalom like I do every Sunday morning. My walk consists of a stop at Starbucks, a run in with a few people on their way to church and sighting of the occasional plate or McDonald's wrapper or empty beer can from the previous nights' festivities. Today, however, my walk was much more crowded. I was shocked with how many people were up and about at 845am on a Sunday. I was expecting an elevation in the amount of litter, but I was not expecting to see a car accident on my walk. I have to admit that it made me embarrassed to see what Penn Staters and their visitors do during this "holiday." This is still our school, this is still our home. We need to respect it and more importantly make sure that our guests respect our town. Would you let your friends behave like that at home? I would certainly hope not. If you go visiting another school, how would you behave? Why does traveling somewhere else make it okay to be rude and disrespectful? Is it because you don't have to deal with the mess and the clean up and the reputation that comes along with "celebrating?" Throughout Saturday, my facebook newsfeed was covered with posts from friends who go to other schools coming up to Penn State to get wasted and friends from Penn State telling the visitors to go home and stop acting so horribly. Clearly this "event" is not for the Penn Staters, but rather for their friends who want to come to what was "the number one party school in the country." We should really reconsider who this event is for and what it says to others about our school. 

We spent a decent amount of time talking about the diffusion of technology in our society--whether it was good or bad to have information traveling so fast. We talked about the hierarchy of communication--how talking on the phone is much more formal than sending an email which is more formal than chatting on facebook. But I honestly think it depends on the situation. Social media alerts me to important issues or trending topics, but I would never rely on facebook as a reliable source of information. If my NewsFeed gets littered with posts about THON from all my Penn State friends and I have absolutely no idea what THON is, I'll go google it try and learn some more, do my own research to figure out what's going on. With respect to the revolutions in the Middle East, the social media tools accelerated the rate at which these revolutions occurred, they did not cause the revolts to occur. 

One point that really struck me was that facebook and popular social media tools were made in a country where the citizens have the right of free speech. We have the right to say whatever we want that doesn't cause physical harm or distress. In other countries, the citizens do not have that right and they are restricted with what they can say. The internet provides a sense of anonymity that gives people a freedom to say whatever they want without the risk of it being tracked back to them. But in a country where free speech is restricted, governments can use their laws to track what people are saying, what ideas they are writing on the internet and penalize them for using social media as an outlet for their ideas. It's difficult to compare the way Americans use social media with the way Egyptians use social media because we have such vastly different cultures outside of the social media outlets. Our governments have very different opinions about how social media can be used as a tool or as an outlet. 

Thon was absolutely incredible this weekend. I worked as a member of Penn State Hillel and as an OPPerations committee member to celebrate THON, the largest student run philanthropy in the world. This weekend we raised an incredible and record breaking $9.56 MILLION dollars all For The Kids of the 4 Diamonds Fund. 

Among all this wonderfulness, three things struck me worth commenting about. The first is about how passionate we are regarding THON. The Penn State community is so dedicated to this cause--devoting hours upon hours of energy and heart to this amazing event. What if we were this dedicated and this passionate about everything we do? What makes THON so much different than any other event on campus? I thinks it's the dedication--the participatory role that everyone plays in making this event possible. Would people behave differently at football games if they did something to make the game happen or contributed to the game in some way? We are as passionate about the football team in the fall as we are with THON in the spring, yet the two events have completely different fans. 

The second aspect I wanted to comment on was the leadership. The overalls and captains are so dedicated to THON. Dedicated to the point that everything else--including schoolwork--becomes secondary. We forget that this is a student run organizations. We are students first. That fact needs to be respected and taken into account with all of the time this event requires. It was really disrespectful of the time and energy we put into THON to keep every OPP committee member at the BJC until 11pm the night THON ended to clean up, while there was a majority of people just sitting and not working for the last four of those hours. The lack of organization during cleanup was frustrating. I expected to stay after the event to clean up, but I thought I would be cleaning up, not sitting down staring into space.

Finally, during one of the family stories, one father mentioned how he brings his daughter to THON to show his daughter the wonderful role models that are Penn State students. I smartly commented to my friend to "not look at us next weekend," which is State Patty's Day. How can a school do such amazing good one weekend, being such wonderful role models to all of these kids and then turn around the next weekend and celebrate by getting completely trashed? What kind of message does that send to these kids? 

During our discussion today, the "Hype" group decided that the idea of silence when the other team entered the stadium instead of booing would be a positive change in fan behavior, one that we would like to see implemented in Beaver Stadium. When the idea was brought forth to the class, some objections, or constructive criticisms were made. Silence is even more disrespectful because you are not even acknowledging the presence of the other team. Silence of the home team just makes the visiting team more audible with their cheers. I understand where both of these points are coming from. But here's my response. 
I was always taught that if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. Well, booing at the visiting team is certainly not a nice thing to say--so why not be silent? I say that silence is a form of acknowledgment. In the way that we envisioned and discussed the proposal within our group, the silence would be a hush coming over the stadium--the response to the team would be Penn State fans becoming silent. 

While yes the visiting team will be more audible with all of Penn State silent, it does not mean that you will be able to hear them. When the visiting bands came to Penn State this year, they were so small in comparison to the Blue Band that I could barely hear what songs they were playing. In comparison to the number of Penn State fans in Beaver Stadium, the visiting section would be so small that you would barely be able to hear them or distinguish what they were saying. 

One of the major goals I think our group needs to focus on is not diminishing the rivalries that exist between school, but rather promoting the good behavior and the positive sportsmanship we want to see. When learning about behavior modification in terms of teaching in a classroom, it is better to reward positive behavior than to punish misbehavior. This is one of the reasons I suggested "caught being a good fan" where once a quarter, a person showing good sportsmanship and positively supporting the Nittany Lions would be rewarded for their work. It is also why I think we should work with the marketing and advertising department of Penn State Football as well as the local t-shirt designers for the downtown stores to make t-shirts that promote Penn State rather than negating the visiting teams. 

Just some thoughts. Let me know what you think.

I was fortunate this past week to attend the speech that President Barack Obama gave here at Penn State University. Thank you so much to the Presidential Leadership Academy for providing me with this opportunity. 

The topic of the speech was innovations in energy. As many of my peers have stated in their blogs this week, President Obama announced the Better Buildings Initiative that would support companies by providing them with the money upfront to build energy efficient buildings. This is to help reduce the 40% of energy that buildings use to function. There will be a clean energy campus at the Philadelphia Navy Yard where these innovations can be developed to help find ways were buildings can be even more efficient and maybe even self-sufficient. 

The ideas of the speech were wonderful, and I think I'm still experiencing the shock of actually being there in the presence of the President of the United States. But looking back on this speech and rereading the transcripts, I wonder if this was the right audience to be giving this speech. Personally, as a college student living in the dorms, I have no idea how much energy I use. I try to be conscience of what I leave turned on and make sure to unplug items that are not being used. But I honestly have no idea how much energy I'm using. And for students whose rent covers the cost of utilities, do they truly appreciate how much energy they use on a daily basis? 

I wonder if instead of creating more and more innovations, we go back a little, revert to the days when we didn't have as many tech toys or electronics in our life. I remember when my 7th grade history teacher taught us that all we do all day is push buttons. No, not the emotional buttons, but physical buttons. Buttons to turn on the lights and start the car, cook breakfast and watch the news, listen to music and do homework on the computer. Our life revolves around technology and moving forward. But our planet is not ready to handle the innovations we keep making in other fields. Just like with the innovations we've made with food (genetically modified foods, meat factories, corn fed chickens and cows)--we seem to be doing more harm than good (the food we eat is less nutritional because we are mass producing are food instead of growing our food). There is a huge kick for organic food--but isn't organic food just food without all the innovations we've added over the years? What if there was a movement for organic energy--reverting back to the days when our lives did not depend on technology so much. I know it seems like a long shot, as I am one of those people who lives with my phone in my hand, but I wonder what would happen if we turned our machines off for a day. How much energy would we save then?