Talk:Pennsylvania State University/Archive 1

"Modern" Era

Cut me a break, I'm not dead yet! I went to Penn State when Eric Walker was president, and Joe Paterno was the football coach then, too.Pustelnik 00:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

List of Notable Alumni, Professors ; History ; Statistics

Somebody needs to please have a list of notable alumni and professors.

Additionally there needs to be a history of the university, and possibly admission statistics.

bold titles

Should all of those old titles of PSU be bolded? I'm under the impression that they shouldn't be, because bold is only for current titles, as far as I know. I think it's better to follow the example of Ohio State. Spangineer 20:07, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

"Penn"

The whole "Penn" blurb was rightly deleted by Spangineer. I'm not entirely sure it's verifiable and even if it were, incidence of using "Penn" instead are probably too small a percentage for it to be of note. Some people may refer to the school with that term in confusion with the University of Pennsylvania (I've heard someone do it firsthand) but the article already mentions that issue. --Jtalledo 23:41, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC) I agree and guess what? your name is not a real name! that is silly!

Featured article status?

Is anyone else interested in bumping this article into featured article status? I suppose we could get a WikiProject going. We could call it the "Grand Wiki" project... ha ha. Reply if you're interested. --Jtalledo 23:45, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm game - I'm a student at PSU, and I'm planning to get some pictures of notable buildings. We'll also need some serious work on the athletics section. I don't think any university have ever reached FA status, but we can do our best to get it there. NPOV is going to be tough, but I'm willing to take on the challenge. I've never done a wikiproject, but this seems like a good one to start. Anyway, let's do it! Spangineer ∞ 01:03, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Cool. I'll probably start a WikiProject as soon as I get through this week. The aim should probably be to refine it to the point where it is representative of the institution, its current mission and future plans. Npov stuff aside, it would (unofficially) be a decent resource for prospective students. --Jtalledo 21:43, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How about starting a category for PSU ?. We could add all the buildings and athletics related material in the category and thus keep this page simple and clean. We could include material on various projects related to PSU (the blue signs in front of the buildings too).

That sounds like a good idea. I suppose we could do in addition to a WikiProject - the focus could be on expanding the category itself. Of course, vfd for such a category concerns me, but given how big the University is, it shouldn't be an issue. We'd need to make the category, decide on possible subcategories and organize all the Penn State related articles into it. Who wants to make the category? --Jtalledo 21:07, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry too much about vfd for a PSU category - the University of Michigan has one, and Penn State is of similar size. We can easily create enough good articles to warrant a category - already we have Old Main, Beaver Stadium, Nittany Lion, THON, and probably some others that I'm forgetting. We can certainly add a few more buildings (though not too many - the Bryce Jordan Center is one possibility, as is the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, but other than that I think we're getting into vfd candidates), plus articles on history, athletics, alumni, and more. Additionally, we have to decide what to do about the campuses problem - should we set up this page to address only main campus, as the University of Michigan and Ohio State University of Nebraska articles do, or leave it as it is with the university treated as a unit? If we split it up and simply talk about the main campus, we'll need more articles about some of the major individual campuses. Any ideas about all this? In any case, we can certainly use the category. As such, I've created one. --Spangineer ∞ 00:06, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

We could just make one article with a list of branch campuses and individual details that distinguish each campus from each other. --Jtalledo 00:18, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A little friendly advice from an MSU Spartan rival: you've got your work cut out for you for feature status, but here's my $.02:

1) History -- try do a bit more than cut and paste what's in PSU's offical website; try more original prose, 2) Lose the lists, esp in the Rankings section. No one wants to see that crap. Again, the peer review folks want to see original prose with more neutral-source attribution to cut down on boosterism. They want an interpretation of the rankings, not just some list from source that, may or may not be credible. 3) although not bearing directly on your Feature Article, I'd really clean up and expand your alumni section; it's a mess.

You guys are rivals, but I guess since you're the fellow oldest land grant school (as you know, we beat you by 2 weeks), I'd hate to see you flounder with what you've got. Plus, I'm tired of looking at it as it is. Even friggin' (The)Ohio State has done considerable upgrading on theirs. Check ours (MSU's) out, as we've been featured and are about to be, again (I'm bowing). 151.197.181.132 03:48, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I will say though that the history section is original writing taken from several sources (I know because I wrote it), but I need to go back and add inline citations to it (and some rewriting wouldn't hurt either). As for the rankings, you're definitely right, and of course the alumni page could use some work as well. Congrats on the 2nd MSU feature; hopefully we'll get there soon enough =). --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 12:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

New Wikiproject

Just to let you know, I went ahead and created the Wikipedia:WikiProject Pennsylvania State University, which will be focused on creating and improving articles related to Penn State. Please add to the to-do list, and make contributions as you see fit. Let's make a significant boost in the Wikipedia's coverage of Penn State! --Spangineer ∞ 00:38, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

PSU

Moved from main article:

The Penn State Undergraduate Student Government is a huge buearaucracy - but it's a fun time. We do a lot - and I'm surprised this page hasn't been developed more. I'll work on it. www.psu.edu

WE ARE... PENN STATE! More alum's than anywhere else in the US.

There is so much more here... it is truly an amazing place to be a student. originally posted by 66.71.52.12

--Jtalledo (talk) 05:31, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Athletics

Should there be a seperate page for Athletics? Other schools, like Michigan have separate pages, and Penn State surely has a sufficient material to warrant this. I've been slowly adding some major information to the page, but there is a lot more that can be added if desired.

Without a doubt. The WikiProject is dormant, but I'll help out with the article if you make it. --Jtalledo (talk) 23:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Recent edits

Once in a while, someone keeps making the same set of edits to the article. They seem to make the article worse, not better. Here's some of the recent edits made by 66.30.12.231:

• Mention of the University of Pennsylvania as an Ivy League university in the lead. I'm not entirely certain what the intention of this edit is, but assuming good faith, it could be misconstrude as a disparaging POV statement.
• Literacy rate 86% - no source was cited and again, it could be misinterpreted as a POV statement.
• Reference of inclusion in the Fiske guide The Public Ivies is discredited by adding "allegedly" to the guide description.
• Possibly the worst edits involve the "Student Life" section, making edits that imply that drinking and partying is a large part of student life here and adding reference to alcohol arrests. While drinking and partying does go on at the University and people do get arrested, the problem is no bigger here than it is in some other schools. And those schools probably don't even get such issues mentioned in their articles either. The most recent edit of this kind is particular troubling - replacing the start of the section that mentioned that number of student organizations on campus and replaced it with a reference of Pubclub.com ranking - which is not exactly a reputable source and moving it below a set of references about alcohol and drug arrests.

Schreyer Honors College was also edited claiming that honors classes are the same as regular classes only with "more assignments". (this is partially true...but misguided...Honors students do take most, if not all, of the same classes, but get additional assignments to enrich their education..the meaning of honor student varies wildly by major...in some majors its little more than a title, as there are few to no special assignments or lessons)

I think that mentioning drinking at the University is definitely warranted, but Pubclub.com and statistics that are three years old are sources of questionable relevance. --Jtalledo (talk) 16:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

In a school with a history of alchohol, drug, and other problems, mentioning them in the article is perfectly valid. Some mention might be made of the lingering effects of the 2000 riots, and the mini-riots before and after that major blow.

Lingo section

I removed the "Lingo" section. Some of these entries have a place in the article, but need to converted from lists to prose. Also, sources for these items would be good as well. --Jtalledo (talk) 02:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

What is wrong with the list format? I basically just took the idea from Penn's entry? As for sources, where would one even get such things for colloquialisms? Certainly, individual entries can be debated here on discussion which is more than appropriate.

A list format isn't very encyclopedic and a list like this one interrupts the flow of the article. Also, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, which is basically what this list is - defining some local slang terms. There's some useful content here, it just needs some clean up before it is placed into the article. As for references, there are definitely some out there. I know at least some of these terms were found in the Daily Collegian's Sesquicentennial guide. Check out Wikipedia:Cite your sources - Wikipedia articles should have their references cited, especially if you want to get them up to featured article status, which is what we should aim to do with this article. --Jtalledo (talk) 04:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

My $0.02 . . . This might work as a seperate article, just like list of famous alumni and what-not are now seperate from the main article. I could definitely see incoming freshmen appreciating a list like this. --Mithunc 17:27, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Lingo

• Willard Preacher: Nickname for Gary Cattell, who is generally found outside the Willard Building preaching against what he considers the sins of the local student population.
• THON: Penn State Dance Marathon
• Obelisk: Name for the sculpture located near the Willard Building, containing stones from across Pennsylvania. Center of an urban legend that it will collapse if Penn State were to ever graduate a virgin.
• Mifflin Streak: A tradition begun by the male residents of Mifflin Hall, where they would streak naked across campus and encourage women to expose themselves from their dorm rooms. Occurs in the spring semester before finals.
• Giant Slide Rule: Cynical nickname for Hammond Engineering Building, so given because its grim utilitarian apperance resembles that of a slide rule.
• Fightin' Red Onionhead: No longer present red metal sculpture on the edge of the HUB lawn fashioned after a famous Spanish Civil War photograph by Robert Capa of a soldier suffering from a gunshot to the head. Removed after the Hetzel Union Building shooting in 1996 occurred near it.
• JoePa: Affectionate nickname for Joe Paterno, longtime coach of the football team.
• Nerdery: Derisive nickname for Atherton Hall, home of the Schreyer Honors College.
• Flower Gardens: Nickname for Lot 83, a parking lot used by students but noted for its long distance away from the center of the campus. Also, that general vicinity is home to the practice facilities for the Blue Band.
• WaitAnHour: Derisive nickname for Ritenour, the student health center, so named due to the alleged long wait period to be seen.
• Skeller: Nickname for the All American Rathskeller, on Pugh Street. Fondly remember for the Rolling Rock pony bottle "case races" which no longer occur.
• Beaver Canyon: The intersection of Locust Lane and Beaver Avenue. An area of downtown State College where there are a number of highrise apartment buildings with balconies that is often the site of many intoxicated revelers on weekends. Was the site of a riot that occurred in July 2000.
• Arts Fest: The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, which occurs in July every summer. Often used as a chance for alumni and students to visit the area during the summer. Noted for its street arts and crafts festival and outdoor musical performances as well as a large number of parties.
• The Cafe: Nickname for Cafe 210 West, on West College Avenue. Noted for its outdoor patio where patrons can "people watch" pedestrians.
• The Gaff: Nickname for the Shandygaff Saloon, a bar on Calder Way which typically has DJ entertainment and cheap pitcher specials.

I hate wikipedia sometimes....everytime I try to post ACCURATE specific info to update this page's alumni section, someone comes along and changes it back to the vagueness it is now. How do I simply revert? It's getting tiring...

That alumni information is not correct according to the alumni website. If you think that it is, please cite it.--Joe 21:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

University of Michigan

While the University of Michigan is currently on the hate list of every true PSU fan, the wikipedians misguided in their support of that evil university have made UM's article featured. We would do well to follow their example in this if we wish our own university's article to be someday featured. --Spangineer^es (háblame) 23:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

List of commonwealth campus locations, from article template. At least most of these need their own articles:

in Abington; Altoona; Reading (Berks); Monaca (Beaver); Media (Delaware County); DuBois; Erie; Uniontown (Fayette); Middletown (Harrisburg); Hazleton; Fogelsville (Lehigh Valley); McKeesport; Mont Alto; Upper Burrell (New Kensington); Schuylkill Haven (Schuylkill); Sharon (Shenango); Lehman (Wilkes-Barre); Dunmore (Worthington-Scranton); and York.

--Spangineer^es (háblame) 20:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

External links

Re: The Unofficial PSU Weblog I delete 95% of new external links added to Wikipedia as spam. However, this one doesn't have any ads. My only issue with it's inclusion is that it seems to focus disproportionately on the Behrend Campus. Maybe the link should be moved to Penn State Erie? Ohnoitsjamie 06:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Student Life

I made a couple of edits to the student life section. At least two other colleges claim to have the largest Greek organization. IF we're going to say Penn State has the largest, we have to back that up. I also edited the line that said "11-13% of UP students are Greek..." to say that most students are independent (GDIs), since (1) that's true and (2) gives a more neutral POV. I also added approximately, since an exact figure does not seem to be available yet. For the glory...Rob 00:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

 Should the improv troupe be mentioned at ALL in this section? I don't think so.
 TW 04:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Conversion to Infobox University from HTML infobox

I don't want to step on any toes, but I have replaced the old html infobox with the new standardized infobox. To address any possible objections editors should know that all country specific infoboxes, as well most of the wikiformatted and html formatted infoboxes have been depricated and coverted to the new infobox. If you have any specific objection please let me know --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Reference Style?

Would anybody object if the footnote3 ({{ref}} {{note}}) format was changed to the Cite.php referencing format using the <ref/erences> tags?

There is a Reference section in this article, and there is a Notes section, and I think that could be confusing. It is not immediately obvious which references in the Reference section correspond with which article statements. Changing to the current practice would also allow future references to be added to this article more easily. RockinRob^Talk 22:33, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

A change in references to include in-text citations and footnotes would be nice. --Jtalledo (talk) 22:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Nittwits

I noticed Spangineer labled the Nittwits article as part of the Penn State WikiProject. Is there any particular direction this article should go? Would this make it notable enough to include under the Student Life or Athletics sections of the main Penn State article? --BroadSt Bully 14:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

why do we get to edit this stuff? i mean sombody could put lies on here and then someone else might be doing a project on penn stae, and their whole project is based off liesgoogle.com

Including a gallery section

The University of Pennsylvania has a photography gallery section. Thoughts on including one for Penn State as well? Would a gallery be appropriate for an encyclopedic article? Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 17:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Usually for longer articles galleries aren't needed because there's enough text to adequately space out images within the article body itself, and most encyclopedia articles don't need more than 5-10 images. Plus, the gallery format isn't particularly useful for the reader (since the images are so small). They aren't commonly used in wikipedia's better articles (I don't think I've ever seen one in a recent featured article). If we do have alot of high quality images that we'd like to organize into a gallery format, the best place to do that is on Commons, where we can create commons:Pennsylvania State University and put the best images there and link to it from this article. --Spangineer^es (háblame) 17:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

This does sound like the better solution. I brought up the same discussion on UPenn's talk page GChriss <always listening><c> 05:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I did mean commons:Pennsylvania State University. The category holds all PSU images in alphabetical order, while the article can hold only the best ones in an organized fasion (by campus, by building, etc.). --Spangineer^es (háblame) 12:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I understand. I'll start the article then :-) GChriss <always listening><c> 14:30, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

What does "state affiliated" even mean

I'm an alum and I'm still not 100% sure how the power structure works, maybe someone more enlightened than me could explain. I'm aware that Penn State is not a public school, but I'm fuzzy on the details of exactly who owns what and how much power each of the entities hold ~foidulus ~~29 Jul.

State-related explains the structure. In a nutshell, the state just writes a sizeable check to the University. GChriss <always listening><c> 13:27, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University dablinks

Whatever wording is used, I feel strongly that

• Either both articles should have dablinks, or neither should.
• I think both should, because to anyone who doesn't live in the U. S. or isn't familiar with the peculiarities of university names, it is really is confusing. It is very, very plausible that a European might believe "University of Pennsylvania" and "Pennsylvania State University" are two different ways of referring to the same institution.
• The purpose of the dablinks is to resolve a real issue of confusion for readers, and not to make any tendentious points about the relative status of the two institutions.
• The two dablinks should be worded symmetrically and neutrally.
• The most obvious distinction between the two institutions is that the University of Pennsylvania is private and Pennsylvania State University is public. Because of legal intricacies, that may not be completely accurate; I'll bet that the University of Pennsylvania has some quasipublic aspects to it, for example, and can't conduct itself exactly the same way a fully private institution would, but that's close enough for a dab and it's the language people commonly use.
• The dablinks should not say things like "for the Ivy League university, see University of Pennsylvania" because that seems to me to be trying to make a point about status, and it's not the most neutral way to identify the two institutions. Furthermore, readers who know what the Ivy League is are probably familiar enough with U. S. universities as to not need the dablink. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

• I agree that the two universities can be easily confused—a friend of mine from South America told me that her extended family still thinks she studied at UPenn even though she told them she was at PSU. The private vs. public thing isn't the most precise of language, but it may be the best point of distinction we've got. Even location might not be obvious--I for one couldn't name the most of the cities where ivy league schools are located. Also, I agree that including a "status" reference is unnecessary--the quality of the two institutions isn't sufficiently different to warrant identifying one as better than the other. One more question—should Pennsylvania University be a disambiguation page and not a redirect? --Spangineer^es (háblame) 14:29, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, comparisons are always odious, but ironically this is one where it's even less justified than usual... Penn State not being your run-of-the-mill "State U" and arguably a "Public Ivy."

Re location: I honestly didn't know where the University of Pennsylvania was until I started editing Wikipedia. It was never important, and if you'd asked me I would have expected it to be, I don't know, in a little college town somewhere. Don't ask me why. And I would have been even more clueless about Penn State. Again, someone who can correctly name the town either school is probably knows the correct formal name of the school. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:53, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Pennsylvania University should probably be a dab page. --Jtalledo (talk) 14:40, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we need a disambiguation link at the top. Yes, the two might be confused, but nothing redirects here that would make the link necessary. Penn, a term that can refer to both is a disambiguation page. Michigan State University and the University of Michigan have no such disambiguation link, as do other institutions that may be confused with each other. I think both disambiguation links should be removed from both articles. --Jtalledo (talk) 14:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, OK. Personally my opinion is that all "X University"/"University of X" pairs ought to have mutual dablinks. I was drawn into this one because this is the one that seems to have a slow-motion edit war in progress. I suspect that two corresponding dablinks will be more stable than zero dablinks, but I did say above that "no dablinks" would be OK. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

GChriss chuckles at the thought of Wikipedia being a slow-motion edit war. I find disambiguation links to be really quite helpful: I brought up this discussion on the talk pages of University of Michigan and Michigan State University. A list of all universities with very similar names would be helpful.... GChriss <always listening><c> 13:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea why, but I've run into tons of people who have gotten UPenn and Penn State confused, whereas I haven't yet run into any who've done the same for Michigan and MSU. I don't know whether other school should have dab links, frankly I don't have an opinion, but I do feel that Penn State and Penn need them regardless of what people do with the other schools. My only concern is that the links for each page are symmetrical, and preferably use the terms "private" and "state-related", not "Ivy League" and "public". "Public" could probably slide but "Ivy League" is definitely implying something . . . --Mithunc 17:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

"State-related"?

I may have missed this discussion somewhere, but is there a reason that the article refers to Penn State as "state-related" instead of just saying "public"? What's the difference? JDoorjam Talk 17:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, found the wikilink way down the page. I'm gonna add the link higher up. JDoorjam Talk 17:17, 31 July

2006 (UTC)

Story of the Lion

There is a legend about how Penn State became the Nittany Lions that my uncle used to tell me, but I don't remember it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and if so do you know the story? Bcody 00:53, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

You might find what you are looking for at the Nittany Lion article, although I remember a historical book covering the topic available through the University library. Hope this helps, GChriss <always listening><c> 01:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Recent vandalism

Could we get the page protected or semi-protected for a short period of time? It's starting to get ridiculous. --BroadSt Bully 04:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Dispute - University Park campus location

The statements that the location of the Penn State University Park campus is in University Park, Pennsylvania, and adjacent to State College, PA are in error.

Since editors have attempted to correct the location in the past to State College, Pennsylvania and have had their edits changed back to the incorrect location, I wanted to have a discussion here first rather than make a change to the article. This discussion can dovetail into the discussion of the merge of this article with the University Park, Pennsylvania article.

Briefly, the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania State University is physically located in State College, Pennsylvania, and that campus has a mailing address of University Park, Pennsylvania. University Park is both a campus and a post office, but it is not a governmental entity of some type. Why is State College, PA called State College, PA? Because when the borough was incorporated by the Pattees and the Osmonds and the Athertons, et al in 1896, the Pennsylvania State College was within its boundaries.

I discussed this previously with another editor who told me that University Park, Pennsylvania was a Census Defined Place. I am certain that he is a sincere editor, but that is incorrect. Both this internal link, and data from the census.gov web site (see page 11 of this PDF document) do not show University Park, Pennsylvania as a CDP.

Maps of State College Borough (here, for example, and also here (PDF), show the majority of campus within borough boundaries. Here's a State College Borough Zoning Map (PDF) showing the State College Borough zoned University Planned Districts within the borough. Similarly, the College Township Zoning map (PDF) shows the University Planned Districts zoned by College Township within that township's boundaries. Further, driving directions given on the psu.edu website (listed under "I am traveling by car"), show a destination as State College.

In the comment for the most recent change from State College to University Park, GChriss, who I consider a knowledgeable Penn Stater, stated in part that "University Park is an independent borough". That is incorrect, University Park is not a borough. This map of Centre County, for example, does not show University Park Borough, and the Zoning maps linked above show that State College Borough and College Township govern those portions of campus within their respective boundaries. If University Park was an independent borough, University Park Borough would create and administer its own zoning laws. If any editor has a source that details the creation of University Park as a borough, please provide it, I could not find any sources about "University Park Borough".

I believe quotes from Mike Bezilla, author of Penn State: An Illustrated History, is relevant in this situation:

"Not long after Penn State began calling itself a university, the president concluded that it was not in the institution's best interest to keep State College as its mailing address. In a letter to Herbert R. Imbt, a prominent businessman and president of the State College Chamber of Commerce, Eisenhower contended that the name Pennsylvania State University was not becoming established throughout the state and nation as he had expected. "Every press release issued by our institution carries the dateline State College," he told Imbt, "and this is naturally assumed by newspapers readers to be descriptive of the institution. Is it any wonder, therefore, that nearly everywhere newspapers, magazines, radio and television announcers, and even educational and industrial leaders refer to this distinguished institution as the State College?" Eisenhower concluded that the best solution to this problem would be to have the borough change its name, although he said he would not presume to suggest what the new name should be."...

"Eisenhower moved at once to obtain a post office for Penn State. By early December, the trustees had authorized the sending of an application to the Post Office Department in Washington. The question of what to name the new facility, assuming it received approval and no one doubted that it would now that Milton Eisenhower's brother Dwight was in the White House-was to be settled in a democratic manner. Ballots listing seven choices were printed and mailed to all faculty, staff, and Alumni Council members and reprinted in the Daily Collegian and the Centre Daily Times. The easy winner was University Park, which won out over Atherton, Centre Hills, Keystone, Mount Nittany, University Centre, and University Heights."...

"Henceforth, University Park was the official address of Penn State and was used as the dateline for press releases and metered mail. Contrary to Eisenhower's expectations, the change did not entirely end the confusion with State College. That name remained a source of curiosity and continued to puzzle many persons long after the University's new address became effective."

I am sorry to belabor this point, but giving an incorrect location for Penn State in the main article for Penn State is an egregious oversight, and the possible impending merge of this article with the University Park, Pennsylvania article means that this is an issue that should be addressed now. Information present in the University Park, Pennsylvania and State College, Pennsylvania articles, as well as information present in sources I have provided on this talk page are contrary to the unsourced statement presently in this article that says Penn State is located in University Park, Pennsylvania.

Thank you all for your consideration. RockinRob^Talk 02:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe that I stand corrected. On a side note, I had no idea that the Post Office was open to exceptions:

"Eisenhower moved at once to obtain a post office for Penn State. By early December, the trustees had authorized the sending of an application to the Post Office Department in Washington."

Thank you for the sources -- this is great research. No reason to be sorry for belaboring the point. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 07:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Great clarification—I was wondering about this myself. Thanks! --Spangineer^es (háblame) 15:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe you're right: University Park is most certainly not its own township or borough. I'd always wondered exactly what it was: thanks for the information.

Still, it seems wise to me, that University Park should not be merged into this article: someone will type in "university park" and become quite confused when they get moved over to Penn State. Instead, wouldn't it be a good idea to include all your information in the UP article, with a prominent link to Penn State? --Patstuart 17:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Why not try, you know, calling up University Park and State College and *asking* them what the status is?

You should really read the *very next* paragraph in the source you cite: "The unpleasantness arising from the debate over the new name for the borough was shortlived." Indeed, University Park *is not* part of State College. People who live on campus are not entitled to any services from the Borough of State College, do not pay taxes to it, etc. University Park has its own police force, has control over, say, naming its own streets (note that Garner Street turns into Shortlidge Road when it crosses into University Park), and so on.

I recommend that, instead of —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.166.64.120 (talk • contribs) 03:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC).

The historical process is outlined at the official University page entitled "The Land-Grant Tradition." In a nutshell: Congress gave state legislatures federal land to support the growth of colleges, the state sold the land to the public to raise funds, and those funds were given directly to the colleges. The land beneath University Park, originally labeled State College, seems to carry no special legal status. (However, it does have neat perks such as a post office, a police force, and unique zip code.) I will continue to look into the subject; I will omit the University location from the article pending authoritative research. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 03:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

One more thing: the original Penn State land seems to have been donated by a private citizen. From the Wikipedia article: "Centre County became the home of the new school when James Irvin of Bellefonte donated 200 acres (809,000 m²) of land—the first of 10,101 acres the University would eventually acquire." The source is not given. GChriss <always listening><c> 03:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

See [1], under "FOUNDING A COLLEGE", 6th paragraph. --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 04:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the merge proposal due to the fact that University Park is a USPS mailing address. Since there doesn't seem to be any consensus to merge right now, and the tags have been up for months, I will boldly remove them. --- RockMFR 16:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Rankings

A recent insertion of

Penn State was also ranked the 47th best university by the US news and weekly.

was removed without explanation. Two explanations are possible. One is that the item did not have a proper source citation (and the name of "U. S. News and World Report" was given incorrectly). The other possibility is that it was removed because it is a lower rank than Penn State received in a Gallup poll.

I've put it back, properly referencing the U. S. News 2007 list. I've moved both rankings to a separate section, as they're not lead-paragraph material and less important than the history of the institution.

If we're going to mention rankings at all, the U. S. News ranking should be mentioned because it is by far the most commonly cited ranking. There's no justification for selectively citing only those rankings in which a school did particularly well; that's not neutral, and constitutes Academic boosterism. We should be presenting as complete and accurate a picture of Penn State as possible. In general, overall rankings are not very useful; it would be better if we had some properly-cited material profiling Penn State's strengths and weaknesses.

The U. S. News rank should not be removed without discussion here. Some reason needs to be given for removing a reference that seems to meet reliable source guidelines. It can be balanced by other views, of course.

(For the record, I detest the U. S. News and World Report rankings; I think they let the cat out of the bag when Mel Elfin, founder of the rankings, stated that he knew their methodology was sound because Harvard, Yale and Princeton always ended up near the top. Be that as it may, the U. S. News rankings are what guidance counselors and ambitious parents use, not Gallup Poll numbers.) Dpbsmith (talk) 20:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Washington Monthly rankings

I don't believe any of our articles should mention the Washington Monthly rankings, because even though I personally applaud what Washington Monthly is trying to do,

• these rankings are intended to promote a political and social point of view and are thus non-neutral; they are attempting to change what prospective students and their parents value in colleges, not to measure what they actually value;
• I do not believe that, as of 2006, these rankings are taken seriously by guidance counselors or ambitious high-school students and their parents. I'd be interested in evidence to the contrary;
• These rankings are, as far as I can tell, always cited selectively." That is, they don't get mentioned except in articles about universities that were ranked highly.

Washington Monthly is trying to emphasize factors like "social mobility," which they evaluate according to what seem to me to be somewhat far-fetched criteria. Here's their own description:

We have data that tells us the percentage of a school's students on Pell Grants, which is a good measure of a school's commitment to educating lower-income kids. But, while we'd also like to know how many of these students graduate, schools aren't required to track those figures. Still, because lower-income students at any school are less likely to graduate than wealthier ones, the percentage of Pell Grant recipients is a meaningful indicator in and of itself. If a campus has a large percentage of Pell Grant students—that is to say, if its student body is disproportionately poor—it will tend to diminish the school's overall graduation rate. Last year, using data from all of our schools, we constructed a formula (using a technique called regressional analysis) that predicted a school's likely graduation rate given its percentage of students on Pell. Because this formula disproportionately rewarded more academically exclusive schools (whose students were high achievers and inherently more likely to graduate), however, our formula this year has been altered to predict a school's likely graduation rate given its percentage of Pell students and its average SAT score. (Since most schools only provide the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile of scores, we took the mean of the two.) Schools that outperform their forecasted rate score better than schools that match or, worse, undershoot the mark.In addition, we added a second metric to our Social Mobility score by running a regression that predicted the percentage of students on Pell Grants based on SAT scores. This indicated which selective universities (since selectivity is highly correlated with SAT scores) are making the effort to enroll low-income students. The two formulas were weighted equally.

Doesn't this sound to you like somebody applying fudge factors in order to discover the formula that yields a predetermined result? (Admittedly, this is not very different from U. S. News' practice of finding seemingly objective measurements that usually make Harvard, Yale, and Princeton come out on top... and are quickly revised and adjusted if, by any chance, they don't).

Not a rhetorical question: do people choose Penn State because it has a high percentage of its students in ROTC and a high percentage of its alumni in the Peace Corps? Dpbsmith (talk) 20:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

PSU's ecconomic impact NOT the largest

The University of Pennsylvania contributes $9.6 billion to the state economy, from a budget of $4.4 billion. This is more than Penn State, which can not claim "largest impact on the state economy of any organization." Even beyond Penn, it seems some big corporation should be bigger than any university...perhaps I underestimate just how much money universities go through these days...

Here is the source —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.125.57.161 (talk • contribs) 07:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC).

Then change it. -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 15:00, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

That comment was a bit testy. All contributions are welcome here, whether on talk pages or the articles themselves. 206.125.57.161, do feel free to change the text if appropriate, and thanks for the note. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 08:34, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I should also add that the two numbers may not be directly compatible. The UPenn source seems to be based on "money spent by the University", whereas Penn State may be claiming "economic stimulus" independent of expenditure. I'll look into the numbers a bit more. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 08:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Extensions

Could someone please add info on the PSU extension offices? Thanks. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 13:59, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

New "Traditions" section

I like the idea of having a section like this for a lot of reasons. It adds personality to the article and tells visitors a bit more about Penn State than they would read in a book. However, as the section currently stands, it's really just a collection of defunct drinking holidays, THON, and one or two other things. A truly comprehensive "Traditions of Penn State" section would include so many things, it could probably be its own article. If this is going to be a section in the main article, it should either be shortened or made more prose-like and less list-like. --Mithunc 18:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Rankings and reputation

A quick scan of the other major universities' articles shows that no one has as long, as unorganized, and as cluttered of a list as Penn State's article does. The huge chunk of the article that this list takes is disproportionate, resulting in too much of the article boasting about Penn State's rankings, when a wikipedia article about a university should do much more than that.

The other universities' articles name only a few of the most important rankings, and in prose form rather than a list. Other, more specific rankings either aren't mentioned, or in MSU's case, are located in a seperate article. I've therefore left the blurb at the beginning of the section intact, and have moved the bulleted list part to a new article, Pennsylvania State University rankings. Personally, I think that the individual rankings should slowly be moved to individual articles for each college, department, etc., but I'm going to put them there for now. The list also has had a verify tag on it for quite some time, so now that the list isn't there, the verifiability of the main article isn't compromised. If anyone actually gets around to citing the list, they can do so in the new article. --Mithunc 06:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. My philosophy is that an article written as a list is not an article. A well-formatted table is not out of the question. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 18:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Blue Pie Chart is hard to read...

They are all hard to read. I tried looking at it and it was too hard to tell them apart from the key... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.58.245.168 (talk) 22:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC).

Nuclear Reactor Program

I was writing stuff about your Nuclear reactor and whatnot. Plz to add it in the article, I see no mention of it currently.theanphibian 07:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I will take a look-see. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 21:20, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Page name

An anon recently did a copy-paste move of this article to The Pennsylvania State University. I reverted, simply because a copy-paste move is not the proper way to move anything (we have a move button for a reason). Furthermore, universities on Wikipedia, by convention, are not named with their article: see Ohio State University, Michigan State University, Oregon State University, etc. Any move should be discussed on talk beforehand, and performed by an administrator (simply because only administrators have the capability to delete old redirects to prepare for a move). --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 21:05, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. You have to have a discussion about a move prior to moving it.--English836 00:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

One need not have a discussion the first time a page is moved. If people disagree about the move, then a discussion should be had as we are doing now. As far as the naming goes, the conventions specify that the "most common" name should be used. In this case, I'm thinking that would be Penn State, however most people would recognize that is too vague for the title of an article.

As far as cases with other universities, I have been involved heavily with the discussion regarding the naming of the Ohio State page. Despite my very long and well referenced reasoning as to why it should be titled "The Ohio State University", I was told that the name "sounds pretentious and silly" even though it is in fact the official name. So if anyone here cares to argue that the title should be "The Pennsylvania State University", I wish you the best of luck. Regards, --Analogue Kid 19:34, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Faculty

there has been an considerable amount of articles on notable and less-notable Penn state faculty added to WP recently, with public-relations-style writing, excessive lists of papers, and a failure to concentrate on the elements of notability a shown by WP:PROF. Please beware of WP:COI, and se WP:BFAQ, which though oriented to business, applies to universities also. I support these faculty articles when they can be supported, but unless they are written with greater care, they are nor likely to survive. se my talk page for a discussion of what is needed.DGG (talk) 07:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC) I suggest moving this article to the title Penn State University, per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). The only place where the full name is really used is in the fine-print copyright notice on PSU's website. On the other hand, the same website says "Welcome to Penn State" in very large lettering, and the abbreviated name is also used on the school's logo/letterhead/etc. Plus, all of the articles about the commonwealth campuses begin with "Penn State", so the rename would also give uniformity. --CrazyLegsKC 19:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support per nom, unless Penn State would be better (it may be ambiguous with a company. Septentrionalis PMAnderson
• Oppose. The full name is the official name of the institution, a simple redirect will direct traffic. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 13:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
  • But per WP:COMMONNAME, we should prefer common names over official ones. If we always went by what was "official", we would have articles entitled State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. --CrazyLegsKC 23:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. The uni is commonly called Penn State, but officially The Pennsylvania State University. I might support a move to Penn State, but not to Penn State University. – Axman (☏) 16:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Why not? --CrazyLegsKC 23:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - Keep in line with all university pages. Every one of them surely must have a colloquial name. Parable1991 (talk) 19:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - Pennsylvania State University is the name of the institution. It's not a convoluted name like "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." --Orlady (talk) 14:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" is not a "convoluted" name, it's simply the full official name of the state. But it's rarely, if ever, used, just like "Pennsylvania State University." --CrazyLegsKC 16:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose- What's next? A redirect from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to North Carolina? Just because people usually call something by a certain name isn't sufficent reason to name the article that. Penn State does have acceptable uses, see {{Penn State Nittany Lions]], just not for the article about the whole institution. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 15:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Just to be clear, I am not advocating a move to Penn State, but rather one to Penn State University. That seems, to me, to be the best compromise title, given Wikipedia's preference for common names (which would be "Penn State") and the need for uniformity (with all other university articles, which all use "University" in their titles, and most of which would be ambiguous without it). Per WP:COMMONNAME, people usually calling something by a certain name is, in fact, a pretty good reason for naming an article that. However, to make my point even further, it's not just people who use the abbreviated name; the university itself uses it 99.9% of the time. Check the website and see that "Pennsylvania State University" is used only in the copyright notice; elsewhere, the university calls itself "Penn State". --CrazyLegsKC 16:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    • There's not anything called compromise in titles.--Samuel di Curtisi di Salvadori 00:43, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose; this article is where it belongs—this is the official name of the university. "Penn State University" is not the official title, nor a commonly used abbreviation, so it is not a suitable option. --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 03:59, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Sigh. Does anybody hear what I've been saying over and over again? We shouldn't title articles strictly by what is "official"--which is why we don't have articles entitled Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, The City of New York or Liberty Enlightening the World. If the official name is not commonly used (which is true in this case), a more common, unambiguous alternative should be favored. "Penn State" is by far the most common name for the university; however, since that title alone could be ambiguous (such as, with Penn State Nittany Lions, adding "University" would disambiguate it and make a better title, while also making it uniform with other university articles. (And for those arguing for officialdom, the current title isn't exactly "official" either--the official name is "The Pennsylvania State University, which is where the article used to be.) --CrazyLegsKC 04:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Description of State-related universities

There is a discussion going here about the introductory descriptions of the wikipedia articles for the four state-related universities of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. You might want to leave your opinion for WP:Consensus building.CrazyPaco (talk) 19:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Redundant Photos

The photo of the Lion Shrine labeled "The Lion Shrine at University Park," and the Photo of the plaque labeled "The Lion Shrine is a gift of the class of 1940" are redundant. I removed the photo of the plaque and changed the label for the photo of the shrine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.118.51.114 (talk) 20:18, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

UPenn

Removed the line at the top of the article directing readers to the UPenn page. The odds of someone mixing the 2 up are slim and certainly doesn't warrant the need for a redirect to be the very first thing seen on the page. rct828 (talk) 07:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see the discussion on this page. Readers often confuse the two, especially English speakers outside the U.S. However, I agree that the "Ivy League" designation is superfluous. "State-related," however, is probably clearer than "public," which means different things in different countries. -- ℜob C. alias ⒶⓁⒶⓇⓄⒷ 13:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Motto

This article states PSU's motto is "We Are Penn State", while List of university mottos states it is "Making life better". Which is it, and provide a source. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 19:35, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

It's "Making Life Better." As a Penn State student I can tell you that "We Are Penn State" is just an informal chant. I found an article on a Penn State-sponsored web site that unequivocally states that "Making Life Better" is Penn State's motto. [[2]] I'll make the change. 66.71.70.66 (talk) 05:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

New Photograph of Old Main

There is a new picture of Old Main that I think turned out well. Possible inclusion? GChriss <always listening><c> 15:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Demographics and Trends Pie Chart

Pie charts are one of the worst types of graphs for displaying any quantitative data. We (I) should change it to a bar graph so it can be useful. --216.165.132.252 (talk) 22:32, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions for Improvement July 2009

Finetooth comments: This article contains interesting and useful material but has several big problems that should be addressed.

* MOS:INTRO says in part, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." A good rule of thumb is to include at least a brief mention of each of the main text sections. The existing lead doesn't mention "History", "Organization", "Research", "Athletics", "Student life", and other topics covered by the main text.

* All of the citation-needed and other tags should be considered and their concerns addressed.

* Large sections of the article lack sources. A good rule of thumb is to provide a source for every statistic, every claim that might reasonably be challenged, every direct quotation, and every paragraph. For example, "Early years" is completely unsourced but must have come from a source or sources. Ditto for other subsections of the "History" section, the entire "Special mission campuses" subsection, and other sections and parts of sections.

* On my computer screen, the map in the "Commonwealth campuses" section is garbled because place names overlap one another and are not readable.

* References such as citation 98 are broken or incomplete and should be fixed. The reference styles are mixed and should be made consistent. The "cite family" of templates used for some of the citations is fine, and sticking with these throughout will bring consistency to the reference section. Please see WP:CIT for the complete set of templates. Don't mix the "cite family" with the "citation" family, which is also explained at WP:CIT.

* MOS:IMAGES says in part, "Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the heading and after any links to other articles), and not above the heading." Some of the images, such as the one of Old Main in the existing article, overlap two sections and should be moved.

* MOS:IMAGES also advises against bumping an image against a third-level head or placing it directly below a third-level head. The West Halls image violates this guideline. Moving the image down or to the right would solve the problem.

I hope these few suggestions will be enough to get you started. Finetooth (talk) 00:04, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

--Flyguy33 (talk) 02:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Diversity

I tagged the Diversity section as having undue weight. The section appears to largely be a recentist coat rack documenting various encyclopedically non-notable controversies regarding race and diversity. I believe the section can be summarized into a single paragraph and merged with the history section rather than being a tangential, standalone section. The University of Michigan, for example, has had far more prominent and notable controversies regarding race and devotes no where near as much content as is present here. This is an encyclopedia article summarizing information about the university, not an exhaustive review of every minor incident. Madcoverboy (talk) 03:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Madcoverboy has a short term memory problem. Some of the issues (from 1992 and 2003) they deleted were as big, if not bigger, than the basketball player's allegations in 2006. I partially restored them with citations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.239.99 (talk) 18:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

A Penn State senior faculty member said this "You can't talk about diversity since you're all white" to a group of white students in the Student Government in 2002. This was mentioned in the Collegian Newspaper article that was cited as evidence of reverse discrimination deleted by another user. I've restored the reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.4.239.99 (talk) 00:02, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Student Section Discussion (Football)

The current description of the student section as being small in relation to the student body appears to me to be misleading. While the approximately 22K students who get football tickets *are* only around 25% of the student body, this does not take into account that the Penn State student body includes students at the commonwealth campuses, many of which are 3-4 hours travel time from the main University park campus. Most universities do not have as extensive a "branch" campus system as does Penn State (unles we would want to consider Cal Berkeley and UCLA as the same university and count Berkeley students as part of the student body for purposes of figuring out UCLA's student attendance). While I am sure that some Commonwealth Campus students are season ticket holders and can travel to University Park for games (especially the nearby Altoona campus), these are exceptions (and are Commonwealth Campus student even included in the ticket sale?). I think it would be better to compare the number vs the students attending the University Park campus, which would be about 50% of the students getting tickets (unless the original edit was made by a disgruntled student who did not get tickets--or an Ohio State fan, as the comparison to tOSU's student sales was made).Kgilbert78 (talk) 19:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Traditions: Phi Psi 500

The article states the Phi Psi 500 was ended in the early 1980s, but I was a student at Penn State from 1985 to 1987, and I have very vivid memories of standing on the sidelines, and cheering the teams on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.86.15.15 (talk) 13:43, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Merged Article

I merged the Penn State University Police article into this article as per consensus. Safiel (talk) 04:01, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There are numerous wiki entries that relate to Penn State University, I belive that the following should be under Pennsylvania State University: Penn State Nittany Lions, Penn State Nittany Lions football. Thoughts or suggestions? Jitsuman (talk) 19:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

My thought on the merger is, Penn State Football, and Nittany Lions are solely owned and an integral part of the University that should not be separated. It is also feasible to integrate it into the Pennsylvania State University Wikipedia Article.Jitsuman (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:57, 21 February 2011 (UTC).

Definitely not. Multiple topics can be separated into different articles if the topics are notable on their own. The merge proposal is ridiculous. There is a section in this article about athletics that has an overview of the athletics team, that should be enough for this article. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:51, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Oppose merge This is a joke right? No way should those articles be merged, basically articles split from university articles should have notability besides being connected to the university. Why it looks like the PSU Police were merged back into the main university articles. At least in the US related University articles it's fairly common to have separate athletic articles, especially if the content is large enough to split. PSU is a definite and clear case were the athletics are notable on their own. Bhockey10 (talk) 21:02, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

It's common and sensible practice to have articles about sports programs with sufficient notable history. Indeed, we have two featured articles about individual seasons for two college football teams: 2007 USC Trojans football team and 2005 Texas Longhorns football team. However, the merge tag should stay up for about a week until consensus has been reached. --Jtalledo (talk) 21:56, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with this being resolved quickly because I agree with BHockey and Eagles247 that this is a very poor suggestion with no chance of being carried out. ElKevbo (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the input.Jitsuman (talk) 11:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Update

We plan to update the information in this article. Your thoughts?

Laurie Creasy Department of Public Information Pennsylvania State University

LSCreasy (talk) 17:27, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you may want to review Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, WP:BOOSTER and WP:NPOV first, just to make sure there is a clear understanding of editing guidelines. Although not a requirement, it would be wise to post any proposed changes here on the talk page first because of your relationship with the university (unless they are very minor). Thanks for wanting to improve the encyclopedia here. Alanraywiki (talk) 18:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Alan: Thank you for your observations and for pointing us in the right direction. We appreciate it. We understand that this isn't something we can "own," but the information in the Penn State entry is incomplete and outdated. We have access to unbiased information and can make sure facts are included, citations are added and verified, and the citation style is consistent. We'll be posting everything here for comment before we make any changes in the entry itself. Thanks again! LSCreasy (talk) 13:20, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Overview update

We have updated the Overview part of the Penn State article and have posted it below. We ask for your comments and suggestions. LSCreasy (talk) 16:47, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that soon it will be time to reduce the focus on the Sandusky Affair. Yes, it should be here, but as time goes on the section should be reduced to a one-phrase mention and updates on the court cases, if there are any. The section takes up more space and attention than it merits in the description of the institution.68.188.185.225 (talk) 20:51, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Suggested text for Penn State Overview update

LSCreasy (talk) 16:54, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

OVERVIEW:

The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) is a multicampus state-related, land-grant, space grant public research university in the northeastern United States founded in 1855 with a threefold mission of teaching, research and public service. Its instructional mission includes undergraduate, graduate, professional and continuing education offered through resident instruction and online delivery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_System_of_Higher_Education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_grant_college http://www.psu.edu/ur/about/mission.html

Its University Park campus, the largest of 24 campuses across the state, lies within the Borough of State College and College Township, Pennsylvania. [See “Campuses and Physical Plant” for more information.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Park,_Pennsylvania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Township,_PA U.S. Census Bureau. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Census_Bureau

Penn State University Park is ranked among the top public universities nationally and is considered a "Public Ivy." "Best Colleges: Top Public Schools: National Universities". U.S. News & World Report. 2009. http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-top-public. Retrieved 2 August 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy

Penn State was an early leader in the movement for diversity, admitting its first two women in 1871 and its first African-American student in 1899. It was one of the first schools to insist on integration in athletics. [See section on Diversity for more information.] http://www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/speccolls/psua/psgeneralhistory/bezillapshistory/083s01.htm http://www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/speccolls/psua/psgeneralhistory/bezillapshistory/083s08.htm http://www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/speccolls/psua/psgeneralhistory/bezillapshistory/083s08.htm [photo of Wallace "Wally" Triplett at 1948 Cotton Bowl] http://live.psu.edu/youtube/OoCbPyPlfls [Wally Triplett video on Penn State team refusal to play at segregated Orange Bowl] http://live.psu.edu/youtube/OMB9ME4lCF8 [Wally Triplett first African-American to play in Cotton Bowl]

Annual enrollment at the University Park campus totals more than 44,000 graduate and undergraduate students, making it one of the largest universities in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_United_States_university_campuses_by_enrollment

The university's total enrollment in 2009-10 was approximately 94,300 across its 24 campuses and online through its World Campus. Penn State offers more than 160 majors among all its campuses and administers a $1.52billion (USD, as of April 30, 2010) endowment. The university's research enterprise exceeded $765 million for the 2009-2009 fiscal year, and in fiscal year 2008 Penn State was ranked 11th among U.S. universities in research income by the National Science Foundation. http://www.budget.psu.edu/FactBook/StudentDynamic/StudentTableofContents.aspx#HeadcountEnrollment&FBPlusIndc=N http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu http://www.registrar.psu.edu/programs_majors/programs_majors_index.cfm http://www.psu.edu/oim/reports.htm http://www.budget.psu.edu/FactBook/Research2009/ExpOrgResearchSummary.asp http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf10311/pdf/tab27.pdf

The university boasts the largest student-run philanthropy in the world, the Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (also known as THON), and has one of the top intercollegiate athletic programs in the nation. [See sections on THON, Student Life and Athletics.] http://thon.org http://www.gopsusports.com http://www.gopsusports.com/trads/national-champions.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directors_Cup http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/stats/champs_records_book/summaries/combined.pdf

Penn State’s vision for the near future includes enhancing student success, continuing sustainability efforts, advancing a global presence, enhancing diversity, maintaining access and affordability, serving the people of Pennsylvania and beyond, using technology to expand access and opportunities, controlling costs and seeking additional efficiencies. http://strategicplan.psu.edu/

La Vie

La Vie (the Life), the Penn State University annual student yearbook, has been in production documenting student life continuously since 1890. La Vie is a student publication governed by an internal Board of Directors who manage and control the copy rights to La Vie publications. The yearbook features spreads for Penn State sports, clubs, organizations, Greeks, student life, each college within the University including seniors who get portraits, and other focuses.File:Http://www.statecollege.com/shop/photos/9751.jpg

Past versions, from 1890 through 2000, of La Vie have recently been digitized in the Online La Vie Project as a joint collaboration between the Penn State University Archives and the University Libraries Digitization and Preservation Department that took over six months. They feature fully digitized and scanned versions of every page in these books, resulting in over 51,000 pages and 1.3 terabytes of information. Past yearbooks are also in the Pennsylvania State University Libraries.

The 2011 Penn State yearbook is currently available for purchase and in production. It will be a 400 or more page, full color book that includes Organizations, Greek life, Sports, Academics, Student Life, School Events and THON. As with more recent editions, the book comes with two DVDs, one of THON from the current year and one from the most recent Football Season. More recent editions than those in the archive are still available for order and particularly coveted by alumni.

As with many other Penn State organizations, La Vie's office is located in the HUB-Robeson Center, the student union building near the center of University park, in room 220. The organization, that goes by the same name, is not only responsible for the production, sales, and advertising of the Yearbook, but also participates and assists with other university events. Jostens, the company that La Vie is submitted to, sells official Penn State Class Rings at the HUB periodically throughout the year, with the help of club members. Senior portraits, that consequently end up in the book, are also supervised and taken in conjunction with La Vie staff, as are graduation announcements, caps and gowns. They also take part in THON fundraisers, such as canning, as many student organizations do.

References

Ranking in lead

The ranking should be removed from the lead, as it is a form of boosterism and a violation of WP:NPOV. Only ONE source says the school is in the top 15. To be neutral, we would have to accommodate all rankings and say the school is in the top 200. —Eustress ^talk 14:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

My understanding is that USNWR is the premier ranking entity for higher education in the US (for whatever that is worth, I don't know). Given that, should we really concern "ourselves" with "Joe Schmoe's rankings of US Public Universities"? Also, I'm not aware of any somewhat reliable or well-regarded rankings of US Public Universities other than USNWR. Do they exist? Are they reliable? As reliable as USNWR? jheiv ^{talk contribs} 15:03, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, the PSU USNWR ranking (#47) is definitely not top 15. However, I still contend that any one ranking is appropriate inappropriate as an overall gauge of academic rigor and not appropriate for the lead. —Eustress ^talk 20:48, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Eustress, the sentence in the lead states that the school is in the top 15 among public universities. I missed that at first too, so it might be good to say "Among public universities..." rather than mentioning it after the fact. It would be more neutral and clear to say that it's ranked 15th rather than "in the top 15" and should say who ranked it and when. If the lead includes rankings, it should include a cross-section of rankings. From WP:UNIGUIDE (bold added by me): "Rankings should be neutrally worded without modifiers or disclaimers, represent a comprehensive cross-section of rankings by national and international publications, be limited to a single section in the article, and be reported as numeric values with years and verifiable sources. In the lead, do not use rankings to synthesize an image of the institution, whether good or bad. Give one factual statement summarising overall "most recent" rankings obtained in key surveys (for example, "In 2010, institution 'A' has been ranked #3 by The Economist, #5 by The New York Times and #8 by Financial Times.")." Klubbit (talk) 16:07, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I agree and realize that I mistyped in my previous comment, now with strikethrough. —Eustress ^talk 16:44, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

W/R/T it being in the lead, it seems to be in the lead of many of the top schools on that list (only checked 5 or 6):

University of Virginia: "The 2011 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Virginia as the 2nd best public university...

The College of William & Mary: "William & Mary's undergraduate program ranks #4 and #6 among American public universities according to the 2010 Forbes and 2011 U.S. News & World Report rankings, respectively"

... And when reviewing the 5 at the top of the public school list, it seems that PSU is modest when it comes to placing rankings in the lead. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 20:53, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Those are B-class articles. Note that Featured Articles Georgetown University, Dartmouth College, and Michigan State University make no explicit mention of rankings in the lead. Duke University (another FA), however, does mention rankings and adheres precisely to WP:UNIGUIDE. —Eustress ^talk 01:27, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Most reputable higher ed scholars would tell you that there are no "good" ("reliable" has a very specific and technical meaning for some of us) rankings of higher education, including the ones published by USN&WR. ElKevbo (talk) 15:52, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

←ElKevbo's exposition of WP:UNIGUIDE assuages the matter: use one factual statement summarising overall most recent rankings obtained in key surveys. The Duke article interprets "key surveys" (plural) to be Forbes, USNWR, and WM, which seems sufficient to me. I have enacted the modification per UNIGUIDE. Best —Eustress ^talk 01:27, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I did not fully read this conversation. What is in the history section seems fine, and not bias up to this point. Although the student demonstrations may need a citation.66.71.124.178 (talk) 06:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Sandusky scandal

I'm not sure if it should be in this article or where it should be, I am merely posing the question. Should there be mention of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal in this article? My thinking is that someone looking for information about the scandal might not know it has its own article, and would come to the Penn State article first. (And as an aside, some might incorrectly assume that Wikipedia is part of the ongoing cover-up of this incident by not seeing a link to the Sandusky incident.) Thank you.—Michael J 12:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think so, at least not now. There's been discussion over the proper naming of the scandal, particularly the inclusion of "Penn State" in the name. And a lot of other schools have faced their own high profile scandals and don't have mentions of them on their pages. --Jtalledo (talk) 13:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the "at least not now" part. After some time, after the frenzy has died down, it should be a question to be seriously considered. But I think one would have a hard time making an accurate call now or for the foreseeable near future. Also see WP:NOTNEWSPAPER. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 20:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Valid points, Jtalledo and jheiv. I wasn't pushing to add anything, it was just a question that crossed my mind and I didn't have a reasonable answer one way or the other.—Michael J 22:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It appears that a reference to the scandal has been added to the last paragraph of the opening section.—Michael J 22:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I see that. I don't think placing it in such a prominent location was due for the same reasons I already mentioned, but I'd be okay with its current placement if that was how other editors felt. I'm sure if Bearian knew of a discussion here he would have chimed in and sought consensus. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 23:29, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I put it in the history section, which I restored. It definitely doesn't belong in the lead. --Jtalledo (talk) 23:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to move it to the history section, and re-word as needed. Bearian (talk) 01:10, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

That works for me. Good job, Bearian and Jtalledo. (By the way, Bearian, were you aware that the print version in The New York Times of the column you referenced referred to "Penn" rather than "Penn State".)—Michael J 03:11, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the scandal warrants a one or two sentence mention in the history section with an emphasis on historical framing (e.g., other administrators being indicted on federal charges, Spainer and Paterno being dismissed by BoT, their replacements). Madcoverboy (talk) 15:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Just my opinion, like stated above, I believe that there should be no mention for the time being. This should definitely be discussed at a later time, however. Any speculation at this point would be mere opinions.Bear PIG man 2 (talk) 06:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to long on for my previous statements. But I read the history section and agree that should be all for now. Now bias noted, although the student demonstrations may need cited.Bear PIG man 2 (talk) 06:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Now that it has been added to the "Athletics" that Joe Paterno was fired, something about the scandal really needs to be added, because you really cannot mentioned that someone like him was fired without at least briefly mentioning why. Tad Lincoln (talk) 04:44, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

There's a paragraph in the history section. ElKevbo (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe what is there now is fine for the time being.Bear PIG man 2 (talk) 01:39, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

The citation used for Joe Paterno's firing is from a sports opinion column from The Boston Globe, and isn't an article about the firing itself. I'd recommend using this one instead. 46.107.102.35 (talk) 09:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I think there should be a link to the scandal article on this page. The article is titled "Penn State abuse scandal" and involves more people at Penn State than Sandusky alone. While it shouldn't be a key element in this article, it should at least be referenced in a link.2CrudeDudes (talk) 14:40, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

It is linked in context in the "Modern era" section. --Jtalledo (talk) 15:11, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

The way that the chapter of Penn State's history is written looks problematic to me. I don't understand why the "Child sex abuse scandal" is longer than any other parts in the chapter. By saying longer, I'm comparing the scandal part with all the other three parts which are "Early Years", "Early 20th Century" and the rest of "Modern era", respectively. Although the "Child sex abuse scandal" section is indexed as the subsection of "Modern Era", it clearly stands out as a seperate part of the university's history.

I beleive such way of introducing Penn State's history is disproportional, misleading and unfair. Because the scandal is only one of the many incidents that were once a focus of attention throughout the modern history of the university. Essentially, Penn State is an educational institute with a goal of achieving academic successes. Its history should be recorded and analyzed mainly based on its educational and research activities, rather than incidents in its peripheral organizations. I'm not saying the introduction of the scancal should be eliminated from the chapter of history, but it is irrational for such part to appear with greater length than "Early Years" and "Early 20th Century". Many universities have scandals through their over-a-century histories, but only Penn State's history is written in such a manner in Wikipedia.

In sum, I think the "Child sex abuse scandal" should be greatly abridged and incorportated into the rest part of "Modern Era". For readers who are particularly interested in incidents of child sex abuse, a hyperlink can be created to direct them to the webpage that exhaustively describes the scandal.

Wikipedia is meant to provide its readers with objective introduction of concepts, things and people. We should not allow a disproportional drawing that magnifies a scar on the face to serve as a person's portrait. ~Dule 09/26/2015 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.39.126.226 (talk) 01:46, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

NCAA Aftermath

I added a paragraph on the sanctions to the section on athletics because that section talks at length about wins that have since been vacated. The paragraph is a start at neutralizing the now-obsolete claims but once the dust settles we need to revamp this section. Since the vacated wins may cause a ripple affect (i.e. other awards and honors may end up getting revoked) it might make sense to hold off for a while. I myself am not comfortable with rewriting the whole section since I am not clear on which parts refer to the football team and which refer to the combined athletic program. (Maybe we can make that distinction clearer when we rewrite it, especially if I am not the only one with that reaction.)

Peace, Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 17:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

References

Southpark s15e14

Hello, there are a lot of references to Penn State in 14th episode of 15th series of Southpark. What is this actually about? Should there be perhaps a subsection "In fiction" introduced to the article? Thanks for clearing this out for me.

On another note - shouldn't there be actually different date or two dates in the infobox, as 1855 was establishment of high school, not the college/university? Cimmerian praetor (talk) 09:30, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

We can't really editorialize on the episode even if we watched it. If WP:RSs cover it, we can use and cite them, however. I'd have to look more into the date to be able to answer that. jheiv ^{talk contribs} 17:58, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

A current events template might be merited for a few weeks pointing people to Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal. People are going to be flooding in from South Park. .froth. (talk) 05:23, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Allegations of Discrimination

I'd like to suggest a correction of the language around the 1988 occupation of the Telecommunications Building. As a direct witness, I can say unequivocally that it was NOT non-violent, and that the demonstrators broke down doors and broke through windows of the building to occupy it, disrupting the communications capabilities of the University. The use of the Collegian article as a reference is akin to using an Op-Ed piece as fact. The only change I would suggest is that the word "nonviolently" be removed, and the addition of the claus "resulting in substantial damage to property and equipment." It should also be noted that the intent of the demonstrators was to "take over the television station and broadcast a message of racism," and they invaded a building that had nothing to do with the University's television broadcast facilities.

Edit request on 9 February 2012

Please change the endowment figures in the information box. As of the latest report, listed here: http://www.psu.edu/oim/gallery/5yrfiscal11.pdf the endowment of Penn State is now 1,708.4 Million Dollars.

|endowment = $1.546 billion (systemwide)

Should be:

|endowment = $1.708.4 billion (systemwide)

Jackstone104 (talk) 01:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you,

jackstone104

Jackstone104 (talk) 01:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Done—Bility (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

References

Edit request on 15 July 2012

"The 22,000+ student section at home football games is the largest concentrated student section in the nation." I'm not sure how "concentrated student section" is interpreted, but many student sections are larger including Ohio State and Texas A&M (reference http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3529485 - scroll to the bottom to the last graphic. Texas A&M had approx 29,736 in the student section which will increase in the 2012 season to 30,284. reference https://twitter.com/AggieFootball/statuses/185103688279408640 ))

The phrase "is the largest concentrated student section in the nation." should be deleted.

76.185.92.127 (talk) 03:57, 15 July 2012 (UTC) busmasterjones

 Done --Jtalledo (talk) 04:18, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

NCAA punitive actions

I see someone added this but should it not be "vacated Penn States wins..." not "vacated Joe Paterno's wins...". The wins are for the school first and also players/coaches. How about splitting the line up so it shows that the school and staff do not get credit, not just one person? Right now it reads as though the school keeps the wins. 216.81.94.77 (talk) 13:48, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

It looks like this change has been made. However, an editor recently reduced the size of the abuse scandal subsection (under History)--which is mostly a good thing as it was too large--but included no information about the Freeh report which is one of the most significant aspects of this story. I would suggest we either add that or, alternatively, reduce the abuse section further by removing less noteworthy aspects such as student reactions to Paterno's firing. It does not seem NPOV to have the student reactions to Paterno's firing without Freeh's findings on Paterno's involvement in the scandal. I will do this myself in a few days if nobody beats me to it. Cheers, Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 17:30, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Added mention of the Freeh report. --Jtalledo (talk) 17:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Jtalledo I saw the new content and I like it. Thanks! Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 12:46, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out. I just took content from the other article and put it there. --Jtalledo (talk) 14:54, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Protection required

I think the pages for Penn State Nittany Lions football, Penn State Nittany Lions, Pennsylvania State University, and Joe Paterno ought to be protected. They are almost certain to receive their fair share of vandalism as these events play out. User:Davidfreesefan23 (talk) 14:27, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Might want to contact a Admin as posting in a TALK page will not go far. Also Paterno's page is already protected, not sure how much more protection you think it needs? ;) 216.81.94.77 (talk) 15:06, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Update number of programs offered by World Campus under Special-mission campuses

Under "Special-mission campuses" it says: "In 1998, the university launched Penn State World Campus, or Penn State Online, which offers more than 60 online education programs, degrees, and certificates." World Campus now has more than 90 programs, degrees, and certificates, as has been updated on the World Campus page.

A primary source for this information:

http://worldcampus.psu.edu/about-us/why-penn-state-world-campus

130.203.179.127 (talk) 16:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)Hilary

References

Updated University Seal?

Can someone download or upload an updated university seal with smooth edges?Juicy fruit146 (talk) 17:57, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Include the child molestation scandal?

User:DrCuddle has blanked the "Child sex scandal" section in this article's history section, stating: "This information is talked about in detail on another Wikipedia page and information pertains to a sports team not the academic institution".

While the first part of that statement is correct (there is a detailed article on the scandal), it is in my opinion incorrect to assert the information does not pertain to the academic institution. As the paragraph DrCuddle would suppress says, "Two university administrators, athletic director Timothy Curley and Gary Schultz, Senior Vice President for Finance and Business, were indicted for perjury". There was not only an individual's wrongdoing here, but a severe governance failure, and a conspiracy to cover it up. It is a quite relevant item in the institutions modern history, where it appears. Ijon (talk) 22:59, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Ijon has a good point in that university officials were involved in the cover up. However many within the University community including faculty and students feel unjustly lumped in with the guilty parties and including such a lengthy explanation of the scandal prominently on the University's Wikipedia page only furthers the association. In addition this section has been repeatedly added and removed so further discussion is necessary to reach an unbiased consensus DrCuddle 05:01, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

The only one who's been removing it is you. Please stop removing it until an appropriate consensus may be reached. The scandal, for better or worse, has been the most significant event in the University's recent history, and it would be a disservice for the encyclopedia to ignore it. Wikipedia is not censored to prevent hurt feelings, and I kn ow as well as anyone how painful this episode has been to my friends and colleagues who are Penn State alumni, but we're here to tell it like it is. Indictments and resignations in disgrace of high university officials are pertinent and deserve discussion in the article. Acroterion (talk) 03:38, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I am not the only one removing and challenging this section, by my count it has been removed and added eight separate times since June 1,2013 excluding the edits I have proposed. I do not wish to turn this into an edit war nor do I intend to do so. I am simply proposing discussion instead of heavy handedness by a few experienced editors at he expense of a new editor who was just trying to keep Wikipedia unbiased and democratic. Hopefully this can be resolved via discussion and not undoing and redoing in an edit battle. DrCuddle 04:58, 17 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrCuddle (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia is not a democracy, it is an encyclopedia, and content is not resolved by repeatedly removing material against consensus without appropriate explanation or discussion, as you and a few others have done. That is something that is perceived as heavy-handed. I appreciate that you have sought to discuss it here, and I understand that you are new to Wikipedia. Please look farther up the page for discussion of the content issues and their place in the article. If you propose to remove the material, please provide a rationale based on policy for its removal that others may support, or at least discuss.

I do not accept your view that the issue was confined to the athletic department and that it can be isolated from the university at large. The central point of the scandal was that it was ignored, covered up or minimized by university governance. The athletic programs at large universities are an integral part of the culture and history of the institutions, few more so than at Penn State, which had always prided itself (with reason) on running a clean program. Apart from its shocking nature, the scandal was an illustration of the extent to which athletics programs influence governance at Division I colleges: there is no separating the sports programs from the university in general, least of all at Penn State, owner of the 4th largest stadium in the world. I think the discussion of the event might possibly be summarized more concisely, but it cannot be ignored. Acroterion (talk) 12:37, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I did not mean democracy in the sense that simple voting should take place, rather i was stating my concern over the heavy handedness and unexplained rollbacks when it is clear consensus has not been reached. Please tell me if there is a policy against this but on the University of Notre Dame and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who have also had scandals involving administrative cover up of things that would hurt their athletic programs. Neither of these universities have these cover ups mentioned on their university Wikipedia pages. It is editorial malpractice to mention scandals on one page but not on others, simply because one was sensationalized in the media. May I suggest correcting these discrepancies before trying to silence an inexperienced editor simply because your opinion is different than mine.DrCuddle 17:14, 17 August 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrCuddle (talk • contribs)

I don't see any reason to remove this material. It's well sourced, balanced, and not WP:undue. In fact, I agree fully with User:Acroterion's statement that the events "cannot be ignored." Some coverage of this needs to be in this article (the main article for the school). Leaving it out because it is covered in its own article makes as little sense to me as suggesting that the form of government in the US should not be mentioned in United States since the topic has its own articles in Federal government of the United States, State governments of the United States, and Local government in the United States.

As for the issue of somewhat similar situations at other schools not being covered in their articles, I suggest that you read Other Stuff Exists. It's an essay, not official policy, but it is widely accepted. The material in any given article has to stand on its own merits, and I believe this material does belong. Whether some other article does or does not contain something possibly similar is an issue for that article, and is not germane to this article.

I'm not opposed to having this material in this article. But I will say this, it takes up roughly 20% of the history section. Considering that this place has been around since 1855, I'm not sure it should take up that much room. --Jtalledo (talk) 11:59, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

That's a fair point. Feel free to try to shorten while retaining the important details. ElKevbo (talk) 12:04, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, it can be more concise, and I appreciate your efforts to condense it. Acroterion (talk) 02:34, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, nice job tightening it. Meters (talk) 04:58, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

References

secret campuses needs citation

the section on campuses abroad needs a citation, I can't find them. and don't know about them, and would expect to. I think it's misattribution or just wrong. http://www.psu.edu/academics/campuses for example does not list 'em. 64.134.243.42 (talk) 23:13, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I was very surprised to learn that PSU has campuses in other countries and no amount of searching turns up these supposed campuses in Australia, Germany, and China. I am going to remove the entire "Global" section and someone can re-add it if they can verify the claim. Perhaps the author was referring to partnerships, but those are in no way Penn State campuses (and there is no partnership with any site in Australia regardless). ndc (talk) 04:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

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Racial Integration?

What can be added about racial integration at Penn State? Paul, in Saudi (talk) 13:55, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

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Seal

The "LIBERTY" banner in the seal is missing the R.

Fixed 25 February 2019. Shenme (talk) 06:12, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

"PSU.edu" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect PSU.edu. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. The Banner talk 13:48, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

"Sandusky state" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Sandusky state. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:07, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Details about the student government

One or more unregistered editor are insisting that this article include multiple paragraphs with details about this university's student governments including the (current? past?) leaders of different parts of the undergraduate student government. There doesn't appear to be anything particularly unique or special about these student organizations so these details are unnecessary. I'd appreciate the editor(s) who have different views sharing those views here instead of continuing to edit without discussion or even the courtesy of an edit summary. ElKevbo (talk) 04:09, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

"Public" or "state-related" in lede

The same unregistered editor(s) mentioned above (in the section about the student governments) is also insisting, without discussion or even edit summaries, that the lede of this article state the university is "state-related." This is unnecessary jargon that is unique to Pennsylvania so it's unfamiliar to nearly all of our readers. Moreover, most reliable sources clearly classify this university as "public" (e.g., IPEDS, US News & World Report) and we should follow their lead unless we have a really good reason to do something else. There's plenty of room in the body of the article to explain the nuance of this university's relationship with the state and its funding; the lede is not the place to delve into those details, certainly not with language that is unfamiliar to readers and not used in other sources. ElKevbo (talk) 04:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

RfC about the description used in the lead of CSHE universities

There is an ongoing Request for Comments on Talk:University of Pittsburgh about whether the term "public" or "state-related" should be used to describe universities that are members of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. Since this is also relevant to Penn State, your comments would be welcome there. --Drevolt (talk) 01:31, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Disputed removal of academic affiliations in infobox

Meleager91 is disputing an edit that I made removing APLU and BTAA from the "academic_affiliations" parameter of the infobox in this article. These edits were generally proposed several months ago with no opposition and substantive discussion. These specific affiliations provide no additional information to readers beyond what is already in the infobox and article. Membership in APLU is open to any institution that is a public or land-grant institution; the "type" parameter already tells readers that this is a land-grant university so this membership offers no additional information. Membership in the Big Ten Academic Alliance is open to all Big Ten members; the "sporting affiliations" parameter already tells readers that this university is part of the Big Ten so this membership offers no additional information.

We do not - cannot - list every organization of which this large, complex university is a member. We must be very selective to only list those organizations that are clearly academic in nature and that provide readers with critical information about the university (the documentation for this template was recently edited to make this clear: "Academic organizations of which the institution is a member and provide essential definition of the institution (mission, values, activities, etc.)."). As described above, membership in these specific organizations does not provide readers with new information that isn't already noted elsewhere in the infobox; we cannot afford to spend space in the infobox repeating information. Further, these particular organizations are not selective; membership in them doesn't tell readers anything substantive that isn't already apparent.

Finally, I have done my best to ensure that edits removing these kinds of organizations have been done and are being done consistently across all articles; I'm not singling out this specific institution in any way. ElKevbo (talk) 19:22, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I apologize if a broad consensus of the deletion of APLU from universities' infoboxes had been previously reached, though there seems to have been ambivalence. Nevertheless, I can certainly see how the inclusion of mentions could potentially bloat the infoboxes of its 239+ members even if part of the goal of infoboxes is to allow quick comparison of common attributes across different pages. Granting that, it would still be my view that a university's afflitiation with APLU help define its mission, values, and activities. Failing that, the college and university article guideline would suggest that such academic affiliations, if not warranted in the infoboxes, should at least be included in prose under an "Organization and administration" section. "If the college or university has formal affiliations with other educational institutions (e.g., Five Colleges) or is a member of a major consortium or other inter-university organization (Annapolis Group, Association of American Universities, etc.), mention these as well." If an academic affiliation is truly unworthy of inclusion in a university or college's infobox, a reference to it should be moved to the body of the article so as not to completely remove that information from the article. As for the BTAA, I would suggest that BTAA and Big Ten Conference is sufficiently notable and important to the university for infobox inclusion. Moreover, membership is limited to only 14 institutions, in contrast with APLU. Without a clear delineation of which academic affiliations are worthy of inclusion, I err on inclusivity in the infobox, and at the very least within the article's prose. I try to avoid deleting things as a matter of principle, bearing in mind that others may find something useful in what I remove.Meleager91 (talk) 20:08, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm okay with including the APLU membership in the body of the article. I personally would not do that as it doesn't really say anything significant about the institution; membership in that organization is pretty much open to all public and land-grant institutions in the U.S. What exactly do you think that readers are going to learn by including this in the article?

I do not understand why we need to include the Big Ten twice in the infobox. Can you please explain? ElKevbo (talk) 20:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

"Sun-grant" and "space-grant" are not university "types"

An unregistered editor has contested the removal of "sun-grant" and "space-grant" from the "type" parameter of the infobox in this article. Although they are confusingly named similar to the "land-grant" status that has had an immense impact on the university in many ways, these research programs do not have sufficient impact on the university's mission, resources, and curriculum to qualify as institutional "types." They certainly merit mention later in the article where the university's research programs are discussed but they don't have the widespread impact necessary to merit inclusion in the infobox. ElKevbo (talk) 13:26, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

"Sea-grant," too; sorry for forgetting to include that in the first place. ElKevbo (talk) 14:36, 16 August 2020 (UTC)