Tag: State College Pennsylvania

Highs and lows

Perhaps one of the places you wouldn’t like to visit these days is Happy Valley, PA.

Heart of Penn State Football. Normally alumni would post home-game tickets as if they were for Albert Hall‘s Fab reunion concert.

Now, it’s a place that is much condemned: punishment for Penn State, penalty for Penn State.

Alumni started to flip the script: BOT this and that, the Governor himself, where was he? etc…

This fiasco reminds me of a rack-focused shot from a David Lynch‘s movie, perhaps Mulholland Drive? which slowly reveals what’s beneath the well-manicured auto-irrigated lawn. Finally, real Happy Valley is revealed.

We know now, there is no perfect place. Nor people. Just ordinary human beings with highs and lows.

Like you and I.

It’s like when we receive our transcript: some courses we did better than others.

Oh well.

Ethically, Penn State is getting its report card. We Penn Staters are getting a black-eye.

Hard to imagine “senior panic” plus austerity, plus this. Perfect storm.

I feel for graduating seniors. I want to remind them of Steve Jobs‘ commencement address “Stay hungry, stay foolish”, plus, “Stay clean”.  BTW, I am not ashamed to admit I started out there at Penn State in my first job as a janitor at the HUB. Reports say one of the janitors at PSU saw what happened but “was afraid for his job”etc…

Maybe he too should be taken into custody for not doing his job: cleaning up the mess at Penn State.

Not “where was the Governor”, but “where was the janitor”. Highs and lows.

Changing-transforming

The first comes natural. The second,  involves an act of the will and intervention. Penn State will need to be transformed.

Besides, it’s not the place. It’s the institutional mindset. We know this. We will do it, individually and collectively.

It’s Sunday morning. I will use this day to reflect on my experience at Happy Valley. Those 4 years have always been special to me. Now, they will need to be looked at in a different light. Perhaps with more maturity due to hindsight.

Today, when I jog pass a lush-green golf course, I still think of PSU’s.

The shorter loop is 4 miles, the 8-shape loop 8 miles.

Students could be seen jogging around the clock up and down those hills. The book Running was a run-away best seller at the time. So were jogging shorts.

And…..long socks with color-stripes up to our knees .

We would watch Midnight Cowboy, Midnight Express…anything with “midnight” in the title. Disco was in the air. And the shiny silk shirts.

Long-hair students sat along “the Wall”, while more traditional ones would stop by the Creamery. The best there is.

When it’s home-game weekend, you can hear the roaring echo from Beaver Stadium. Post-game evening, win or lose, it’s full house at local pubs. It’s fun to go out in Happy Valley. Everyone finds a date, winter or summer.

It’s 50’s innocence, now facing 21st-century ethical dilemma: big box, big bucks and bomb-shell publicity problems.

I can well imagine the press descending upon State College, the Corner Room, Old Main, the HUB. I am sure they interview students, staff and faculty for reaction.

I am sure they camp out at nearby hotels (lots of them to accommodate tourists). Then, they would pack up and go on to the next disaster.

Happy Valley will once again be quiet..until September.

Summer there is hot. Student housing are sparingly occupied, either by those who need to work summer job, or take a summer course to finish up their degrees.

If any good comes out of this, it’s the proper place of football in the scheme of things. Perhaps academic, and yes, ethics.

Institution for higher learning, for learners and decent folks, PE included, but not as THE thing at Penn State. The changing and transforming of place, people and priority.