Talk:Pennsylvania State University

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Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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)

[edit] "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!

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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. --Spangineeres (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.
--Spangineeres (háblame) 20:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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. RockinRobTalk 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)


[edit] 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

[edit] 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. --Spangineeres (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.). --Spangineeres (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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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? --Spangineeres (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)

[edit] "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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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. RockinRobTalk 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! --Spangineeres (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. --Spangineerws (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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Extensions

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

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