I thought Sam Richards idea for State Pattys day was very interesting but I do not think I totally agree with it. I think State Pattys day is one of the more fun weekends of the entire year and I look at it as a celebration for not only Saint Patricks day but hard work for the first half of the second semester. The weekend before State Pattys day is Thon and Thon could be one of the most powerful and moving weekends of the year. So many students at Penn State do such great things and work so hard and work tirelessly before Thon to ensure Thon raises more and more money each year and is as successful as it can be. So many different organizations Thon and can and send out Thonvelopes. Fraternities, sororities, and all different types of clubs and all of the Thon groups can and care about this cause and care about the kids and care about raising money. And Thon represents Penn State in the best possible light imaginable and it is just not fair that the entire world knows about the terrible Jerry Sandusky scandal and the entire world does not know about the unbelievable acts by Penn State students in the fight against Pediatric cancer. I understand where Sam is coming from and how the media focuses on the negative side whenever something is going terribly wrong. They blow everything out of proportion just like when they went crazy when the first news broke of the scandal. There was constant Penn State scandal news and it was mayhem in State College for the next two weeks. So if the press gets a hold of the news in State College about State Pattys day and how there are more arrests and crimes on the weekend of State Pattys day than any other Penn State weekend, the media will get a hold of it and run with it. But after all this is a college town and all of the students here had absolutely nothing to do with the sexual molestation of children and college students should be able to live there life and have a fun time and this is one of the weekends they do it. And students here at The Pennsylvania State University should definitely be able to celebrate after raising over nine million dollars for kids with cancer. I know partying and Thon have nothing to do with each other and should not have anything to do with each other but after all we are still college students and after all college students like to have a good time. And after a unreal weekend like Thon and after so much hard work, they should have a weekend to have fun and dance and hang out with their friends and drink alcohol if they chose to do so.

I thought the hectic week of November 7th leading up to the Nebraska football game on November 12th could have been one of the craziest weeks in Penn State history. And this article did a fantastic job of telling the story from the students perspective and telling the world what the students were feeling. The students were feeling confused, the students were in disbelief about the entire thing, the students were angry and sad and mad. What I was feeling that entire week, was disbelief. There was a sense all around campus that the whole thing was just unreal, like you did not want to believe that it happened on your campus and your administrators did not do enough to stop it. And then Tuesday night rolls around and Wednesday night rools around and you think to yourself, how stupid could the administrators be. Why would you make such a big announcement that affects your entire student body at that time of day when you know your school has rioted in the past. Penn State is a rally happy school, they want to find reasons to rally and the administrators just handed them one on a silver plate. I truly believed that they should of given the announcement early Thursday morning while all of the student body is still asleep or they should given the announcement during the day when the entire student body is either doing work or in class. The board of trustees really squared up there and let everything hit the fan. And that is when the media blew everything out of proportion and made Penn State out to be a bunch of crazy people. I think one of the best moves by any faculty member during this hectic week during the Sandusky scandal was by Stacy Silver, my sociology of gender, sociology 110 professor. We were supposed to have an exam on Thursday from 4:15 to 5:30 and she postponed it to the next Tuesday cause she believed which I totally agree with was that this was too important of a time in Penn State history not to talk about it from a sociological perspective. And we talked about it and it was such and interesting class. Her husband who is a sociology professor at Penn State as well, he teaches a 400 level sociology of deviance class, talked about the entire scandal. And I also loved what Sam Richards did, he cancelled his normal class and talked about the entire scandal as well and brought his wife in to talk about the crazy series of events in State College that week and that is why I loved this article because it does a great job of giving credit to Sam for really listening of the students and hearing it from our point of view.

I would first like to start off by saying that the sociology department has done an unbelievable job in the past couple of days responding to these events in class. I am a sociology minor and I am taking two sociology classes right now, sociology 110, sociology of gender and sociology 119. Both of my professors took the time on Thursday during class mind you to discuss the ongoing scandal and to answer student’s questions which I respect so much and I am very grateful to them. Because I know a lot of students were still in disbelief that this happened and were very confused. I personally think the board of trustees handles this very wrongly and did an awful job. I can understand both points of view and obviously I am biased because I go to The Pennsylvania State University and I love college football and I love Penn State football and I love Joe Paterno. But I still feel like Joe Paterno should be able to finish out the season because it is not fair to the players and the entire team. He did what was in his job description and he reported to a higher up and it was the higher ups that really really squared up the entire situation. I do understand that he probably should have done more and followed up on the situation. But Joe Paterno has gave his life to this university. His entire life has been about The Pennsylvania State University and he has done so much for this university and really put this university on the map. This university would not be the university it is today if it was not for Joe Paterno. He built this university from a tiny agriculture school into an amazing university with an unbelievable business school, engineering school, and a great research institution. I strongly believe he should have been able to finish out the season with his team and with his seniors. It is just for another month!!! And he was fired over the phone. Are you kidding me board of trustees? Are you absolutely kidding me? That is out of control and so disrespectful. You do not have the balls and the decency to at least walk over to his house and explain the entire situation to his face. I also think that the world does not think highly of Penn State at all right now. And that is not fair!! It was one person that did these acts and a couple of people that tried to hide them up and the world is looking sown upon all of Penn Staters. It is just a very sad situation for everyone involved and I would like to end my blog with a message to all the victims. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the families of the victims.

They will go to any costs when they have a family back at home and when they are sending their paychecks back to those families at home. The one example Sam Richards brought up in class was the Alabama farmer who literally had fields of crops that were just not being picked because the Alabama immigration laws are just so strict. Alabama and Colorado have very strict immigration laws and illegals cannot be hired. So farmers in Alabama cannot hire these illegal immigrants and then there fields just do not get picked. Farmers are losing money because the lack of illegal immigrants being hired and the fact they cannot be hired cause of these strict laws. I do not have an answer for immigration in this country and I think no one really has an answer.

You are not going to force people to talk a language and how would you enforce it when they are just going to talk their native language in their homes? I just do not see it being worth the time and resources for the US government to try enforce this. I think immigration in this country is so confusing and backwards and no one has a true solution for it. It is tough to regulate immigration and this economy needs immigrant workers too. The tough labor jobs in this country are usually being done by immigrants. Immigrants are sometimes the hungriest workers because they will do anything to get money in their pocket and support their family. You are willing to work when you have nothing and that is what immigrants usually have when they enter this country.

They already are dropping everything to get here and start a new life. They are just trying to provide a better life for themselves and their family which everyone in this world is trying to do. And I think their kids are going to learn English anyway because they are going to be immersed in to our culture and go to our schools where English is being taught. So trying to force something to happen when it already is going to happen is pointless and how would we enforce this anyway. Make immigrants go to class right when they get here? Make them pass tests or such?

I think immigrants should not have to learn English. I do not think it should be a law or in the constitution or anything crazy like that. They are coming from their country of origin where they spoke the language of their home country and it would not be fair if they came to this country and right when they got here they had to drop everything, including their language would not be fair at all.

I think it would be a really weird feeling for me if the whites, Caucasians all over the world became a minority. My buddy in the sociology 119 class was discussing this with me and he said by 2025, which is in my life time that white people will be the minority. That still boggles my mind. It is so crazy. My buddy took a demographics class and he said they studied movement of people around the world and the growth of certain ethnic groups and cultures. I feel like it is something that I just cannot wrap my head around, it is so mind boggling. I am from New Jersey. My hometown is in North Jersey in Essex County in a small town about twenty minutes away from New York City. It is a very small town and it is surrounded by a lot of big towns with a lot of different ethnicities and diversity. My hometown is predominantly white and maybe that is the reason why I find it so mind boggling that white people are not going to be the dominant race very soon within the next fifteen years. Essex county could be one of the most diverse places in America east of the Mississippi other than New York City. There are a lot of Asian people, a lot of Hispanic people, a lot of white people and a lot of black people. There are a couple of places in Essex County that you do not want to be when it gets dark. There are very urban places in Essex County and when I start thinking about it the demographic patterns and the demographic growth in this Country and all around the world, I start realizing that less and less people live in rural areas. A lot of people live in urban and suburban areas and a lot of people are moving towards the cities and it starts making more sense. A lot of people in this country who live in urban areas are non-white Americans and urban areas are the dominant living areas in America right now and they will just continue to dominate cause people continue to flock to the cities. The world is constantly changing whether you like it or not and your ability to adapt to these changes and keep living your life to the fullest is going to be key especially in the coming years when white people will not be in the dominant race. What is Penn State going to look like when white people are not the dominant race? Penn State will probably stay predominantly white because of its location but there will definitely be more and more ethnic and black students in Happy Valley.

I am in a very different stage then my parents I truly believe. I feel like race does not bother me. In my fraternity, there are black kids and there are non-white kids. In my fraternity I am very good friends with a black kid and with a Hispanic kid. My mom grew up in Virginia and graduated from high school in 1975 and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979. She is a very old fashioned lady and is from the south. She grew up in a very prominent time of the civil rights movement and grew up in a time when blacks and whites got integrated. An unbelievable thing happened, her cleaning lady was an African American lady and her cleaning lady’s daughter went to the same school as my mom. My mom was going to the bathroom one morning before school started and the daughter of the cleaning lady came in to the bathroom with her two friends and intimidated my mom and started talking to trash to my mom and they also almost got in to a fight. My mom grew up in a neighborhood that was half black and half white. She was a very smart woman and was third in her graduating high school class of over five hundred students. But she grew up in a very strict and conservative household. Her father, my grandfather is very old school in his ways and grew up in Europe and never encountered people of other races so when he moved to America right before the break out of World War II, he had a gigantic culture shock. He thought he already knew what was right and what was wrong and did not want to change so he liked only people that were similar to him and did not change that and did not want to change that. He was set in his ways and people do not like change, especially people who are older. My mom grew up in a very conservative home and she was taught what to like and what not to like and who to hang with and who not to hang with. She is definitely judgmental and sees race. This has grown with me, however. I see both sides of the pendulum, and my mother’s raising has helped me grown and learn as an individual that color is not an important characteristic in life. Besides my mother’s background, I’ve grown to learn that integration is an important part of American life, and is a necessity when it comes to being a fully cultured American at heart. Although I respect the “heck” out of my mother and love her, I will learn from her past and experiences and realize that this America is a ever changing.

I have felt white guilt plenty of times and in many different situations. I am from a small town in New Jersey that many people call a bubble. It is a small town surrounded by five very large towns that are very ethnically diverse. My hometown is predominantly white and when I say it is predominantly, I mean probably over ninety percent white. I attended the public school in my hometown that everyone in town goes to if they chose to go to a public school. It is a small group one high school and in New Jersey group one is the smallest high school. Group four is the biggest and there graduating classes are like four hundred to five hundred kids and my high school was around one hundred and twenty five. We did not have a lot of non-white people in my school. And the towns surrounding my town were very ethnically diverse. New Jersey is a very ethnically diverse place because North Jersey is made up of a lot of suburbs of the largest city in the world. And that is also why New Jersey has the best food but that is on a side note. My dad and I were once driving home from my lacrosse game when I was in seventh or eighth grade and we were blasting one of our favorite country songs. We were stuck at a red light and the car that pulled up next to us had two black men in it and they were blasting rap and hip-hop music. My dad and I both looked at each other and smiled because it was funny to see the difference in ethnicity and the difference in love for music. My hometown is a big lacrosse town and we always go to the lacrosse championships on Memorial Day Weekend. One weekend it was being played at The University of Maryland at Byrd Stadium at College Park, Maryland and we stayed in Washington D.C. at a nice hotel. And we went running through D.C. on a tour and we were running through a park and a couple of my friends almost ran in to a homeless man who was one the sidewalk sleeping there. The homeless man was a black man and I remember feeling very sad and thinking to myself why he has to be homeless. Every Halloween, residents of the surrounding neighborhoods come and trick or treat down my block. And they are black people and you can tell they are not from the neighborhood because you have never seen them before and do not recognize them. I think they come because my neighborhood gives out a lot of candy and a lot of big candies. And you think to yourself, why does that happen?