A Legacy Untarnished

Joseph Vincent Paterno.  The last week at Penn State has been spent showing our support to him, and his family.  From the scare of thinking he had already passed last Saturday night, to his actual death announced Sunday morning.  All of this was followed by an extremely moving candlelight vigil in front of Old Main, a viewing that thousands upon thousands of people attended, a campus lined with students and alumni waiting to "guide Joe home", and then one of the most touching memorials I have ever been blessed to be a part of.  

However, some people do not think that any of these things were appropriate.  Many people in fact view Joe Paterno one of the villians in the scandal that has been overtaking our school for the past 3 months now.  Many critics voiced their opinions saying that we are taking everything too far, and that we are forgetting what crime he has committed.  They say that his legacy was tarnished forever.

I completely disagree.

Maybe it is just because I am a Penn State student, or because I live by the rule that you should look past people's mistakes and see who they truly are and what they have done. Today,  I attended the memorial for Joe Paterno and all I could think while I was there was that I wish every single one of those critics could hear what everyone had to say, and how everyone came together.  I am not saying Joe didn't make a mistake, but to say his "legacy is tarnished" is going too far.  62 years dedicated to this university, 409 wins, over 4 million dollars donated to Penn State... that is only some of the contributions he made in his life.  Along with influencing individual lives I believe one of his greatest achievements that makes it impossible to say his legacy is tarnished is that he helped to make a body of students a family.  This week at Penn State has been proof that Joe's legacy indeed lives on.  Thousands of students coming together, along with families and alumni, to show their support for Joe and his family was beyond touching. He made us all a family, a family that lives on and has had and will continue to have amazing experiences because of him. This last picture is probably one of the most impacting things he could have done for me.  Today, at the end of the memorial, everyone in the entire Bryce Jordan Center, friends and strangers alike, held hands to pray the Our Father, just like Joe does after football games with his team. For me to see thousands of strangers do that together, to celebrate the life of one single man, moved me. It made me see how no matter what outsiders say about Joe, or about how we talk about him, or treated his memory the last week, that he was an incredible man that touched the lives of so many people and created a family.  And although he is gone, this family will stay strong because of his legacy.

We are because he was.

The Rhetoric of SOPA

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a highly controversial proposal by the government that was created to prevent the online trafficking of copyrighted material.  It is an extreme way to deal with the issue of pirated files.  Although many people do agree with the fact that this issue has to be dealt with, they do not think this is the right way to do it.  Many online search engines such as Google and Wikipedia see this bill as a way for the government to censor the internet.  In protest to this bill many websites, such as the ones listed above, participated in a “blackout”.  This was not to prohibit people from using these search engines, but instead create awareness of the bill and the consequences it would have on the internet as we know it.  Many other websites (around 7,000 of them) posted either some kind of protest or links to petitions to sign.  Some even had links to your closest representative you could contact in order to voice your opinion.  In addition to protests that were held in the virtual world there were also organized petition drives, boycotts of companies that were pro-SOPA, and rallies held in New York. One political issue people have with this proposed bill is that it is a piece of legislation that could be said to reduce the freedom of expression.  It is another way for the government to control us, and go back to censoring what we can say and think.  Overall, I believe that the amount of opposition to this bill should be taken into consideration.  There has to be other ways to control the trafficking of copyrighted files.