UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State's University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG) and Graduate Student Association (GSA) are hosting a Penn State Town Hall Forum with the administration at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 30, in Heritage Hall of the HUB-Robeson Center on the University Park campus.
There will be a live feed to Alumni Hall in the HUB-Robeson Center, where attendees will find overflow seating.
This is a ticketed event, open only to students. Free tickets will be available to students beginning at 11 a.m. Monday, Nov. 28, at the HUB Information Desk on the University Park campus. Students must present a current, valid student ID to receive a ticket. Tickets will be distributed first for the event in Heritage Hall. Once that venue is full, tickets will be distributed for the overflow location, Alumni Hall, also in the HUB-Robeson Center. Students will need to present both their tickets and their student ID cards for admission to the event.
CCSG President Peter Khoury urges the Penn State student community to gather for this event, which he says is an important occasion. “It will provide a time for questions to be asked by students and answers to be shared by the vice presidents and President (Rodney) Erickson participating in the forum,” Khoury said. According to Khoury, arrangements are being made to ensure students at all campuses can participate. “This event is intended for students across all of Penn State's campuses and we expect that students from Commonwealth Campuses will be participating and submitting questions as well,” he said.
Khoury, UPUA President TJ Bard and GSA President Jon Lozano are working with student leaders at each campus to secure viewing areas, which will be equipped with live streaming video. A student facilitator at each location will have access to a University Park facilitator to communicate questions between the campuses and the Heritage Hall location in real time.
Lozano hopes that students from all Penn State campuses will take advantage of the opportunity to engage with leadership, whether in-person or online. “It is important to us that students at the World Campus and the Commonwealth Campuses also have an active voice in these conversations,” Lozano said. “We are all in this together.”
The event also will air on Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN), WPSU-World, and on the Campus Cable Network, as well as at http://wpsu.org online.
Sam Richards, senior lecturer in sociology, and Laurie Mulvey, lecturer in sociology, will moderate the forum. Bard and Khoury will offer introductory comments, as will Erickson. The other administration panelists joining Erickson are Rob Pangborn, acting executive vice president and provost; Madlyn Hanes, vice president for Commonwealth Campuses; Craig Weidemann, vice president for Outreach; Terrell Jones, vice provost for Educational Equity; Damon Sims, vice president for Student Affairs; Hank Foley, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School; and Rod Kirsch, senior vice president for Development and Alumni Relations. Lozano will give closing remarks.
The forum is designed to be an open discussion between students and the administration about the events of recent weeks and where the University should go from here. The student leaders want other students to share the opportunity they’ve had to get to know key administrators, including Erickson and Pangborn, and to hear answers to questions that trouble them. They also want the administration to have the opportunity to hear important messages from students.
“Ultimately, it is our goal to provide a venue for administration to continue to hear what students have to say and to help in the efforts toward ensuring transparency at Penn State,” Bard said.
“I hope the outcome would be that students feel that President Erickson and his administration want to engage students and will continue to work with students in the future,” Khoury said.
For more information about this event or the student organizations sponsoring it, visit: http://gsa.psu.edu online, http://upua.psu.edu online or http://ccsg.psu.edu online.