Letters: Support for Hawbaker; Vaccination stance leaves stain on Barron’s legacy
Support for Hawbaker
The Glenn O. Hawbaker company does not “steal” from its employees nor sit around in ”cozy” offices despite the self-serving rhetoric of politician Shapiro. As noted in the CDT article, the judge did not impose a fine, the company was not found guilty of anything and any misdirection of funds (that will now be corrected) that is likely due to a bookkeeper’s interpretation of the Byzantine 2,750-page tax code.
The man that runs GOH, Dan Hawbaker, would never “steal” from his employees. On the contrary, the company has a very loyal corps of workers and high esprit de corps, and more than once Dan has rescued an employee in unexpected financial difficulty.
And no McMansion for Dan and his dear wife. They live in a single story, third hand house out in Port Matilda with the rest of us peasants.
Vaccination stance leaves stain on Barron’s legacy
With the Penn State “town hall” session on Tuesday, President Barron is fully entrenched in not requiring vaccinations for students this fall semester. This is despite letters and petitions from undergraduate and graduate student representation, the Faculty Senate and now the State College Borough Council imploring Penn State to make vaccination mandatory.
It is inconceivable that world class faculty in nursing, epidemiology, infectious diseases, virology, public health, and critical care medicine, to name just a few, support this stance.
Penn State must require vaccination to the COVID virus for students, faculty and staff.
This, along with a full stadium for Penn State football, is a terrible legacy for the retiring Eric Barron. In a few words:
Money talks and lame-duck President Barron walks.
May no act of ours bring shame ...
‘Unconscionable’ Penn State decision
Penn State’s not mandating vaccination for all students and staff is unconscionable. It would seem that the powers that be are more concerned with state funding than the health and safety of students, staff and local residents. Do the right thing, not the “politically” right thing.
Higher spending, less consideration
I can recall a time when our political establishment considered billion-dollar legislation with a modest degree of circumspection. Today, a trillion-dollar expenditure is treated like Monopoly money. Scary, isn’t it?
Different kind of education needed at the Arboretum
I would like to respectfully respond to a recently published letter that respectfully disagreed with a letter I wrote about Penn State’s new pollinator garden. I’m pleased the writer affirmed my position that environmental pollutants are a real threat to pollinators, but I disagree with their feeling that the garden’s educational initiatives will help reduce the use of harmful chemicals. Unfortunately, nothing at the garden, nor any published or online information about it, refers to this issue. All of the educational initiatives I have seen are about what to plant in order to attract pollinators (a fact actually confirmed in the writer’s letter). Worse yet, there are indications in and near the garden (and the campus at large) that chemicals and practices that are harmful to pollinators are being used there, which, given Penn State’s development and support of chemical-based turf management, is not surprising. We need people to stop drinking the chemical companies’ Kool-Aid that is designed to make them think naturally-occurring, pollinator-attracting plants such as dandelions, clover, milk weed, etc. are bad; that our yards and greenspaces have to be mononcultures of chemically-enhanced grass only and that occasionally finding a blemish or a worm in our fruit or vegetable is unacceptable. I hope the powers-to-be at the Arboretum start educating people about these ideas.