Letters: State College has a noise problem; Questionable performances at hearings

State College has a noise problem

This week, we heard about the neighborhood near high school band practices enduring noise and lights during football season. The school board and neighbors are trying to find a compromise.

In The Highlands, “simulated crowd noise” emanates from Penn State’s football practice field weekly. During one of the nicest times of the year, we must close our windows, as it is intolerable. The angle of the speakers seems to determine who is most bothered. Efforts to improve the situation by contacting Penn State’s Athletics Program were met with inaction.

The season of gas-powered leaf blowing/lawn mowing has begun. Our neighbor’s lawn service blew leaves for over one hour this week for a shockingly small pile of debris. Borough Council should review gas-powered equipment in their upcoming Climate/Sustainability Plan update. It should be banned outright (noise as well as negative climate and worker impact), and funding could be provided to aid lawn services to purchase battery-powered equipment as has been done in other communities.

Should we just put up with these uncivil noises? Year-round? Driven inside our homes with windows and doors closed? I don’t know about you, but I like my house open, weather permitting, at least six months of the year.

It is unfair to say that just because we bought a home in State College Borough that we should endure frequent loud noise. We have always accepted with good humor the partying and traffic that characterize a college town.

Questionable hearing performances

Anyone watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, surely noticed that four Republican members of the Committee focused on one narrow issue.

Senators Cruz, Hawley, Graham and Cotton repeated unfounded charges that Judge Jackson had been unusually lenient on defendants convicted of viewing online child pornography.

Fine. All Senators should assert their views, and this point was clearly made in just a few minutes, making the quartet’s one-track focus look like petty gamemanship.

On the fourth day of hearings, expert testimony regarding Judge Jackson’s qualifications was presented by a panel established by the American Bar Association, which unanimously rated Judge Jackson “Highly Qualified,” the highest rating available.

Can you guess which four Republican Senators were absent from that session?

For his part, Senator Cruz pontificated on how it was his duty to ask the nominee “tough questions” regarding her judicial philosophy. But this same Senator spent an outsized portion of his questioning time with Amy Coney Barrett chatting about her piano playing skills.

Senator Hawley repeatedly asked Judge Jackson, “Do you regret” your decisions. We might ask the same of him. A former appointee who worked with Hawley on his human trafficking task force during his days as Missouri’s attorney general penned an op-ed in January of 2021 saying Hawley “sought TV cameras, not justice.”

It seems pretty clear that Cruz, Hawley, Graham and Cotton were actually performing for QAnon conspiracy theorists and workshopping their midterm campaign platform.

A great ‘Seussical’

As a proud Thespian from the State High Class of 1959 I would like to congratulate this year’s Thespian production of “Seussical.” We should be proud how this community supports the arts, from Singing Onstage to State High. This production was so well done in all areas. I would go just to hear the orchestra. The talent on stage was terrific. The arts are so important and I am happy we support them here. Bravo to all.