Hello all.
I just discovered this site, and enjoyed reading up on this version of the College Republicans Halloween party story. I thought I'd add a few things though, just to help you all gain a little more perspective. First of all, Penn State President Graham Spanier's mouthpiece is a man named Bill Mahon. When this story first broke, Mahon issued a Penn State newswire with commentary from the administration and sent it out to 60,000 people. In this newswire, he stated that the College Republicans had a "racist theme party" and it was implied that several people were dressed in racist costumes. In fact, only one student was dressed offensively, the student who painted his face black. The other student attended the party as a ghost (his costume was blue and green and there was no point on his hat) - the only thing that gave him the KKK appearance was the comment on the website where the pictures were. His comment said "He stopped burning crosses long enough to drink a cold one." After libeling the College Republicans in the inflammatory Penn State newswire, Mr. Mahon included a link at the bottom of the e-mail to look up where students at Penn State live. While he did not name specific College Republicans in his letter, he was aware that the Penn State Collegian had already named many of them in an article about the party. The administration claims that it is standard practice to include this link at the bottom of Penn State newswires, but personally I think it's highly irresponsible to write an inflammatory letter lying about students' actions, then to show people a link to find out where those students live.
Another interesting point worth mentioning: since this story broke, several members of the College Republicans have received hate mail, harassment, some have been followed, two were assaulted, and basically these students have lived in fear. When one College Republican, who had resided on the Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice floor asked to be temporarily moved to another location, and explained that several members had been harassed and assaulted, an administrator called the student's parents and told them that their son/daughter was "imagining things" and that there had been "no assaults in connection with the College Republicans party" and that their son/daughter should "seek counseling". More than one College Republican's parents almost withdrew their son/daughter from the university entirely, because the administration was denying the assaults and harassment. Please, keep posting about this, it's a very interesting topic.