The two blog post were post in late July of 2012. As everyone knows, this is when the Sandusky scandal, the freech report, and the NCAA sanctions were the national topics of discussion when it comes to “Penn State University.” Because these are blogs, the targeted audience is pretty much everyone however, when I finished reading both of these arguments, it was evident that the audience was Penn State faculty members and anyone else who has access to these blogs. Each blog post presented their argument in a way that was ineffective and effective.
For starters, the first post which was called, “Redirecting the Penn State Way,” by Debra Hawhee focused a lot on the role the staff at Penn State needs to play. Its main argument was that the faculty and staff needs to have more of a say in the decisions that affect the university because based on the our culture, the staff is taught to be silent when it comes to talking about things that affect the campus. This argument was backed up when Debra stated points such as how she herself is a faculty member and in other universities (big public ones) where she has worked, the norm is that faculty members speak their minds (have a say) when it comes to their campus. This was effective because it invoked me as the reader to see her point and be persuade by her valid argument. One of the other things she included in this post to support her claim was that faculty was told it was inappropriate to comment on allegations against Sandusky. Although I can understand how this is wrong, I still think this wasn’t such an effective claim because it can also be argued that this is just a way for the University to maintain order within the campus and not create anymore chaos.
The second post, “We are…NOT,” also targets the staff but more so the entire campus. The argument of this post is that the chant, “We are…Penn State” has created a phenomenon in which diversity of ideas and point of views are not valued. She backed up her argument by including the “hypocritical NCAA penalties” against the football team. I thought that once again her arguments here were effective when she would display how when we say the chant, it is automatically associated with things such as football and nothing else. This does make you see how the campus revolves around one identity instead of multiple ones. However, I think that what can make this post ineffective is the fact that she doesn’t really know how to speak about this chant without sounding like she wants it to either be completely changed or gone. Therefore, some people may read this post and view that she is trying to say that “We are Penn State” chant should be eradicated. But overall, I think Debra Hawhee backed up her argument(s) well in both post except for the fact that she didn’t account for any counter argument(s).