Today’s annual Blue-White football game at Penn State featured some students back in the stands after the public spring practice was called off entirely last year. However, plenty of the upperclassmen were put off-kilter by their omission from that group allowed in Beaver Stadium. Seniors were left out of Beaver Stadium, as freshmen were the only students allowed into today’s Blue-White Game.
After not allowing any students into regular season games this past fall, Penn State allowed some students back in to watch the Blue-White Game, which serves as the first look at the Penn State Football Team for the upcoming year.
For seniors, it’s also their last chance to watch a game in-person as a student. That has left a bitter taste in the mouth of many students, including Andrew Destin.
“Seniors should’ve been allowed in first, especially close friends of mine, roommates, people that I hang out a lot with here at school, those are the ones who I know are very upset by it, feel slighted by it,” he said. “So, I’m a little disappointed in the university that they didn’t allow more people in based on the current restrictions put in place by Governor Tom Wolf.”
Destin feels bad that freshmen haven’t gotten to experience Happy Valley to the fullest yet, but that shouldn’t have come at the expense of seniors, who he says may have had the worst go of it out of everyone.
“I understand that freshmen need to be there and don’t want them to miss out on any more things they’ve already lost in their freshman experience, but seniors arguably are the ones who’ve been most screwed by this (pandemic)”, he opined. “They lost study abroad programs as juniors in the spring, they lost senior year home football games, now you lose your senior year Blue-White Game, and they’re the ones who’ve been impacted the most heavily and really they’ve faced the worst sides of it.”
He says he definitely wished he could go too, but that the choice to prioritize younger students was wrong.
“I recognize that things haven’t been perfect for me, but I sympathize most with the seniors. They’re the ones who’ve been most afflicted by this in a negative way.”
Yesterday, Penn State did opt to invite seniors to a special practice next Saturday.
