The story
19th century
Pennsylvania State University was founded in 1855 when James Irvin, a U.S. congressman from Bellefonte, donated 200 acres (0.8 km2) of land in Centre County to the newly-established Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, representing the first of 10,101 acres (41 km2) the school eventually acquired.
The same year, on February 22, the Pennsylvania General Assembly designated the school a degree-granting institution. Initially sponsored by the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society, the use of "college" or "university" was avoided in the school's naming since local Pennsylvanians perceived that such institutions were impractical in their curricula.
In 1862, the school's name was changed to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania. The following year, in 1863, the Morrill Land-Grant Acts was passed by the U.S. Congress, and Pennsylvania selected the school to be the state's sole land-grant college. Two years later, in 1874, the school's name was changed to the Pennsylvania State College.
By 1875, enrollment fell to 64 undergraduates, and the school attempted to balance its primary focus on agricultural studies with classic education. In 1882, George W. Atherton was named the school's president; Atherton set about broadening the curriculum beyond its agricultural focus.
The school developed an engineering studies program that immediately became one of the nation's ten largest engineering schools.
A major road in State College was later named in Atherton's honor. Penn State's Atherton Hall, a well-furnished and centrally located residence hall, was named after George Atherton's wife, Frances Washburn Atherton.
20th century
In the 20th century, Penn State grew significantly, becoming the largest grantor of baccalaureate degrees in Pennsylvania. In 1936, its enrollment reached 5,000. Around this time, Ralph D. Hetzel, the school's president, established a commonwealth of colleges to provide an alternative for Depression-era students who were economically unable to leave home to attend college.
In 1953, President Milton S. Eisenhower, the brother of then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, sought and won permission to elevate the school to university status, and it assumed its current name, The Pennsylvania State University. Under Eisenhower's successor, Eric A. Walker, the university acquired hundreds of acres of surrounding land, and enrollment nearly tripled.
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In 1967, the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, a college of medicine and hospital, was established in Hershey with a $50 million gift from the Hershey Trust Company.
In 1970s, the university became a state-related institution, leading to its membership in the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. In 1975, the lyrics in the Penn State Alma Mater were revised to be gender-neutral in honor of International Women's Year; the revised lyrics were taken from the posthumously published autobiography of the writer of the original lyrics, Fred Lewis Pattee. Professor Patricia Farrell acted as a spokesperson for those who wanted the change.
In 1989, the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport became affiliated with the university.
21st century
In 2000, Dickinson School of Law joined the Pennsylvania College of Technology in affiliating with the university. The university is now the largest in Pennsylvania, and in 2003, it was credited with having the second-largest impact on the state economy of any organization, generating an economic effect of over $17 billion on a budget of $2.5 billion. To offset the lack of funding due to the limited growth in state appropriations to Penn State, the university has concentrated its efforts on philanthropy (2003 marked the end of the Grand Destiny campaign—a seven-year effort that raised over $1.3 billion).
Child sex abuse scandal
In 2011, the university and its football program garnered international media attention and criticism in a sex abuse scandal in which university officials were alleged to have covered up incidents of child sexual abuse by former football team defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. Athletic director Timothy Curley and Gary Schultz, senior vice president for finance and business, were indicted for perjury. In the wake of the scandal, Coach Joe Paterno was fired and school president Graham B. Spanier was forced to resign by the board of trustees. Sandusky, who maintained his innocence, was indicted and subsequently convicted in June 2012 on 45 counts of child sexual abuse.
A subcommittee of the board of trustees engaged former FBI director Louis Freeh to head an independent investigation on the university's handling of the incidents. Freeh released his findings in July 2012 in which he claimed that Paterno, Spanier, Curley, and Schultz "conceal[ed] Sandusky's activities from the board of trustees, the university community and authorities" and "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade". Subsequently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association levied sanctions against Penn State for its role in the scandal, penalizing the Penn State football program with a $60 million fine, a ban from bowl games and post-season play for four years, a reduction in its scholarships from 25 to 15 annually for four years, the vacating of all Penn State football wins from 1998 to 2011, and a five-year probationary period.
Following imposition of the NCAA sanctions, emails surfaced indicating that high-level NCAA officials did not believe they had the jurisdiction to pass down the original sanctions. Subsequent emails, brought forward under subpoena, quoted an NCAA vice president, who wrote, "I characterized our approach to PSU as a bluff when talking to Mark [Emmert, NCAA president]...He basically agreed [because] I think he understands that if we made this an enforcement issue, we may win the immediate battle but lose the war."
On September 8, 2014, following a report by former U.S. senator and athletics integrity monitor George J. Mitchell citing progress by Penn State in implementing reforms, the NCAA repealed the sanctions. On January 16, 2015, all previous Penn State football records were restored.
An investigation led by former U.S. attorney general Richard Thornburgh, who the Paterno family retained to review the Freeh report, alleged that the report that placed so much blame on Penn State and Paterno was a "rush to injustice" that could not be relied upon. He found that not only did the evidence "fall far short" of showing Paterno attempted to conceal the Sandusky scandal, but rather that "the contrary is true". In November 2014, Pennsylvania state senator Jake Corman released further emails that he claimed showed "regular and substantive" contact between NCAA officials and Freeh's investigators, suggesting that Freeh's conclusions were orchestrated.
Death of Timothy Piazza
On February 2, 2017, Timothy Piazza, a pledge of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity located off-campus in State College, died while undergoing hazing activities at the fraternity. Eighteen members of Penn State's Beta Theta Pi fraternity were initially charged in connection with Piazza's death, and the fraternity was closed and banned indefinitely. In July 2024, the fraternity president and vice president and pledge master each pleaded guilty to 14 misdemeanor counts of hazing and a misdemeanor count of recklessly endangering another person.
From Wikipedia’s article on Pennsylvania State University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5