By Derek Progin, Staff Member

Have you ever heard the sweet sounds of vinyl fill the air? The inspiration of these old songs on actual albums can be compared to the bindings of pages of black ink clamoring to be heard. Within a book, we shut out our personal life so we can listen to the culture surrounding the story in the book. Like listening to songs on vinyl, we hear the sensations of life through words. At times we stumble upon how the combinations of letters can cause such an impact on life. And at times, we stumble upon old copies of words, like how you might stumble across vinyl records.

In Penn State Harrisburg’s library, near the far back wall of the third floor, one will find the campus archives. Although the history of From the Fallout Shelter may not be known by today’s average student, the journal is one of the longest-running publications by students on this campus. Visiting the archives reminded me of walking through an antique shop, passing vinyl record after vinyl record with old worn out covers and rustic sounds. This trip to the archives gave me the realization of generational differences. My old-fashioned mind relates to the ideas of the 60’s and 70’s, which gave me the eager opportunity to see how past students expressed their ideas in those days. Penn State Harrisburg was founded in the 60’s during movements of war protests. Not all the pieces expressed these ideas throughout the years, but one of the most striking themes across the archived issues of the campus literary magazine and the campus yearbook was an ongoing attempt to document the environment of campus.

Authors and poets in this old publications described their lives as college students, yet it’s weird to think that we could call many of these individuals our parents. For a second it made me really think about it. There was the striking moment in local history when Three Mile Island had a near meltdown. The terror, concerns, and the larger questions were asked in these texts. It helped to see the perspective students had at the time. Not only was there the concern for safety of students, but there was displeasure in the moment of time, like a cold spell in the mind of depression. I noticed that as a result, some of the old writings in the campus magazine and yearbook were poorly written, or there were just what I call non-photogenic flower ideas of publication.

The idea of why I was there in the archives that day started to become less of a haze. What happened to PSH students long ago, with the problem at TMI, was a problem with the corporate “good” for the “better” of the world. The light to ignite the night was this nuclear machine driven off the economics of powering a community, but it had nearly powered a lightning bolt of human destruction. I kept thinking about the Three Mile Island incident in 1979 as I browsed through numerous pictures and personal messages in the archives. What “good” can be created in this situation? In the pages of the archived literary magazine and newspapers and yearbooks, you can feel the anger today of what students felt in 1979 because of a nuclear disaster. Imagine your excuse as to why you did not graduate on time that year; there was a nuclear meltdown at a power plant. If that had been me, having lived in the local area my whole life, a meltdown would mean I would have to pick up and leave everything I knew. That would happen to many students here at Penn State Harrisburg. Not to mention, what would happen to our state capital? The larger concerns began to mount in my mind. Why do they even put these huge energy machines right by a place full of citizens?

Why should we care about the differences between a creative writing journal from generations ago and the current issue out this month? It was a question that had filled my mind, yet the pieces began to rearrange my own thoughts. The differences were more than the uses of page space, printing qualities, and all those technological advances. It was the way you asked yourself, “Why should I care?” These were the students who came before us and paved a way to a brighter education.

In hindsight, I thought to myself, what has changed? We write down the thoughts and keep them tucked away from our yesterdays in hopes of a better tomorrow. Through the window panes we try to associate our thoughts with common beliefs. Fifty years of education at Penn State Harrisburg, with a student-run literary publication available for most of those years, shows that we fight for common beliefs. There is the constant fear of the uses of nuclear powers on the horizon, either for creating energy or from war. What is war? The slow destruction of the earth or the violence among human race? What even is a true cost of war? Have we learned anything about war the past several decades? Humans have written down their thoughts and observations, not to be studied, but just to be understood. Maybe time has handed down items to the antique table, yet the sound of expression – on old vinyl records or in archived copies of magazines — speaks loud and clear.