The Penn State HUB is a central place on campus where students relax, study, socialize, and congregate. The building is known to vacate numerous students at a time and entertain numerous of activities such as eating, Late Night, parties, clubs, and organization meetings. Recently the twitter tag #thehubisnotaplayground has become fairly popular among Penn State students due to a current student named Ashley Lytle. September 5, 2013 around 3pm, Ashley tweeted:
The buildup surrounding this topic has peaked various civic interest inside and outside of the classroom. There have been many conversations about whether or not the tweet is offensive or not for a number of reasons. Many amongst the black community feel targeted and over generalized by her statement. Others feel that the tweet has stimulated more racial tension on campus. Most notably, in my Sociology 119 class yesterday, the entire class was geared toward the impact on what is now making its rounds on Twitter.
Ashley Lytle has received a great amount of backlash for her words. She quickly (2-3 hours after) deleted her Twitter account because of the amount of hate she was receiving. If you follow the tag #thehubisnotaplayground, you will find that many people are angry for a variety of reasons. Everyone seems to have taken their own spin on why more or less Ashley was in the wrong or in the right.
I would like to recognize the situation in which I experienced in class. Sam Richards asked our class if any other race were replaced in the same context of the tweet, would it create as much hysteria. After voting, clearly the answer was no.
This leads me to believe that the preconceived notion that the black community feeds into and defends hate against their race is also believed heavily among other races. This also made the civic discourse within Sociology 119 to make a major shift within the classroom. Where a large variety of people volunteered to speak and digress with their opinions on a subject, quickly shifted to only the black community expressing their opinions during class. Very few Caucasians had much to say because they didn’t want to be ‘that’ white person. Instead, they stated their feelings on the #soc119 Twitter feed, along with everyone else.
What do you think about #thehubisnotaplayground?
Tags: ashleylytle, psu, thehubisnotaplayground
Kayla, exactly my point, thank you 🙂
This is the first I hear of this issue on campus, and I am in shock. I do, however, agree that the HUB is a public venue and a place where people are allowed to express themselves accordingly. As for the tweet, Ashley should of known better than to target one race for the comment. Although twitter is a public site in which people are to express their thoughts and opinions, it is not a welcome mat to criticize or call anyone out.
Technically, the hub is a playground. It is a place to socialize with peers and that includes “shouting and dancing and playing music.” Those types of things are acceptable in the public venue, so long as it is not a serious disturbance. On the other hand, I think that people are a little too sensitive about tweets. Twitter is also a public venue and people are allowed to tweet whatever they want. If you don’t like what someone tweets, then don’t read the tweets… Problem solved.