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VOLUME 131, No. 199
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Legislation could enact slim
reforms to state’s elections
BY MARC LEVY
Associated Press
HARRISBURG, PA.
Pennsylvania lives in a cave
when it comes to modern elec-
tions, critics say, but fast-tracked
legislation that was quietly nego-
tiated behind closed doors could
usher in some advancement.
The bill, should it pass, didn’t
Student Tyquise Edgerson completes an order at Qdoba in downtown State College on Tuesday. With unemployment low, local businesses are
experiencing a worker shortage, a problem that has led to temporary closures and concerns for the future, managers say.
Help wanted: State College
is facing a worker shortage
BY SARAH PAEZ
spaez@centredaily.com
STATE COLLEGE
Every week, thousands of Penn
State students pass the help
wanted signs in storefronts and
posters advertising wages well
above the state minimum that
dot the landscape of downtown
State College.
The lack of students working in
those restaurants, shops and
groceries is more of a problem
than ever, according to business
managers who say the labor
shortage has led to temporary
closures and concerns for the
future.
“From what I’ve seen, it’s a
nationwide problem but it’s am-
plified in the university town
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come easily: Partisan jockeying,
11th-hour blowups and brinks-
manship dogged what could be
the most substantive changes to
Pennsylvania’s election laws in
more than 80 years.
“We’ve attacked the election
code very little, so Pennsylvania
is ranked in the very bottom tier
of states in the country,” said
Micah Sims, executive director of
Common Cause’s Pennsylvania
Many business in downtown State College have hiring signs posted.
Centre County’s unemployment rate in August was 2.9%.
Advice
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SPORTS
TE makes
Penn State
history vs.
Spartans 1B
NEWS ALL DAY.
YOUR WAY. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2019
chapter. “That’s why this mo- tion laws, including automatically
ment right now is huge for Penn- registering people to vote when
sylvania.” they turn 18, allowing election-
For now, negotiators — Demo- day voter registration and open-
cratic Gov. Tom Wolf and leaders ing polling places for early in-
of the House and Senate Repub- person voting.
lican majorities — are waiting to This bill won’t do that, and
see whether the bill can over- Wolf didn’t get Republicans to
come objections from rank-and- embrace every election reform he
file lawmakers. had sought.
Many states long ago adopted But Wolf did get wins, includ-
further-reaching changes to elec- ing expanding voting access and
ABBY DREY adrey@centredaily.com
really by the fact that you’ve got
a potential student workforce of
almost 50,000 that is shrinking
in terms of their availability for
work or their willingness,” said
Rob Schmidt, director of the
Downtown State College Im-
provement District.
And it’s not just student worker
numbers that are dwindling. “It’s
workers in general,” he said. “It’s
a low unemployment rate that’s
causing an adult worker short-
age.”
Pennsylvania’s unemployment
rate was 4% in September, up
from 3.8% — its lowest ever — in
April, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics. Centre County’s
unemployment rate is even lower
— in August it was 2.9%,
according to the state Depart-
ment of Labor and Industry.
THE CHANGING PENN STATE
STUDENT
Jim French, general manager
ABBY DREY adrey@centredaily.com of McLanahan’s Downtown
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securing millions of dollars for
counties to buy voting machines
ahead of the 2020 elections.
Under the bill, voters can regis-
ter up to 15 days before the elec-
tion. Among states, Pennsylva-
nia’s current 30-day deadline is
the furthest out, according to the
National Conference of State
Legislatures.
Also, the bill allows any voter
to mail in a ballot for any reason,
adding Pennsylvania to a group
of 31 states that already do so,
according to the NCSL. Current-
ly, Pennsylvania restricts mail-in
ballots to “absentee” voters who
meet a narrow set of reasons.
With a lawsuit pending over
Pennsylvania’s deadlines for
SEE ELECTION BILL, 5A
Savoring
a special
sendoff
at Beaver
Stadium
BY JON SAUBER
jsauber@centredaily.com
UNIVERSITY PARK
Brady Dorner stood in the
stands last week at Beaver
Stadium, rooting on the Nitta-
ny Lions as they defeated
Michigan in an electric White
Out environment. While he
stood there, cheering along
with the crowd, his mind was
elsewhere — imagining what
it would be like to play on
that field himself just one
week later.
“It was pretty awesome
(being at the White Out),”
Dorner said Saturday.
“Watching that last week, I
knew what was coming this
week.”
Dorner was looking ahead
to his team’s season finale,
and Senior Day, at Beaver
Stadium. The State College
quarterback and the rest of
his teammates got the oppor-
tunity to play at the home of
the Nittany Lions on Saturday
afternoon, as they downed
the Cumberland Valley Ea-
gles 33-21.
The senior quarterback’s
excitement began to build a
full week in advance. After it
was over, Dorner said it met
his expectations.
“We had a ton of fans here
and when we made plays,
they went crazy,” he said. “It
was awesome. It’s a once-in-
a-lifetime opportunity.”
Dorner and the rest of the
senior class had to play all
their home games in their
final season at the South
Track Field. The team’s usual
home, Memorial Field, is
undergoing renovations that
cost $14,322,485, according
SEE STATE COLLEGE, 9A
MORE INSIDE
State College seniors go out with a win
over Cumberland Valley. 1B
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PEOPLE
Prince’s
posthumous
memoir is
ready for fans
The memoir Prince
started but didn’t finish
before his 2016 death is
ready for his fans to read.
And his collaborator, Dan
Piepenbring, is telling all
on how “The Beautiful
Ones” finally came togeth-
er.
The book, from Spiegel
& Grau, goes on sale Tues-
day.
Piepenbring said panic,
shock and joy swept over
him when he was chosen
by Prince. They met face-
to-face for about 15 hours
before the superstar’s
death from an accidental
drug overdose.
Prince had written just
28 pages, leaving Piepenbr-
ing searching for a way to
complete the book. He
found it at Prince’s Paisley
Park, using photos and
other artifacts from the
icon’s childhood and early
career.
In the book, Prince looks
back on how conflicts be-
tween his parents played
out in his life.
— ASSOCIATED PRESS
Student Kenny Mack works on an order Tuesday at Qdoba in downtown State College. Many businesses, like Qdoba, have
had to cut back their hours and up their wages to attract workers during this labor shortage.
FROM PAGE 1A
SHORTAGE
Market, said finding
student workers to fill his
part-time roles today is
much more difficult than it
was 15 years ago.
Then, it was much more
common to have students
from varied socioeconomic
and geographic back-
grounds around the state,
he said. He never had trou-
ble filling his schedules,
which now take weeks to
fully staff.
But since the economic
recession in 2008, “it’s like
a different student that
attends at Penn State,” he
said. “It’s the most
expensive public university
in the nation, so the
students that come here
come from affluent fam-
ilies. They don’t need to
work to buy their own food.
The kids that are here are
either on loans or their
family is supporting them
while they’re here.”
The numbers reflect that
sentiment. According to
2017-18 data on students
who applied for financial
aid via the FAFSA, the
median family income for
University Park students is
$115,905, up from
$103,679 in 2013-14. That’s
more than the median
family income for the state
of Pennsylvania, which was
$75,949 in 2017, according
to American Community
Survey data. The average
annual cost for a Penn-
sylvania resident to attend
Penn State is $30,373.
Prince, shown at the 2007 Super Bowl halftime show, had
written just 28 pages of his memoir before his death in 2016.
Kanye finally
drops new album,
‘Jesus Is King’
Miracles do happen.
Kanye West finally
released his new album,
“Jesus is King,” at noon
Friday after failing to drop
his latest collection on
several previously sched-
uled release dates.
It came after West’s big
night Thursday in New
York, as he appeared on
“Jimmy Kimmel Live” in
Brooklyn and made a sur-
prise visit to the World
Trade Center transit hub in
Lower Manhattan, filming
a performance to the de-
light of fans in the Oculus,
many of whom posted
Penn State students carry
the highest debt load in the
Big Ten, with an average
loan debt of $36,044 in
2017-18.
Though Penn State
doesn’t collect statistics for
off-campus student work-
ers, about 13% of Uni-
versity Park undergraduate
students work on-campus
jobs, according to statistics
provided by the university.
However, on-campus
student workers enrolled in
the Federal Work Study
program have declined
rapidly over the past five
years.
From 2013-14, Penn
State University Park had
1,067 student earners en-
rolled in work study. That
number had dropped to
422 by the 2017-18 school
year, according to Penn
State spokeswoman Lisa
Powers.
During the 2015-16
school year, the federal
government “significantly
reduced” Penn State’s
allocation for work study,
said Powers. The program
had to “downsize,” and
since then, Powers said the
university has noticed “less
interest” from students in
accepting work study posi-
tions or aid.
“At this point, the uni-
versity’s federal allocation
would support hiring more
work-study students, and
we are making efforts to
more broadly advertise the
community service aspects
CHRIS O'MEARA AP
about the event on Twitter.
The religiously minded
11-track gospel album fea-
tures artists from rapper Ty
Dolla $ign to jazz saxo-
phonist Kenny G.
“Jesus Is King” is a long
time coming. The “Gold
Digger” singer’s ninth
album was originally sup-
posed to arrive in Septem-
ber 2018.
— NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Maddow confronts
NBC News over
Weinstein
reporting
MSNBC anchor Rachel
Maddow publicly con-
fronted the leadership of
of working a Federal Work
Study job,” she said. “We
would like to see more
students participate in the
program, as there are posi-
tions available university-
wide.”
Students working non-
work study jobs at Uni-
versity Park has also drop-
ped off in recent years.
Using data from the last
five years provided by Penn
State, 5,515 student worked
on-campus non-work study
jobs in fall 2015. But by fall
2018, that number had
dropped to 4,963. Between
fall 2017 and 2018, the
number of students work-
ing on-campus non-work
study jobs dropped by 407.
‘PERFECT STORM’
FOR EMPLOYERS
Still, many Penn State
students do work jobs, but
they say they’re looking for
more flexible hours, a little
spending money and work
experience that aligns with
their course of study.
Senior Julie Bates, who
works as a grader for a
professor, said she took the
job because it’s flexible, it
pays well and it’s related to
her major. She also said it’s
more appealing to work for
a professor who could write
a recommendation letter
for a job, versus a manager
in the service industry.
Junior Haniel Tracey,
who studies psychology,
said she’s held a few jobs
on and off campus, but had
to quit this year, “because I
had so much going on, and
it was just really hard to try
to fit that into my sched-
ule.”
her own network Friday
night, declaring live on air
that she and other NBC
News employees had deep
concerns about whether
the organization had sty-
mied Ronan Farrow’s
reporting on movie mogul
Harvey Weinstein.
In a prime-time mono-
logue, Maddow questioned
why NBC News executives
had not invited an inde-
pendent investigation of
the Weinstein episode or
the workplace behavior of
Matt Lauer, the former
“Today” show anchor who
was fired in 2017 after a
colleague accused him of
sexual misconduct.
“I’ve been through a lot
of ups and downs in this
company since I’ve been
here,” Maddow said. “It
would be impossible for me
to overstate the amount of
consternation inside the
building around this issue.”
Maddow interviewed
Farrow on her show – itself
a surprise booking consid-
ering her bosses have been
at war with him since the
publication of his new
book, “Catch and Kill,” in
which he asserts that NBC
executives blocked his
reporting on Weinstein’s
brutal treatment of women.
NBC News has stren-
uously denied any sugges-
tion that it got in the way of
Farrow’s investigation of
ABBY DREY adrey@centredaily.com
Balancing two student
organization memberships,
coursework and her clinical
psychology research re-
quirement became too
much to hold a job down,
she said. Working allowed
her to earn money to put
toward books, food and
other expenses, where she
now has to rely on her
parents for support.
Schmidt, of the DSCID,
said the low unemploy-
ment rate combined with
the increasing flexibility of
the gig economy — jobs
like driving for Uber and
Lyft — and the number of
Penn State students com-
ing from higher-income
households have created
the “perfect storm” for
employers.
“The cost of going to
Penn State is not some-
thing you’re going be able
to pay or cover with your
job in college, so I really do
think a lot of students and
their families come here
with the goal, ‘You’re gon-
na graduate in four years,
you’re not gonna work,
we’re gonna address it
when you graduate,’” he
said.
At Qdoba in downtown
State College, General
Manager Jason Scott said
it’s been “super challeng-
ing” trying to find workers
who can work a full, eight-
hour shift.
“A lot of the students
that I do have are on very
tight schedules because of
academic reasons. So it’s
more like two- to three-
hour shifts, sometimes
four- to five- (hours),” he
said.
Stay Connected 3A
the accusations against
Weinstein, saying that his
LOTTERY RESULTS
work was not fit for broad-
PENNSYLVANIA
cast at the time he left the
network in August 2017. Friday drawings
— NEW YORK TIMES Pick 2 day: 5-1 eve: 6-1
Pick 3 day: 1-9-6 eve: 6-9-8
Lovett inducted Pick 4 day: 7-6-2-0 eve: 7-2-2-1
Pick 5 day: 3-3-5-3-4
into Austin eve: 4-7-5-7-5
Wild Ball day: 1 eve: 6
City Limits Treasure Hunt: 5-15-18-24-27
Hall of Fame Cash 5: 2-4-19-24-28
Match 6: 3-9-15-17-23-24
Lyle Lovett has been Saturday drawings
inducted into the Austin Pick 2 day: 9-6 eve: 7-6
City Limits Hall of Fame. Pick 3 day: 5-7-0 eve: 4-4-1
The Grammy-winning Pick 4 day: 6-0-8-8
musician was honored eve: 3-6-3-4
Thursday night at a cere- Pick 5 day: 0-0-3-5-1
mony in the Texas capital.
Actor Sean Penn made a
eve: 2-6-7-2-9
Wild Ball day: 6 eve: 4
surprise appearance, call- Treasure Hunt: 7-17-19-21-27
ing Lovett “a humble
maestro” and “a singular
Cash 5: 4-27-29-32-37
Match 6: 2-3-9-19-32-36
American troubadour”
during his induction MULTI-STATE
speech. Friday MegaMillions:
The event featured sev- 16-24-25-52-60 MB: 6 MP: x3
eral performances and also Saturday Powerball:
honored Blues legend Bud- 3-20-48-54-59 PB: 4 PP: x4
dy Guy and singer-song- Friday Cash4Life: 1-23-40-58-60
writer Shawn Colvin. CB: 1
Lovett was born in Klein, Saturday Cash4Life: 2-7-11-39-53
CB: 2
near Houston, and gradu-
ated from Texas A&M
University before turning CORRECTIONS
to music.
Highlights of the cere-
mony will air on PBS dur- The CDT strives for
ing a special New Year’s accurate, thorough
broadcast. reporting. Whenever an
— ASSOCIATED PRESS error is made, we want to
correct it. Call 231-4617.
As a result, the local trying to attract workers
franchise no longer opens from outside State College,
on Sundays and often including Mifflin and Hun-
closes early due to a lack of tingdon counties, to fill the
available employees, he jobs in State College and
said. The owner, who has the Centre Region.
operated the franchise for In talks with CATA,
19 years, has made some CareerLink and Penn State,
cosmetic upgrades to the Schmidt said the improve-
restaurant, and manage- ment district is looking at a
ment has raised starting system where people park
wages to attract workers. remotely and are bussed in
There are several full-time to State College, possibly
employees supporting by shuttle.
themselves or their families He’s also talked to em-
at Qdoba, but Scott says ployers about offering a
management has often stipend to employees to put
relied on students to make toward offstreet parking or
up the part-time employ- a bus pass.
ees. The main question right
“If we don’t have the now, he said, is, “How can
employees to work here, we cast a wide net and
it’s kind of hard to keep the work with the businesses
doors open,” Scott said. “If and work with Penn State,
it keeps going the way it’s to make it more of a com-
going, you never know, we muter opportunity to work
might have to close.” in and around State Col-
The labor shortage, lege?”
which is hitting the service French, the manager at
industry hard, is arguably McLanahan’s, has been
the best way to organically pulling more from the pool
raise the living wage, said of workers coming from
Schmidt. But on the flip Philipsburg, Bellefonte and
side, he said, it’s raising the Zion — those who want to
cost of labor which in turn work in State College but
is contributing to the rise of can’t afford to live there on
automation and fast-casual a service wage. They’re still
restaurants like Snap Pizza a student-friendly place to
or Hello Bistro where work, but it’s gotten hard
there’s no table service, to maintain student work-
“where you go and you ers.
order your food and you sit “I don’t see how it could
down.”
Schmidt said the DSCID
is putting together a round-
get any worse. Each of the
last four years has been
more difficult than the year
table or task force to ad- before,” he said. “At some
dress the worker shortage point, it’s gonna turn back
issue in State College, and around. You have to be
more broadly, Centre optimistic.”
County. Instead of trying to
get more college students
to work, he said, DSCID is
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