Dear Mr. Ira Lubert,
There is much about your life that is admirable.
After initially gaining fame as a college wrestler, you went on to build a $50 billion business empire. You have developed numerous businesses and projects that have positively impacted communities nationwide. You have made major donations to Penn State athletics and served on Penn State’s Board of Trustees.
Unfortunately, it is possible that none of these things will be what is remembered most about you here in Happy Valley.
Overshadowing all of your impressive accomplishments, you have been the driving force behind a long-term effort to bring easy-access casino gambling to Penn State’s students by building a casino at the Nittany Mall. Casino gambling is legal for anyone age 21 or over in Pennsylvania, so virtually every Penn State student will be legally allowed to gamble in your casino before graduating.
You have fought long and hard for the rights to develop this casino. You had to defeat a rival casino developer in a protracted legal battle to retain your casino’s license. You had to resolutely ignore the concerns of thousands of Penn Staters and State College residents who do not want you to build a casino near the University to move forward. Just last week, Bally’s broke its business partnership with you, stating their strategic priorities have shifted elsewhere — and yet you press on.
If your casino is built, it truly will be a transformational development for Central Pennsylvania —but not only in the ways you intend. It will also cause or aggravate many serious harms. Some of these include:
- Penn State students becoming addicted to gambling at the casino and dropping out of school with gambling debt
- Children going hungry because their parents gambled away their food money at the casino, or sitting neglected at home or locked in a hot or cold car while their parents gamble in the casino
- People being assaulted at the casino or robbed after leaving it, or harmed by someone driving under the influence after leaving it
- Local businesses closing because an employee embezzled money to gamble at the casino, or because customers redirected their spending into gambling at the casino
- Increased prostitution, human trafficking and drug activity
Casinos have comprised only a small fraction of your vast business dealings, and you did not build your fortune on the backs of gambling addicts. Nevertheless, the Nittany Casino would be entirely your own. The easily foreseeable harms it will cause will indelibly mar your otherwise outstanding reputation in the community you care most deeply about.
Your casino will likely operate for decades. It — more than anything else you have ever done — will become your legacy at Penn State.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Please listen to your fellow Penn Staters and reconsider the development of the Nittany Casino.
Your legacy at Penn State will not be determined by your wealth, but by the greatness of your character.
Sincerely,
Andrew Shaffer
State College
PSU ’04, ’09
‘Legacy Would Be One of Gambling Addiction,’ if Casino Moves Forward
Dear Mr. Lubert,
I am the mother of a gambling addict whose addiction began when he was of college age. He is 44 now, and still homeless. His addiction has prevented him from ever getting together enough money to pay first month and security on a place of his own. So much of the time, unfortunately, he lives in his car, or in his tent, if the weather is favorable and if he can find a place to pitch it.
The continued development of the casino at the Nittany Mall under your name would make the casino, rather than the Welcome Center at Beaver Stadium, your enduring legacy at Penn State. This legacy would be one of gambling addiction, like my son’s, along with impoverishment, crime, family dissolution and student academic failure.
Do you really want the casino to be your legacy (which is likely to happen), rather than the Welcome Center at Beaver Stadium? You can still retain the goodwill of the Penn State community, and a positive legacy of supporting student athletics, by abandoning the casino project now. And you have a chance to avoid that harm, if you will take it. It’s not too late.
If you don’t, you risk having other grieving mothers like me regret the fact that you were a Penn State trustee, since having a casino so accessible to their children when they came to Penn State meant that they became gambling addicts and thus destroyed what otherwise would have been a happy and productive life. Instead, their dreams for their children’s future would be shattered by the scourge of addiction.
I truly believe that, now that you realize the harm that addiction can cause, you will channel your resources into projects that will be beneficial, rather than harmful, to Penn State’s future. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Very truly yours,
Joan M. Bouchard
State College
Project 2025 Spells Disaster for Public Education
The Department of Education’s mission is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” The Trump-Vance adjacent Project 2025 section on Education would break up the education department and destroy its mission.
Its proposals will make it harder for low-income students, middle-income students and students from marginalized groups to obtain education from kindergarten to post-secondary education.
These policies include cuts to the number of students eligible for free or reduced lunches, the gradual elimination of Title I funds, which are used by most school districts in the highest poverty schools. Project 2025 eliminates student loan forgiveness programs and recommends privatizing the student loan program. Project 2025 also eliminates Head Start, a pre-school program that has helped many in rural areas. These policies would hurt many residents of U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson’s congressional district, which contains some of the poorest and most food-insecure counties in Pennsylvania.
Project 2025 would abolish incentives to use restorative justice practices in disciplining students; it rejects educating teachers and staff about race and gender; it rolls back Title IX regulations including elimination of protections for trans and non-binary students. Such policies make some of the most vulnerable students in our schools even more vulnerable.
To stop Project 2025, we must stop its enablers, Trump, Vance, Connecticut’s own Dave McCormick and Congressman Glenn Thompson. We must make Kamala Harris and Tim Walz our next president and vice president, re-elect Sen. Robert Casey Jr. and send Zach Womer to Congress.
Jesse Barlow
State College
