Finding an independent or foreign film in the State College area is kind of like trying to find a pearl in a sea of bad acting and explosion-fueled Vin Diesel flicks. It's hard to find some sort of literary or social commentary in a Disney movie that has female cartoon characters with body types that are anything but human.

Star-driven movies such as these rule Late Night Penn State and the theaters in the surrounding area. The list of bad metaphors and big name films playing here goes on and on.

If anybody wants to see anything outside the mainstream, it usually involves a trip to Bellefonte. This is ironic, considering people call State College the closest thing to a "city" in this area.

But there are a couple independent and foreign film programs on campus, and University Park Allocations Committee (UPAC) funding was cut in half to one of these -- the Graduate Student Associations' Critically Acclaimed Film Experience Series, or GSA CAFÉ.

These films are shown on campus every weekend, and are usually moderately attended events. Albeit, they do not receive the massive outcome of Late Night Penn State's films, but attendance is in relation to the film's popularity playing there.

A college campus should facilitate diverse viewpoints, and GSA CAFÉ films are an intricate part of this experience. Where else could you see Y Tu Mama Tambien in public without being ridiculed for watching pornography?

Films that promote ideas outside dominant commercial ideology are an outlet that allow people to receive these messages through an entertaining medium, hopefully creating a more receptive audience to opposing viewpoints.

GSA CAFÉ was set earlier in this year to only show movies until mid-November, and the lesser funds were going to cause the series to present cheaper films. This would have meant that the independent film program would have to show Hollywood movies, destroying the whole point of the GSA CAFÉ series.

But two additional groups on campus saw the importance of the GSA CAFÉ film series, and decided to financially support the lost funding. We applaud the Colloquy on Asia in the Era of Globalization, a group recieving funding from The Institute for the Arts and Humanities, for helping out the GSA CAFÉ program. The problem is that this funding may not last the entire year. We can only hope that UPAC and other organizations see the importance of keeping these diverse films on campus.

A true university promotes all ideas, not just those released by Hollywood. Penn State needs to realize this.