I am writing in reply to Rich Murray's letter to the editor "Penn State student fans pale next to Notre Dame," Sept. 12.

First and foremost, it should be noted that Notre Dame's student section, as informed by the Notre Dame ticket office, holds enough seats for every single current Notre Dame student to have a seat. While the ticket office would not release the section's exact size, admissions at Notre Dame quoted their enrollment to be "about 8,000 students." Beaver Stadium's student section holds 21,000 or 13,000 more seats than the Notre Dame stadium.

I would trade anything and everything to have 13,000 additional cheering, screaming Penn State students around me, than have 8,000 with matching T-shirts. I would also be willing to bet that 8,000 of our students are there and ready for the game 15 minutes before it begins.

Furthermore, according to www.und.com/store, the official online store of Notre Dame athletics, the tradition T-shirts you mentioned are a "Student Activities fundraiser sponsored by the students and alumni of Notre Dame." While in the past Penn State students and athletics have deemed games White Outs or Code Blue, a student-wide organization of the T-shirts hasn't been officially structured, and the blame or lack of such should not be placed on the students, but rather is just simply a difference in routine. Notre Dame has great tradition, but so does Penn State. And just because our traditions differ or we're not as uniform as you'd like us be, certainly doesn't make us any less impressive.