Darren Green's comments ("Want tickets? Try harder in high school, get into UP, " April 3) about commonwealth campus students are misguided and untrue. In any of your given classes, you'd be surprised by the proportion of students who started at a commonwealth campus, and not because they didn't "study hard" enough. Like many students, I was deferred to Penn State Altoona not because I wasn't smart enough, but because I applied much later than my friends who had the same GPAs and SAT scores, but came straight to UP.

During my freshman year, I attended almost every single home football game using student season tickets. Unlike students who could roll out of bed hungover and amble over to the stadium, we got up early, crammed ourselves into a car and drove an hour to the stadium every Saturday.

I wasn't a huge Penn State fan in high school. But by the end of freshman year, I stood shirtless in the 13-degree weather, covered with blue paint and screaming my lungs out when Larry Johnson passed the 2,000-yard rushing mark. University Park has been my home for the last four years, and like any other fan, Penn State football has become a part of who I am.

But it never would have happened if I hadn't had the chance to be there and learn what it was all about when I was a freshman. Denying season tickets to students at nearby commonwealth campuses will cut out a huge portion of students from experiencing their share of the pride.

Mithun Chaubey

senior-computer science