The Power of Group Think

     Group think can become extremely dangerous to society with a perfect example being set at Penn State University. Upon the firing of Joe Paterno, thousands of Penn State students and fans rioted throughout the streets of the university, breaking public property and flipping cars. The students heard the news of Joe Paterno’s firing without knowing the true reasons of the University and quickly felt betrayed as fans. Joe Paterno is clearly an icon to the Penn State community and the students felt it was their duty to form together to avenge his firing and show their displeasure. With the power of thousands of students all thinking the same thing and not hearing any outside information, they quickly formed an “us against the world” attitude. Since the students only interact with each other, they all had the same view points on the scandal and shunned any outside opinions with the belief that since they attend Penn State they know the real story. With Penn State being the crazy party school that it is, a couple beers mixed with angered attitudes of thousands of students caused the students to riot and felt that is was their right in doing so. Knowing some friends that attend Penn State, after more information was released and the riots were shown as an embarrassment to the student body, the angry group think was sort of dispersed and new opinions came about between the students. The rioting at Penn State displayed how the power of group think can become extremely dangerous and powerful.