Talk:Pennhurst State School and Hospital

Headline text
The Pennhurst Preservation Petition section was woefully inappropriate, hence my removal of it, and I'm astonished that it's lasted as long as it has. I'd remind the person who keeps trying to include it that Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and language such as "we urge you" and "join us" have no place (outside of direct quotes) in any of its articles. - Sestet (talk) 17:30, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

major NPOV problems in intro and "Petition"76.6.149.146 (talk) 00:38, 11 July 2008 (UTC)erratica_1

I have been reading a lot about Pennhurst, its history and origins, and agree that there are a lot of problems in this article. I am for the time being holding off on actually doing anything about this because I have a strong POV of my own about some of this. Pennhurst seems to have its origins in the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century, which is in no way related to what is sometimes called progressivism today (i.e. left-liberalism). The Progressive Movement was the driving force politically behind Eugenics. Those who favored Eugenics felt that it was important to take the "feeble-minded" - and their offspring - out of the gene pool. In the early 20th century this manifested itself in (among many other policies that most of us today would find obnoxious) a massive program to institutionalize thousands of supposedly inferior people, many of which would be considered perfectly normal today. IQ tests were administered, the results were taken as definitive (though there was never a good case to be made for doing so), and those who scored 70 (sometimes 90) or below were basically "thrown away" into institutions like Pennhurst, usually never to leave. So to imply that the institution was founded with good intentions is, I feel, a dodge. You wouldn't say that about Jim Crow laws or miscegenation laws, but they came out of the same bigoted mindset. (As I said, I have a strong POV, so maybe it's best that I don't write the article) InsultComicDog (talk) 19:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

"It is claimed to be haunted and lots of paranormal activity has been confirmed."
Oh Please. InsultComicDog (talk) 23:49, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I've removed this paragraph, unless somebody wishes to rewrite it to make it NPOV. Lesmothian (talk) 02:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

PMPA has nothing to do with anything going on at the current Pennhurst property. I've removed their edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JBurns198311 (talk • contribs) 15:50, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

"The decision in Pennhurst State School and Hospital vs. Halderman forced the institution to close by July 1, 1986"
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. I was just looking at the decision and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Pennhurst. That is, if I'm reading it correctly. InsultComicDog (talk) 21:01, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Land Area
Under the "Creation and Purpose" heading, the second sentence reads "Pennhurst's property was vast, covering 120 acres (0.49 km2)." Then under the "Property and Grounds" heading, the first sentence refers to "its 1,400-acre (5.7 km2) site"! Which is it? Is its "property" different than its "site"? Did the size change over time? This needs clarification. Alfrogbet (talk) 03:47, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Major revisions to page; More needed (maybe shifted too far in the wrong direction)
User:Smccphotog did a major overhaul of the page. Overall, I think it reads better than before; I did some significant copy-editing and altering of sections. However, I see two major problems with the article now, both related to the balance of materials. 1) My understanding, from reading the old version, and from a perusal of some online info, is that Pennhurst is notable primarily because of the terrible treatment of patient's there, and how exposure of that treatment was a major part of the changes surrounding disabled rights. In the new version, that part seems to be vastly understated.  As such, I think the article will definitely benefit from an expansion of the Criticism section. 2) Similarly, the article spends too much time talking about the layout of the grounds (we probably don't need to go through the step-by-step addition of each section, and we probably don't need the full list of buildings). More importantly, the "Modern Day Timeline" is far too long. The length gives so much weight to this, that it sounds like the contemporary land dispute is equally or more important than Pennhurst's history as an institution. While I'm sure that this is what matters to some people now (I can see on the external websites that there appears to be a battle between residents and memorializers), it's not really what Pennhurst is notable for. This section needs to be significantly trimmed; the best way to do this will be to 1) get this into prose form rather than list form (which is generally preferred anyway per WP:MOS), and trim out as many of the small details as possible. I'd be happy if someone else tackled this by helping to pick out what are the most salient details (as I'm not familiar with the whole process that has occurred myself), but if no one does so in the next while, I'll take a stab at it.

Finally, the layout is a bit awkward right now--I think we have too many short subsections, and the pictures aren't lining up so well (and there's probably too many anyway). But we can worry about that once the article text itself gets more stable. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:21, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Haunted House
For someone more knowledgeable about wiki pages and can add this info (if needed/wanted): Pennhurst is being opened up as a Haunted House this fall/winter, starting 9/24. Information on PennhurstAsylum.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.81.98.129 (talk) 23:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

NRHP
The property is not listed on the NRHP. Though it is marked as eligible in PA's CRGIS database by the state, but that isn't the same as listed. CRGIS does not show any indication that it was listed, nor does the National Park Service's database. There are no nearby historic districts that it would be a contributing property to. I removed the NRHP reference from the article, and replaced the NRHP infobox with a PAhistoric infobox to hold the marker designation. Generic1139 (talk) 05:26, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I Remember when I was a 9 year Girl Scout in 1971
We were forced by our Girl Scout Leader, Mrs. Sue Ressler, to make yarn toys for the residents of Pennhurst as part of our 1971 toy badge requirements. I am now 58 years old and still remember how traumatized were all were during this "field trip" she made us endure. I vividly remember to this day and still feel the pain of the inmates who were chained to beds and screaming for help. I will never forget. My own mother was there was and was as horrified as the little girls who looked on this terrible thing that was happening. Then, after it was closed due to horrible abuse practices, they turned it into this goulish horror house that people paid to see. How could this possible happen. Who are you people? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.19.122.201 (talk) 23:18, 26 October 2020 (UTC)