Penn State’s fans and alumni are coming to realize that the Pennsylvania Lottery has morphed into just another online casino. The “instant” online games the university and the Lottery are promoting to Penn State students, including freshmen, are basically just a variation of online slot machines. Both instant games and online slots are designed to induce high-frequency betting. This cultivates gambling addiction. These games are among the most addictive forms of gambling ever devised.
The promotions the Lottery is offering are to entice students and others as young as 18 years of age to start gambling. They further exacerbate the addictiveness of the Lottery’s games by requiring players to place a large number of bets in a short time period to become eligible for the promotional bonus. With the payout rates of Lottery games being as low as they are, almost all who try for the bonus will lose more than the amount of the bonus before they can claim it.
What parent of a Penn State student wants the university to direct its students to ways they can pay for gambling using credit cards, potentially resulting in their incoming student racking up thousands of dollars in debt playing Lottery games on their smartphone before they ever take their first midterms?
Penn State’s own research shows that 44.6% of people in Pennsylvania who engaged in online gambling in 2021 exhibited at least one problem gambling behavior. Last year, this rate remained high at 36.7%. Gambling Disorder is now recognized in the DSM-5 as a behavioral addiction that can be just as dangerous and destructive as an addiction to alcohol or hard drugs. Given the enormous resources that Penn State invests in promoting its students’ mental health, why is the university undermining its own efforts by partnering with the Pennsylvania Lottery? The Lottery goes so far as to offer referral bonuses, which enable students to obtain more gambling money by recruiting their roommates and others into gambling.
Penn State is first and foremost an educational institution, and promoting gambling to the University’s students does not advance any part of the university’s educational mission. The university claims to value Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, Discovery, Excellence, and Community, but its partnership with the Lottery violates every one of these values. The Lottery partnership damages the university’s reputation. Moreover, no amount of money can ever compensate for the lifelong harms that its students who become addicted to gambling will suffer as a result of this partnership.
The university should immediately stop advertising addictive gambling products to its students, end its partnerships with the Pennsylvania Lottery and all other gambling operators, and develop an official university gambling policy to prevent future gambling harms.
For more information about Penn State’s partnership with the Lottery, to sign the petition calling on Penn State to stop advertising addictive gambling products to its students, and to learn about other ways you can help, please visit saynocasino.org/psu.
Andrew Shaffer,
State College
