Missing Freshman Found Dead
Not football related but major Penn State news nonetheless. 18 yr old freshman Joe Dado who was reported missing yesterday was found dead on campus today, having fallen apparently 15 feet down a stairwell. So how much negative "Penn State is a school for drunks" press will there be? I feel really bad for this kids parents.
over 2 years ago
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I wouldn't rule out foul play
I understand that he was most likely drunk and only has been on campus for a few weeks, but the steps he fell down were the opposite way from the way he would have been walking if he left FIJI to go back to East Halls as the story reported
How could Nixon know so little about Watergate and so much about football ?
not really
I mean, yes, Deike is downhill from FIJI, but it’s a minute away. When you’re that drunk, I’ll forgive you for going to wrong way at first. And maybe he was going for pizza or something. I’ve left frats late at night and wandered to Canyon, guided almost by some preternatural GPS system.
NittanyWhiteOut.com. Arguably the second best Penn State blog I know of.
Yeah I didn't think about the pizza
I guess I have been out of college way too long
How could Nixon know so little about Watergate and so much about football ?
and the other thing
is that he was incredible liquored up and he’d been on campus what, 4 weeks? Not hard to get lost.
NittanyWhiteOut.com. Arguably the second best Penn State blog I know of.
Boozed
There is a high likelihood he was drinking. Probably not a safe assumption to think his movements were accurate. The leap to foul play is bizarre comment to make.
Since I had a son, I read these stories completely differently than I did before. Terrifying.
by InScoresOfOtherGames on Sep 21, 2009 9:36 PM EDT up reply actions
no, he was drinking
alcohol was deemed to be involved.
NittanyWhiteOut.com. Arguably the second best Penn State blog I know of.
I never said I thought it was foul play
just that I wouldn’t rule it out after just finding the body 20 minutes earlier which they seem to be doing.
How could Nixon know so little about Watergate and so much about football ?
Yeah
the only question I have is how he could be in plain view in a staircase and not be seen all day? Weird.
NittanyWhiteOut.com. Arguably the second best Penn State blog I know of.
that and
how did he get into a campus building at 3 AM when it is locked all night
How could Nixon know so little about Watergate and so much about football ?
not in a building maybe?
if my memory serves me correctly, there are some alley’s and maintenance passageways in and around deike/whatever the other building was called. so, if he was found there, thats probably why he was found unintentionally.
We decide when you hear the snap count...
he was outside
as I heard it, it was an outside stairwell in an alley between Deike and Steidle…below grade, and entrance to a boiler room…
thats it
i used to pass these buildings all the time on the way from chambers to EE west/east, plus a bunch of classes in deike.
We decide when you hear the snap count...
Yeah I just heard
I’m in Thompson Hall in West halls this year, so literally they found him about fifty yards from where I’m living in a stairwell between Steidle and Hosler buildings. There have been helicopters, cops, and ambulances (and some FBI if I saw correctly) all around campus today looking for him.
As for negative PSU stories, I sincerely doubt there’s a school in the country who hasn’t had the same type of drunken stupidity induced accidental death (assuming it was an accident, which we don’t know right now, however there’s been no indication of foul play). It doesn’t help any that we got that BS “#1 party school” ranking, but for us to be singled out I think would be unfair.
Unfortunately, I think it’s just a dark side of college life that thankfully doesn’t happen more often. There’s always going to be someone that goes too far whether it’s pushing yourself to the drinking limit, or getting behind the wheel. it’s just unfortunate it happened to someone here.
What I don’t get is how he got into a PSU building at 3am. I thought they locked the doors at some point.
The stairwell is outside
Goes down to the entrance to the boiler room. I can picture it and see how it happened, he looked across the street from FIJI and saw a dark place where he could probably go to the bathroom and accidently fell down the stairs from the state he was in. It’s a real shame and my thoughts and prayers are with the Dado family and all his friends.
I hope the media doesn’t take us to the opinion court over this, drinking in college has been going on for a century and it happens, people make mistakes all over the country with alcohol, not exclusively in Happy Valley and it didn’t happen just because we are the number 1 party school in the country. Keep with your buddies and know how far you can go and just be safe is what we can take from this tragedy.
RIP Joe.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
i know one thing that will come of this
guaranteed that the doorway/archway of this back alley are gated or something.
it sounds hyper-critical and maybe a bit knee jerk, but i can already predict some sort of movement by OPP to sort of drunk-freshman-proof the campus. and i’m not using the term “freshman” in a critical manner, but this is something that would likely not happen to an upper-classman. this has a whole lot to do with someone in an altered state in an unfamiliar place.
i also see a move by the RA’s to really start harping on people to never walk anywhere alone at night. i can’t recall what attitude the university currently has towards educating freshman on safe partying (help me out current freshman/students) but when i was a freshman (2005), there was a whole lot of “don’t party/drink” talk, and not a whole lot of “we know you’re going to do it, here is how to be safe” talk.
We decide when you hear the snap count...
oh they've done plenty of that
It’s actually quite comical. “bring a water bottle, nobody will hassle you to drink.” Right, like there’s such a thing as peer pressure. It’s a joke.
NittanyWhiteOut.com. Arguably the second best Penn State blog I know of.
yeah
figures. i love how they are like “don’t drink, just ignore it”, but they give out condoms by the basket full in UHS? it just seems like those views points (safe sex, safe drinking) would go hand in hand…
We decide when you hear the snap count...
actually
now that I think back about this, I recall a newsletter when I first decided to come to Penn State that told us how to drink safely: to eat plenty, to drink water so I would’nt get a hangover. Honestly, I’m a pretty big drinker, but I’ve never been unsafe about it. It’s not hard to be safe, in fact, you really have to work hard to be in a situation where you put yourself or someone else at risk.
NittanyWhiteOut.com. Arguably the second best Penn State blog I know of.
Something needs to change
And it’s the way the college community handles drinking. I remember my freshman orientation 3 years ago. Pretty much all they said was the 1:1 rule, cup of water per drink along with a lot of you shouldn’t drink anyway.
They tell us to don’t drink and then they throw us into the college community and tough situations. Does anyone believe that Campus Police walked by the Fiji house that night and didn’t have any serious doubts about underage students drinking inside? Of course they knew and they just kept on walking the way they and many of their colleagues across the country have for decades. If they don’t want student’s to drink then come down harder on underage drinkers, if they are going to continue their ignorance then they need to change their approach of alcohol education. Don’t tell us to not party, it’s unrealistic, tell us to always stick with a friend, if that friend is leaving, leave. Know where your limits are, know to sleep on your side if you think you had too much. Educate students on the signs of when a friend has definitely gone past his limits and needs medical attention whether they all get in trouble or not (hopefully that bill that would give students calling 911 to help their friend immunity from underage drinking charges). These are things that can help younger people who haven’t had a lot of experience with the college drinking scene.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
It needs to change, but do you honestly think it will?
I truly and honestly do not drink much at all. My excessive drinking history can be summed up in about a paragraph, honestly. The first few times I got intoxicated (I really don’t know if I was actually legally drunk or not), I felt horrible after I did it. I was nauseous, which is, IMO, worse than actually throwing up. But I hate throwing up too, which makes it doubly worse for me to drink. I learned through the few times I got drunk, that I didn’t find it fun.
My point is, you’re never going to make naive young people any smarter about drinking through education. Unfortunately things like this happen, and people get seriously hurt or die, yet the cycle continues. A person died yesterday in State College from drinking, yet how much money would you like to bet that a student is hospitalized or arrested for drinking this weekend, not a week after this kid dies. It’s all a big cycle. Eventually, a kid is going to have a bad enough experience where he cuts back on how much he drinks. Unfortunately that experience for some of them ends tragically like this weekend. For others I’m sure being arrested for underage, DUI, etc. and having to pay a huge fine and possibly jail time is a deterrent.
Something does need to change, but honestly, I don’t see anything that can change that other than negative reinforcement, unfortunately.
by dawsonPSU10 on Sep 22, 2009 12:50 AM EDT up reply actions
how innocent our Dawson is
For others I’m sure being arrested for underage, DUI, etc. and having to pay a huge fine and possibly jail time is a deterrent.
for all the people I know who’ve gotten underage/MIP, open container, DUI, etc, I can’t think of a single one that was deterred from drinking. Even people who’ve gotten really sick/hunger and swore they’d never drink again are usually drinking by the next weekend/party. About the only people I can think of who at one point were big drinkers, and then cut back, either graduated college, matured a bit, and moved on, or had someone close to them die from alcohol related reasons, and even then not everyone had cut back on drinking, or soon started drinking again.
But yeah, fines and jail time has not been a deterrent to drinking, just a motivator to hide it from the police better.
by The JuggerNitt on Sep 22, 2009 9:03 AM EDT up reply actions
I was cited for underage possession...
it was not a deterrent.
Never mistake effort for achievement.
by Esteban d' Amur on Sep 22, 2009 10:20 AM EDT up reply actions
Agreed
It all comes down to maturity. I didn’t drink much (at all really) in highschool. Throughout my frieshman – sophomore years I drank a lot, usually on the order or two nights a week, maybe more if there weren’t any tests in proximity. But my grades hurt from it and I realized that and cut back a lot on it. I cut back more this summer when alcohol was having an adverse effect on my general health. At some point students need to take a step back and look at what they are doing and how it affects them. They need to realized that while yes there is a big social part to the whole college thing, the chief reason they are shelling out thousands of dollars every semester is to get an education and better themselves and get a good job. They just need to find a balance between school and their social lives and just hit they maybe button on the facebook event instead of saying “Alcohol? Hell yeah I’ll be there.”
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Sorry, yeah...that does sound a bit naive, and even I know it's not true
I was going to go a bit more morbid and say DUI and you killed someone, but given the death of this kid, I didn’t want to go there.
by dawsonPSU10 on Sep 22, 2009 12:02 PM EDT up reply actions
I don't think it will
In fact unfortunately this will just be another line in their talks about what can happen if you drink, even a little bit. But it would be nice for them to switch it up a little bit.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Sounds about right.
After the sniper incident on campus, PSU’s response was to cut down the tree she was laying under.
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard
I’m pretty sure the tree was not responsible for her going bat sh*t crazy and shooting students.
by dawsonPSU10 on Sep 22, 2009 12:05 PM EDT up reply actions
Seriously?
DO YOU HAVE PRIDE, DANNY?
by ReadingRambler on Sep 22, 2009 12:06 PM EDT up reply actions
Yep.
"I thought the kid we were using had the potential to be a good quarterback, and I blew that one." - Joseph V. Paterno
by leeharvey418 on Sep 22, 2009 12:09 PM EDT up reply actions
even better
they’re shutting down FIJI. So goddamn stupid.
NittanyWhiteOut.com. Arguably the second best Penn State blog I know of.
You mean the frat where the kid got drunk?
They’re lucky if all they get is their frat shut down.
His sister theoretically could face criminal charges too, but I doubt they’ll do that
The fact that he allegedly drank in multiple places
including his sister’s apartment, makes it slightly harder to point a finger at any one person. However, the SCPD is eager to start charging people for something, to prove that they’re an AWESOME police force.
FIJI isn’t being shut down, however I speculate his friend (who is 21) he went to go see will get a misdemeanor for furnishing alcohol to a minor. He was there for an hour, after a party had ended, so there’s a question of whether or not the organization has any responsibility from a criminal charge point of view. Not sure about ATO, as he was there in the midst of a party, allegedly. Also wonder if he did some pre-game in his room in east, or if he was at a tailgate beforehand.
Now, I’m 100% sure the parents will start firing up civil suits against ATO, FIJI, and the very deep pockets of PSU (damn dangerous wall our drunk son decided to climb!), but that’s all in the future.
by Tailgate Shogun on Sep 23, 2009 8:58 AM EDT up reply actions
They're currently suspended, not shut down
granted that may end up being the outcome, but as of now, it’s an IFC suspension. Now the classy thing for FIJI to do would be to admit that they served alcohol to minors in attendance that night, but otherwise, the cops can’t prove the beer in the kid’s stomach came from FIJI.
And he was at least at two other parties before he went to FIJI, so there’s no telling where he consumed alcohol. The police report said they got to FIJI as their party was ending at 3am, so there’s really no way to pin this entirely on the frat, unless they admit to it.
by dawsonPSU10 on Sep 23, 2009 12:44 AM EDT up reply actions
FIJI international just banned alcohol at the PSU chapter
i was going to post the collegian article on facebook last night and say how stupid and knee-jerky it was for the IFC to do that.
then i realized i didn’t want to get into stupid circular arguments people for 2 hours.
EPIC LOGIC FAIL
We decide when you hear the snap count...
Agree
If they’re going to be consistent, they’d have to suspend every frat as they all furnish alcohol to underage students; and everyone – the cops, the University, the IFC – knows it.
If they want to get tougher on underage citations in the future, fine; but arbitrarily suspending one of the frats this kid went to is pointless.
by PSUMark2008 on Sep 23, 2009 12:13 PM EDT up reply actions
we had a situation similar to this at iowa state back during my sophmore year
a student got disorientated after leaving a party drunk and he ended up drowning in lake laverne (lake on campus). i remember them organizing search parties and people searching all around ames. it was an eerie feeling around here while that was going on. my sympathy to the Dado family. RIP Joe.
"Stats from the spring," he said when handed the numbers. "I can take those down to the spare bathroom in the house. We can put them to use down there."
- Paul Rhoads
It's a horrible tragedy.....
I think it is kind of interesting that a just couple weeks ago, many of us, right here on BSD, talked about how “stupid” it was for Zordich and Poti to be driving when they could walk anywhere. Then this happens, no vehicle is even involved.
This proves that we are never totally safe. S***t happens even when you are not under the influence. When you deaden some of your senses with alcohol, it just makes it worse.
I drank illegally at PSU so I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I was just lucky that nothing major or minor happened during my four years up there. I do wonder how many dead brain cells I left behind in State College.
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.
Vince Lombardi
well the difference between this and a DUI
is you aren’t likely going to kill someone else by running into them when walking home drunk.
by The JuggerNitt on Sep 22, 2009 11:18 AM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
+1
Big difference. Impairment behind the wheel starts at ONE drink, and can have catastrophic consequences involving lives of innocent people. Falling down a stairwell, or something similar…it takes quite a bit more than one drink for me not to be able to walk home safely.
Its different
For everybody. A single drink can impair balance just enough to make you stumble which is all he would ahve needed to do. I’d say I’m pretty clumsy sober, put 4 or 5 beers in me and a stumble here and there isn’t unheard of even if I’m fine otherwise.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Yeah, but if you fall down you might hurt yourself.
You drive drunk, you run this risk of smashing a 2 ton car doing 60mph into someone else.
Big difference.
by Tailgate Shogun on Sep 22, 2009 6:14 PM EDT up reply actions
Drinking age
I hate sounding like a libertarian, but until the US wakes up and realizes that other countries don’t have these problems because they don’t electrify drinking by setting a stupid drinking age, these things will continue to happen.
I plan to start serving alcohol to my son when he’s 14-15. Not getting him wasted, just enough for him to think it’s not a big deal when he shows up to a party and there’s booze there, and for him to understand what it feels like to be buzzed, how to manage it, and how to know your limits.
by InScoresOfOtherGames on Sep 22, 2009 10:28 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
It's the culture, not the law
I believe that students (and non-students) binge-drink because it’s in our culture, not because it’s against the law, or because they haven’t been able to do it at home (and now they’re at college with new freedoms). We live in a culture of excess: we eat to excess, we drink to excess, we are lazy to excess, we work out to excess, we study to excess, we complain to excess, we watch football and monitor this blog to excess. Not all of us do all of those things to excess, and some of us don’t do some of those things at all. But as a society, we do.
I don’t buy the theory that un-forbidding something will make it less desirable. Did we drink less when prohibition was repealed? No, we most assuredly drank more. For most of us, binge drinking is actually fun for a few years. However, once we have more responsibilities in our lives, binge drinking becomes less attractive and rewarding. Some of us suffer terrible accidents (and by that I mean anything not done purposefully, consciously) as a result of the binge drinking, and some of us have medical or mental problems (addictions) as a result of the binge drinking, and that’s terrible. The compassion we have for each other makes us search for a solution, and that’s a noble pursuit. However, I don’t think there’s a universal solution that will work for every young adult; society treats them all the same, but they are most definitely drastically varying individuals.
All that said, serving your son a beer every now and then may work for him, so I hope it does. Teaching individual responsibility is, unfortunately, something our society avoids in excess…
Bacon is almost as great as being a Penn Stater
Well that,
and there’s almost no negative consequences for actions. Honestly, I’m not happy the kid died, but if anything could come of this, I hope it’s that people wake up and see that they aren’t invincible.
Nothing in America seems to matter… a company could give people crappy subprime mortgages and then they get their house repossessed and turn around the the company CEO and high ranking officers get bonuses with the government’s money. There is NO personal responsibility if there are NO negative consequences.
I’d also hope there would be no “copycats” either desperate for attention… that’d be sick.
As JNitt called me out on above
it’s naive to think this changes “people” in general. Maybe a few more take it easy this weekend (unlikely given the night game, but still a possibility), but then this story begins to fade in everyone’s memory, and the cycle continues.
by dawsonPSU10 on Sep 23, 2009 12:47 AM EDT up reply actions
I wished my parents would have done that for me
And it’s not bad parenting at all. Instead my parents made me afraid to drink (not with horror stories, but just how I could get arrested, have a record, etc. which did scare me), which has now been imprinted on me, and despite being 21, I rarely drink. And the worst part is that I enjoy beer. I’ve developed a taste, I love trying new beers, but I can’t have many before I start to feel nervous about it, and it all stems back to the “ALCOHOL BAD” as a minor, when we really should be introducing it gradually to kids to teach them moderation. Hell, if you start letting your son/daughter experience good drinks (aka not Natty, or Keystone), I’d expect them to not be able to binge on Natty (and they won’t be able to afford to binge on the good stuff). My dad likes all sorts of beers and wine, so I got little tastes from time to time. And after tasting that and developing a taste for good drinks, dirt cheap beer just tastes like diluted piss to me, and I won’t drink it.
Had they allowed me to taste alcohol, like you said, not to get drunk, but just to experience it, I think I wouldn’t be such a puss about drinking now, but I’d still be a smart drinker. I would be able to enjoy what I’m drinking, not enjoy how much I’m drinking. Explain to them moderation, and how much is too much. It’s a much better strategy than HS health classes trying to scare the crap out of us for drinking alcohol for so many years.
Agreed
About the good beer thing. I have taste for beer, I love to try new stuff. I’ve got a 6 pack of random beers from the Brass Rail in Palmyra, PA (Go there, it’s amazing.) that cost be about 3 to 4 bucks a bottle. I can’t even think of the last time I drank a lot of the crap beer and I know there is no way I’m going out and buying a case of Sierra Nevada to binge on. Mixed beverages and liquor are a totally different thing but good luck finding those at the frats or apartment parties beyond the jungle juice yuo may find here or there.
I’ve been over to Europe a few times in high school with host familys and what not, I can tell you that their drinking culture is entirely different than ours. They are brought up on beer and wine, at 16 they can buy it themselves but usually from a very early age they are introduced to it. Their kids aren’t any different from kids here. I’ve been to parties there and not one of them was heavily intoxicated at the end of the night, most have 4 or 5 beers over several hours and call it a night.
Also, I’ve had several friends here (including myself to one degree or another) find drinking to be a little less exciting and fun after our 21st birthdays. Can’t tell you what it is, maybe because we’ve been doing it for a while anyway, or the packed bars have dissillusioned us, or maybe the fact that we were breaking the law, sneaking around with booze in backpacks or mountain dew containers and turning the stereo down when campus security walked by our rooms made it just a little more exciting now that it isn’t a taboo it isn’t as big of a deal and we don’t do it as much.
Yay maturity.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
How are you going to go?
My pops died in my arms after coming up the stairs; he was 55. Booker Moore just died watching football in his living room; he was 50. This dude took a drunken tumble down some stairs; he was 18.
How we go is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
And yeah, I just Gandalfed this post unsarcastically.
"For me the game wasn’t grounded in reality. It was about the uniform you put on that turned you into a warrior. It was about the mythology of the battle, the victory, the defeat, the struggle." - Mike Reid, PSU '69
by jtothep on Sep 22, 2009 10:50 AM EDT reply actions 2 recs
Yikes.
I remember as a sophomore I would walk right next to that stairwell every Monday morning at 7:50 as a shortcut between Hamilton Hall and the now-demolished Engineering Unit D. It’s kind of a quirky location next to the mineral museum and a bunch of steam pipes. I would rarely see anyone there on my way through, but it would be shorter and warmer than walking along the access road to the Brown parking lots. I’m glad the authorities found him before a student.
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