Nittany Lion Spotlight: State Patty's Day

Well I’m sure WR Hickeys and the various bars benefited.

Maybe they should pony up for the overtime EMT and cops.

Why do students need a reason to drink? We had State Patty’s Day, only we called it “random Saturday in February.”

I think the biggest oil/water issue is the restrictiveness of alcohol distribution in Pennsylvania mixed with the largest congregation of young people in the state. These restrictions are horribly outdated and shortsighted. By restricting distribution, it glorifies a product rather than suppresses its consumption.

Missouri, Louisiana, and Nevada are probably the least restrictive states in the country when it comes to alcohol, and I’ve not heard anything extraordinary coming from visits to UM or LSU (aside from the drive-through margarita stores in Baton Rouge, that’s definitely a bad idea). Go to a grocery store in one of these states after being in PA for a long time. After doing a double-take at the lines of bottles of vodka for sale next to the dairy products, you might feel like you’re being treated like a responsible adult instead of a potential sinner. It’s actually pretty nice.

St. Patty’s Day is really a glorification of alcohol. Remove its preciousness by making it more widely available and you’ll go a long way in solving this problem. Don’t get me wrong: most twenty-year olds anywhere in the USA will glorify alcohol in an extent, but in PA the state government is unknowingly making it worse.

Why the f**k not?

What Would Jenn Brown Do?

I don’t know how you contain the animal at this point. The founder is now calling for this made up holiday to end, and yet this year it was bigger than ever. Sadly, it probably will take a death or two until this thing ends.

If I were the university, I would try to plan a positive activity on the same day as SPD to give students an alternative. Have a concert or mini-arts fest or something. See if you can get the IFC to buy into it and get an equal number of students involved in that. But then I could see that start a new tradition that would just foster more drinking.

The bottom line is, if you mark a special occassion in State College, the students are going to get smashed.

Honestly SPD is the administration and Spaniers fault they purposely scheduled us a weird spring break in ‘07 so that they would not have to deal with Saint Patricks day, well that backfired. State Patty’s ’07 was absolutely awesome, we looked at it like we were stickin it to the man. Fine take away our holiday which is synonomous with drinking, we will just create another.

’08 and ’09 it got way to mainstream with kids coming from all over the place to expereience SPD for themselves. Everyone knows that when your in college and you hang out with old friends drinking consumption increases exponentially, and thats exactly what happened.

I did not participate in the ’09 year like to the extent of the first two years, it was a normal weekend for me with nighttime drinking not an all day shitshow. I knew that just a few weeks down the road we had the real SPD St. Patricks Day.

So to sum up this novel, state pattys should have stopped in ’08 when we got st patricks day back.

I think two things didn’t help this year- the increased crackdown (some bars not opening, etc) led to more attention/need to fight the man (“Shut us down? We’ll party harder woooooooo!”). It also probably led to more apt/frat parties from closed bars, which you can drink a lot more at an apt/frat.

The best thing to do would just be to leave it alone. Without attention brought to it, people will stop caring. Or try to take it over and embrace it- if the students see it as the university’s thing and not “theirs”, they’ll get bored with it.

As far as the quotes from Shakely, he was a poli sci major- good guy, but he tended to speak like a politician. Hence the BS-ish sound.

Didn’t read everything in its entirety, but some perspective on 2007 from a senior at the time…

SPD did make some headway via facebook, and it was strictly because of the spring break schedule, none of this “borne out of a desire by students to ’prove” restraint bull. That being said, the main thing that vaulted SPD into popularity was its endorsement from a number of bars that first year. When word got around that bars offered to open early to accommodate the holiday (that idea may have been blocked eventually), it became a student-body wide event.

So to RUTS, who says that the students are destroying the community and yatta yatta yatta, don’t forget that there are a lot of State College businesses that make out as a result as well.

This came after my time (02), but it looks like a bunch of college kids made up an excuse to drink, and now it’s become a raging party. Good on them!

The cops cite rising crime statistics without telling us how much extra attention they’ve been paying. No cops = no crime. Lots of cops = lots of crime.

Let the college kids be college kids. Binge drinking and raising hell is what they’re supposed to be doing. I truly hope no one gets hurt, and you have to admit it’s possible, but that doesn’t mean the thing needs to end.

If they really want to mitigate the problem as best they can, then they need to understand that people are going to drink no matter what, so they should provide a safe, somewhat “monitored” way to do it. I know it would never pass, but heck, open up some bars on campus. Have university sponsored parties and events where alcohol is available, and then act as responsible bartenders/hosts and don’t let people get ridiculous.

The more you push it underground the more appealing it seems, and also the further away from any regulation it becomes. In my personal experience, the people I’ve met who’ve been drinking (responsibly) under parental supervision since their teenage years are usually the most responsible drinkers during their college years.

Hmm, makes me wonder if the university tried banning studying and getting good grades, what would happen?

Penn State students drink every weekend and the crazieness that SPD brings never gets to these levels outside some of the bigger event weekends.

I think the biggest problem now is the truck loads of doucheabags from other schools who get shitfaced and trash the town like it’s their own. It’s like a state wide college drinking convention, and it really pisses me off.

Its about as simple as that. Assholes will do what they want. There will always be responsible ones that don’t cross lines. Assholes will continue to ruin that.

My new favorite activity is to go out and stay reasonably sober. Then just watch people. I have stopped being surprised about shit that I see. I work in a restaurant, so I get some good ones there. I have friends that work in the bars, so I get some good stuff there. Its nuts. This past weekend one of our delivery driver’s cars was stolen. Another one’s house was getting robbed while he was delivering. My buddy that is a door guy told me of a chick spitting in a cop’s face. And another girl with vomit all over herself trying to get into the bar.

I mean, I love the sauce. I have made some less-than-good, but at least victim-free decisions. I was lucky enough to receive an underage whilst tailgating my freshman year. But man, some of these people make me look like Mother Theresa.

I don’t really know what can be done about it.

bring back case race day at the skeller.

delete SPD. that sh!t’s weak like christmas in july.

also, no more katilsday.

Penn does two of these every year (Although they call it the Erin Express.) The bars actually block off a street and everyone drinks outside and has a great time.

When you have a house of like 100 people playing… i dont want to drink out of a cup that 100 other people drank out of….. thats sickness waiting to happen! We put water in the cups and every time you make a cup you take a shot….. it’s smart!

Water Pong was banned at Dartmouth.

Here’s the link: http://thedartmouth.com/2007/02/05/news/water

Can’t see this going away unless the bars get on board.

I LOVE the idea of the University adopting it full-throttle and making it the lamest carnival ever. That’s just brilliance. Cordon off a huge section of town where the bars are, fill it with balloon-twisting clowns, lame Irish gags, and awful music acts. Nobody will ever want to come back again.

(This just gives me an opportunity to remind the world that for Movin’ On 1998, the genius organizers decided to bring in Eddie Money, who even in 1998 was about 12 years past anything approaching relevance. Thanks, Movin’ On!)

I’m a senior graduating in May, I took part in State Patty’s this year and found it enjoyable, minus the huge CATA delay. The problem I have is all the townsfolk getting all pissy about it. They live in State College, PA, home to one of the biggest universities in the country that brings them millions of dollars every year. They host weekend long drinkfests 8 times a year, called football games. I guess when Alums are joining in it’s just responsible fun but when students do it on their own it’s disruptive irresponsible behavior? If they want to make a stink about drinking, be consistent about it.

They complain we cause damages to the town. I claim the county makes money over State Patty’s weekend. Think about it, all the people that traveled here will probably buy gas here, eat here, buy State Patty’s clothing, pay to use the bus and then of course, drink tons of alcohol. The taxes gained from all those purchases easily beats out the cost of extra law enforcement.

The other thing is, 90% of the people who go downtown on State Patty’s drink like it was any other weekend, they may get trashed from time to time but most of the time they stay in limits and as long as you aren’t endanging yourself or others you can legally drink as much as you want. The locals act like every single one of us is going down and pissing on their houses, only a small portion of people are doing that. I bet it would be hard to find 90% of congress obeying laws but they expect more out of us somehow.

I think the more of a stink people make over State Patty’s the more of a stickittotheman mentally will become prevalent at school and more holidays like Cinco de State will pop up. If I want to get wasted, God help you if you try and stop me.

RUTS, did you get the e-mail I sent you the other day?

I really can’t believe we never started our own cab company, even if you had 4 cars that ran Wed—Sun the owner would kill it.

Hire some foreign exchange students (like OC Maryland in the summer) as drivers and clean up.

Then with Spanier complains you call him a racist!

go together like ham and cheese.

In the fall, there are 7 (or 8) weekends during which lots of people from the rest of the state and the country come to central PA to get drunk and urinate in public. There are also football games.

In the “spring,” no one comes to State College until at least March but usually later because it is absolutely miserable. There’s little to do but stay inside and drink yourself stupid with a few friends.

I think this made-up holiday is fine. They way I remember spring semester was that everyone just waited until blue-white weekend to finally have an excuse to get a little more rowdy than usual. If the students want another drinking party in the spring, fine by me. There are still many less than there are in the fall.

But you can defend the idea of this SPD without defending the acts of idiots. Just like I defend tailgating at Penn State, but not people (students) throwing full beers at opposing fans.

Actually that is a waste of beer…I now defend throwing urine filled cups at OSU fans

I’ll debate my feelings after tomorrow. For anyone who wants to attend a St Paddy’s Day bar tour that lives in Pittsburgh, this is where I, and friends, will be. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you all about the secret places on Calder Way to do just about anything. Anything.