The day that every Penn State student looks forward to every year.
And as a Penn State student, I know first hand how upset the majority of the student body is about the current situation revolving around State Patty's Day and how many guests everyone is allowed to house in their rooms. Although it is extremely understandable that the school would be upset with the results of State Patty's celebrations in the past, I think that there are definitely better ways to deal with the issue at hand. This holiday has become known as one of friends coming together to enjoy a good time. Some students even have their parents come to celebrate with the rest of the school and see how Happy Valley comes together on a day like this. However, this can no longer happen due to the administrations decision as of today that each person can only have one person per dorm room. First of all, this was an extremely late decision. Some people have already paid for their means of transportation, expecting that they also have a place to stay, only to find out today that they must either find other accommodations or sell their bus tickets. Second, many students like to have their siblings come up, or even their parents. They are no longer able to do this without choosing between people because they have no where to have them sleep.
This holiday has become a tradition for Penn State and I believe there are better ways to deal with the negative effects. One of the biggest things is trash around the campus and downtown due to the influx of people here that weekend. What if the Sunday after the celebration a huge philanthropic opportunity was given and clubs and groups could help clean up different areas to make everything back to the way it was? Maybe instead of immediately instilling these punishments on us we could have first gotten a warning about it. I believe that maybe if these issues were presented to the student body we could possibly work with the school to organize State Patty's Day instead of completely ruining the celebration.
I can see where the school is coming from in their decision, but I wholeheartedly agree with you that the students should have at least gotten a warning about it. If I bought a bus ticket and couldn't come I would be a little more than pissed off. I also think that having different clubs and organizations clean up the mess afterwards would be a great idea.
ReplyDeleteOh man I was so pissed when I heard all of the rules with this this year. Did you know that they're also encouraging bars and distributors to shut down for that weekend and frats and sports houses can't have parties?
ReplyDeleteI was going to have 4 friends stay in my room, but now I think we've decided that rather than try to figure something else out or spend anymore money than we were going to, we're all just gonna go back to Philly and wear our State Patty's green proud.
On another note, we did kinda shit the bed on the celebration last year. I mean, I was up here visiting a friend and at 2 in the afternoon there were people breaking stuff and throwing up in the streets. My friend's dorm hall was trashed and there were toooons of people who were here making trouble who were not State students. So I guess we made our bed and now we have to lay in it.
But it still sucks.
I love your idea about Sunday being a clean up/philanthropic day, although I don't think that's going to change the administration's mind. Although it sucks that we have to deal with all these rules, I agree the "holiday" is way out of hand. There's a reason our school has a reputation as a party school, and I do worry sometimes that this reputation could affect my chances at a job or grad school.
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