On State Patty's Day

As many of you may or may not know, this past weekend was State Patty's Day.

Only at Penn State do we create our own holiday

For this week's post, we're going to delve into the history of this holiday, and maybe learn a thing or two about crime rates!

State Patty's began way back when in March of 2007 (wow, 10 years ago!) with a group of students realizing that the notoriously alcoholic drinking holiday Saint Patrick's Day was scheduled to fall during Spring Break. Not one to miss out on a party, these students created a Facebook group called "The Official Group to Move St. Patrick's Day", hoping to get the entire student body to celebrate the day early, and that they did. The following year there was an effort to get the bars downtown involved, and the holiday has escalated ever since.

One of the changes that was made initially to the event was to solidify the date for the holiday, which has now been established to be the weekend after THON. This made sense considering that State Patty's now falls in the gap week between THON and Spring Break. State Patty's has grown to encompass more than just the Penn State community. The group on Facebook has grown to over 12,000 members, and the event itself has become a beacon for tourists and out of town visitors.

However, one of the biggest problems with this new holiday is that it is centered entirely around drinking, and traditionally, with mass amounts of people drinking comes problems, including an annual crime wave. This year State College Police requested the assistance of PA State Police to help
patrol around State College on police horses like they did in the rallies following the OSU upset (24-21!!!) and the B1G Ten Championship win. Despite increasing the policing, there were still over 215 reported incidents this State Patty's weekend, including shutting down parties at the host's request in some cases. All in all, it's a bad weekend to be a police officer.

Because of the crime surge traditionally associated with this holiday, over the years there have been numerous attempts to smother the event out of existence, which have obviously failed, but these attempts have been effective in reducing the amount of incidents from their peak in 2011.

The following year, the IFC banned parties on State Patty's weekend, students on campus were only allowed one guest per room, bars closed their doors, and even the CATA buses stopped running. In 2013, Penn State actually paid the bars a subsidy of $5,000 each (the money was from a reserve made on traffic tickets) to stay closed for the event, and eventually members of sororities weren't allowed to have any guests over if they lived on the sorority floor in the residence halls. All these actions have done much to combat the crime wave, but there is still a noticeable surge in arrests and hospital intakes at Mount Nittany each year during State Patty's weekend.

In the end, State Patty's has become quite the spectacle to behold over the years, and perhaps says something about the drinking culture here at Penn State. Time will tell if this Happy Valley tradition will continue on, and hey, in 2028 State Patty's will turn 21 and will be able to legally drink as well!

To rate State Patty's, I'd give the absurd history of this holiday 8 counts of public intoxication out of 10.



Image courtesy of:
Pennlive