The college is State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University, which this year was named the number one party school in the country by the people who name the number one party school, the Princeton Review. The Princeton Review chooses the number one party school from online student surveys. 120,000 students at 371 schools around the country answered these questions, how widely used are beer, alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs at your school, how big is frat life at your school and finally, how many hours do you study each day. Students aren't randomly selected, so it's not, strictly speaking, a scientific survey. But the last two years, Penn State has done very well. It was the number three party school last year, number six the year before that, and nobody argues it is not a very big school for partying.
The Harvard School of Public Health did a study of what schools tend to have the heaviest drinking, and Penn State actually hits all the criteria that they found. It's located in the northeast, and it has a large undergraduate population-- that would be, in this case, 44,000 students-- a large fraternity system, a nationally-known football team. At tailgate parties, you see just how deeply embedded drinking is in life at Penn State. It's entire families, it's several generations together gives you the feeling that the whole world is drinking, probably because there's so much of it. Penn State now has the largest stadium in North America, it holds over 100,000 people. The tailgates are these huge masses of people, spread out as far as you can see, all around the stadium, starting at eight in the morning.
The routine at Penn State on weekend nights is that you pregame or preload. That's what they call it when you drink at your apartment or your dorm room before going out. It's way cheaper than buying drinks at a bar. The bars in State College are actually very strict about underage drinking, so many flock to frat parties. Under Penn State rules, nobody is supposed to get into a frat party except members of other fraternities and sororities, and people on an official university list of potential pledges. There is supposed to be a guest list with names at the door. However, in practice, it seems like any one can get onto that guest list on the spot. Surveys show that every Friday and every Saturday night, 75% of the school drinks. That is over 30,000 people, an average of four and a half drinks per person. By 4 AM, the streets are empty; overall, State College police issued 80 citations this weekend, including 17 for underage drinking.