A recent ruling by the IFC (Interfraternity Council) has
prohibited fraternities from having parties or gatherings on February 25th. This day was marked as State Patty’s Day and
the IFC is attempting to distance frats from being connected with a made up holiday
with all sorts of negative connotations.
This ruling has gotten mixed reviews from people and raises the question
if this ruling will actually help or worsen State Patty’s Day. An editorial in the Daily Collegian applauds
this decision and calls on more people not to participate in this holiday. To be honest, I believe this ruling could
have serious negative impacts. The
holiday will never be cancelled and will continue to the foreseeable
future. Vendors and bar owners make a
decent profit from all the products they sell and it would be stupid for them
to stop and throw away money they would be making. Students will still celebrate at apartments
and houses consuming an abundant amount of alcohol at unsupervised
parties. That’s when things can become
risky, when students consume a large quantity of alcohol without rules. At fraternities there are strict rules about
the alcohol being consumed, other beverage and food options to minimize the
effects of alcohol and security to make sure things do not get out of
hand. These are some of the many rules
imposed at fraternities that are not at other parties. The stereotype of all fraternity members
being animalistic crazed alcoholics is just not true. An average student parties and consumes
alcohol as much as a member of a fraternity.
This ruling that has come from the IFC is understandable trying to
distance Greek life away from a negative connoted holiday but I believe it is
wrong. Penn State students and visitors
face more danger going to apartment or house parties then going to a fraternity
party. Without an end to this holiday and
people wanting to celebrate it would be in the best interest for everyone to
have fraternity parties because it offers more safety.
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2012/02/01/follow_ifcs_lead_cancel_state_pattys_day_parties.aspx
I completely agree with your point of view here. I believe that the IFC is at risk of making things worse than making them better. I understand that they may want to distance Penn State's greek life from the negative views of State Patty's Day but I believe decisions like these should have been made some time last semester. The IFC knows that the "holiday" is almost always planned during the last weekend in February and people tend to invite their friends up for that weekend. To make such a huge decision a couple weeks before the holiday will more than likely be more detrimental than they intend. I'm sure non-Penn State students are still going to come up that weekend, McClanahan's will still be selling those green shirts and accessories and as you noted, the parties will still go on, except they will be more out of control.
ReplyDeleteI choose to write a blog entry this week on the same article, except I agree with the writor. I understand where you are coming from though, vendors do make a lot of money from the holiday, and it does bring in revenue to State College, but there are negatives to the holiday. Often, more damage is done to downtown then the average riot, and most of the people involved do not attend Penn State.
ReplyDeleteAs for your argument on "safety" I think we can both agree that frat houses are not the safest places to party. When someone drinks to much, often they are just kicked out of the house. No help is offered to them, no service is called, they are forced to get home on their own. They do not want to be held liable if someone gets into an alcohol related accident. Also,I personally feel much safer in an apartment owned by someone I know then at a random frat house. This is just my own personal thoughts though.
You make a solid arguement against the new IFC policies, but I cannot agree with you that the ruling was a negative one.