It's a weekend in State College, and men and women scurry from their dorms or apartments to fraternities, bars or apartment parties.

Women check the straps on their tank tops and play with their navel rings. Men try to keep up their struts without shivering.

No, it's not the summer -- it's a near-freezing late fall night.

"You see girls walking down the street when it's 30 degrees out and they don't have a coat on," Jake Strano, a bartender at the Rathskeller All American, 108 S. Pugh St., said. "It's pretty crazy. I don't understand it I freeze."

Students' outfits boggle the minds of some people in State College who see the crowds firsthand with sober judgment.

"It can be really cold out, and girls do not wear coats. They freeze," said Nichole Deininger, an employee at Canyon Pizza, 260 E. Beaver Ave.

Even though many students acknowledge their peers might wear attire that their mothers would not approve of when they go out on weekends, most insist they themselves are the exception to the rule and dress for the weather.

Heather Evert (sophomore-elementary education) said she worries about keeping track of her coat when she goes out, so she wears a sweater instead.

"At frats and other places, I worry that I'm not going to find my jacket again," Evert said.

"That's why I don't wear a nice jacket," she said.

Rob Huber (sophomore-computer science) said he wears a jacket with short-sleeved shirts, but not with long-sleeved shirts because he's warm enough. Even though he doesn't always wear a coat, he doesn't think people need to worry about losing their outerwear.

"I don't usually leave my jacket behind," Huber said. "But it's not usually a problem if I do. Someone will pick it up for me."

Still, some students can't bear the thought of leaving their gear alone for a second when they're out.

"I don't leave my stuff alone. I keep my jacket on most of the time. It's always with me," Melissa Kung (freshman-marketing and international business) said.

When bars have a coat-check option, Melissa Cook (junior-management and international business) thinks her winterwear is safe.

"I go to bars if they don't [have a coat check] I just carry it," Cook said. "It's no big deal."

While the Rathskeller doesn't offer a coat check, Strano said there are plenty of places to store coats while throwing back a few beers. He said students take advantage of the coat hooks around the bar, but this convenience sometimes leads to a lot of walking around in the cold at the end of the night .

"[Students wear their coats here, and] I always notice that they leave them here too," Strano said. "They come back the next day for them."

David Tillman, manager of Café 210 West, 210 W. College Ave., said the college-related tendency to conform by wearing the same clothes as friends causes some problems. One person's charcoal peacoat can get mixed up with another's black one or someone else's midnight blue wool coat, leading to drunken confusion and accidental coat switching.

"It's a pain in the neck to be responsible for [a coat]," Tillman said. "You don't want to worry about where your coat is."

Losing a coat or having it stolen at a bar is pretty frequent, Tillman said.

This weekend snow is expected to fall, but some students say it's not the temperature that matters most.

"It gets really hot in the parties, so you don't want to wear a coat," Cook said.

While theft, mix-ups and heat keep students from wearing jackets in the cold, it's possible they don't even notice the weather.

"I guess they don't really feel [the cold] if they're really drunk," Cook said.