Ira, what have you done? Thanks to Ira Glass, host and producer of the radio/TV documentary series "This American Life," I feel uncomfortable about my relationship with State College.
I say "relationship" because when you live in the same place for a significant amount of time, you unknowingly develop a relationship with your surroundings. You get to know the location's habits, its idiosyncrasies, peccadilloes, traffic patterns, where the closest ATM is and little things like that.
But the relationship with State College isn't the same for all. I could always discern that living in this town as a resident and a student are probably two completely different experiences.
But I never really got a true feeling of that difference until listening to "This American Life's" recent episode titled "#1 Party School."
That would be us.
Glass and his team of producers (which includes local resident Sarah Koenig) documented a football weekend last semester. They interviewed and observed students in their natural environments while talking with local businesses, President Graham Spanier and other staff in order to get a feel for what it is like to be at a No. 1 party school.
Turns out we're all just a bunch of destructive alcoholics.
OK, well, that's a harsh generalization. But when the residents here install motion sensors around their houses to combat trespassing drunks or can correctly identify the sound of a stop sign being dragged across the ground, then we have officially become, at the very least, bad neighbors.
If you're a student and haven't listened to this 70-minute exposé, I recommend doing so. You'd have to be living in some fantasyland of complacency to listen to this and not feel a tiny bit disgusted. Glass and Koenig begin the episode by simply observing drunken activity around Koenig's house. The amount of times they come across public urination and destruction of property in a mere half-hour on a Friday night is astounding.
But hearing about this stuff secondhand from me won't result in any startling revelation. We all know that mostly everyone's got the ability to be a royal schmuck when they're wasted. If you haven't been the sloppy drunk then you've at least been affected by one in some way. This is just one of those involuntary improprieties of the "We Are!" culture that are unfortunately too familiar.
But when you step back from everything and see how our dependence on alcohol and its effects must look to an outsider -- in this case through the eyes of a radio show host and his crew who make their living documenting different places and people -- you start to rethink things.
Suddenly, the normalcy of binge drinking and pregaming turns into absurdity.
In one segment of the episode, Glass goes to a fraternity party and asks one of the brothers why he thinks this is so routine.
"You can only do this stuff now when you're in college," he answers, "I wouldn't be able to do it six months from now."
I can understand that sentiment but only because it stems from the mentality this town nurtures and fosters right from the get-go as a freshman: We're a drinking school with a football problem.
I really hate sounding like an embittered curmudgeon who wants to permanently abolish fun. Trust me, I don't.
But there has to be a point when you grow up and realize that getting wasted and pissing in someone's yard or destroying someone's property is just immature and reflects poorly on all of us.
Besides holding a mirror up to ourselves, the most remarkable thing about this episode is when Glass interviews people who have lived here for years: the neighbors who know a used tampon on their lawn means a used condom can't be far or the ones who can attest to once having removed drunk, confused trespassers from their children's bedrooms.
This behavior is just old-hat for them.
And that's a sad fact.
If Joe Dado's death and the sudden crackdown on alcohol use by fraternities haven't clued you in yet, then maybe you need to listen to this program to get a real outsider's view of Happy Valley.
Expect feelings of guilt mixed with nausea.
Visit the "This American Life" Web site to listen to the "#1 Party School" episode in its entirety.
