Life on campus during the plague

by philg

From a mole inside Penn State…

Email to students from a dean:

In response to reports of large gathering of students in off-campus apartment complexes in State College during this past weekend’s Penn State football game, the University announced joint planning, enforcement, and outreach measures designed to help prevent similar gatherings in the future. Large gatherings of mostly unmasked individuals not practicing social distancing are in violation of the State College Borough ordinance, which limits gatherings to no more than 10 people.

The State College Police Department is asking for help identifying 60 individuals who attended large-scale apartment parties last weekend. The individuals in question, compiled in this online document, allegedly attended parties at State College apartment complexes during Penn State football’s season opener against Indiana on Saturday, October 24. The document includes dozens of pictures that appear to have been taken from social media clips.

Anyone with information is encouraged to reach out to the department by phone (814-234-7150), by email, or through an anonymous tip line. Police ask that you note the location, case number, and image number when identifying an individual.

The dean proceeds to quote Emerson: “In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.” Coronavirus is part of “nature”, isn’t it? Are the 99.93 percent of us who have yet to be killed by COVID-19 experiencing “wild delight” in the presence of coronavirus?

How about the gangstas whom the police are hunting?

How are they supposed to behave? Some of the dorm rules:

Department of Fat, Drunk, and Stupid IS a great way to go through life…

We write to tell you that Penn State University and the Borough of State College share a deep and growing concern about activities and allegations centered around a rental property located at 329 East Prospect Avenue in State College. This rental property served as a chapter house for Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, which was suspended by the University in April 2017 for multiple alcohol, health, and safety violations. The fraternity’s national organization subsequently revoked the chapter’s charter, and Sigma Alpha Mu no longer operates as a recognized student organization at Penn State.

Despite the fraternity’s suspension, the privately-owned house at 329 East Prospect continues to serve as a rental residence, and men living there represent themselves as a fraternity. Yet from April 2017 until this semester, residents in this facility have been accused of or found responsible for various additional violations, including hazing and sexual misconduct. In the weeks since the current semester began at Penn State, residents of this property have repeatedly hosted large gatherings in violation of the Borough’s Covid-19 ordinance. The State College Police Department has visited this property at least ten times in that period for various offenses, taking enforcement action on numerous occasions. The Borough is considering additional legal action, and the University has already suspended two students living there.

It now has been alleged that residents of this property hosted another large gathering last Halloween weekend. An underaged female Penn State student who attended this gathering was found intoxicated and unconscious on a nearby sidewalk. Residents responsible for the gathering at 329 East Prospect are accused of placing her there in the early morning hours last Saturday. Fortunately, after transport to the Mount Nittany Medical Center, where she was treated for alcohol poisoning, the student fully recovered. Most recently, there has been an allegation of a sexual assault occurring at this property over the Halloween weekend.

Neither of us has ever issued a warning of this nature, which should indicate the seriousness of the behaviors allegedly occurring at this property. We share this information out of conviction that the best protection for public safety includes individual efforts to self-guard against such threats.

In short, residents at 329 East Prospect have demonstrated a pattern of behavior that is troubling and has not stopped despite the continuing efforts of local police and University authorities. For that reason, we strongly discourage any student from affiliating with the unrecognized group living in this facility, and we urge you not to attend activities there. Anyone who has additional insight about these concerns may notify either the State College Police Department at 814-234-7150 or the Penn State Office of Student Conduct at 814-863-0342.

Sincerely,

Damon Sims
Vice President for Student Affairs
The Pennsylvania State University

Thomas Fountaine
Borough Manager
State College Borough

14 thoughts on “Life on campus during the plague”

  1. From my mole in State College PA: “Our positivity rate in Centre County is 35%”

    Mole is a senior PSU employee in the administration (Director level)

  2. > Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, which was suspended by the University in April 2017 for multiple alcohol, health, and safety violations.

    Lol, they say that like it’s a bad thing. Dean Wormer would be proud.

    • In August 2016, the mission drew to a close and the participants were allowed to exit, feeling the sun and wind on their faces for the first time in a year.

      “When we saw them walk out of that dome, it was pretty shocking,” Gorringe says. “They were pale, had lost weight, their teeth didn’t look very good.”

      They don’t want to defund the State College Police Department – not with that America’s Most Wanted lineup of Public Enemy mugshots. The cops now have their targets selected for them through contact tracing! 33 out of the 60 appear to be white males, and the group is overwhelmingly white. That sounds about right for the future.

  4. The mask is to the Church of Lockdown as the yarmulke is to children of Israel.

    The only difference is that God is to be feared more than covid-19. The faith given to the yarmulke is more grounded in reality than the faith given to the facemask.

    Welcome to the Terrordome.

    • I’ve been reading Turchin for a few years now. He’s achieved some modest recognition through the few hundred thousand elitist readers of The Atlantic, and I agree with him. Coronavirus has indeed exposed a lot of fissures and fault lines, but these things were going to happen anyway.

      “The final trigger of impending collapse, Turchin says, tends to be state insolvency. At some point rising in­security becomes expensive. The elites have to pacify unhappy citizens with handouts and freebies—and when these run out, they have to police dissent and oppress people. Eventually the state exhausts all short-term solutions, and what was heretofore a coherent civilization disintegrates.”

      https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/

      We can try not to, but the elites in this country are quite consciously living in the worlds, their own gated communities, doing everything they can to keep their lifeboats afloat, and now deliberately pushing a lot of people away who want to climb in – for ideological reasons – which is going to accelerate what he’s talking about.

      https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/

      And it’s going to get worse. AI and automation are going to continue to make it much more difficult for people to justify their employment. The lie that it’s going to create more jobs than it destroys is the Marketing Department talking.

    • @Mememe: I feel sorry for these kids, and we’re all in some deep shit, but they’re really the first generation that has ever experienced the crushing force that is coming down on us – not just in terms of their personal freedom, but their economic futures.

      When China entered the WTO in 2001, most of the intelligentsia forecast that it would be a great synergy for the United States and China – that more jobs would be created here to replace the drudgerous and dirty manufacturing jobs that were going to disappear. I drive around in Massachusetts rural towns that have been completely hollowed out – full of Trump supporters, clinging to to some hope that they’d have a return to some kind of dignity that isn’t going to happen. I knew it was a terrible sign when every single College in the United States decided it needed to become a University (including Kean College in New Jersey).

      These kids are caught in a vise that’s going to keep tightening up on them, and they’re all going to be scrambling to get in the remaining Elite Lifeboats. Most of them aren’t going to make it. The gubmint’s money’s gonna run out, no matter what President Harris thinks.

      And we did it to ourselves. Coronavirus has only taken the picture and applied some filters to it.

    • When I was a kid, Kean College was a kind of technical school for people who couldn’t get into Rutgers. Then they decided they needed to be “world class” – as a “University.” And they promise people:

      “At Kean, we believe in offering a world-class education at a price you can afford so you can launch the career of your dreams.”

      Well, the careers of their dreams are a long way away, and the number of those careers is shrinking. They’re competing against other “Universities” who all have people who want the same place in the lifeboat. And we’re not making any more lifeboats.

      The best way to attend Kean University is to live with your parents. You might be there for a long time.

      https://www.kean.edu/offices/financial-aid/cost-attendance

    • @Alex

      Hello to a fellow Garden Stater. To those who are not from here, Kean University used to be Newark State Teachers College, and indeed it tends to produce more teachers than anything else.

    • @Scarlet Number: What exit you from on the Garden State Parkway? 🙂 You don’t have to tell me, and you can probably guess mine already. That’s Jersey, baby.

    • @ScarletNumber: And I don’t mean to disparage Kean College – that’s not what I’m saying. I have friends who attended, when it was still “College.” I think the bloat in higher education overall hasn’t served people well. I used to date a woman who attended Montclair State University and in fact is a secondary school teacher in the NJ system. She’s a wonderful person, and we met completely by accident at a bank where she was working during the summer. You want to talk about a sweet story, it was literally Romeo & Juliet but without anyone dying, thank goodness. I love her dearly to this day and remember her as fondly as anyone possibly can.

    • @ScarletNumber: This was one of the songs. She also loved Mötley Crüe “Girls, Girls, Girls” which I couldn’t quite fathom — but who was I to question that? You know, lots of others, the good stuff.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazHNpt6OTo

      And sadly:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5hWWe-ts2s

      Now I’ve probably told everybody too much, but at least they’re good songs. I hope the kids stuck in their dorms with their masks on at least try to listen to some good music while they’re locked up.

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