0:19:24 to 0:19:55( Edit History Discussion )

I want to tell you a story about that: I have been giving talks ever since I came here about the drinking problem, for I see it as the greatest opportunity for student government of the Penn State student body to earn respect of everyone in the community, in the University, among the alumni, and in the media, and to reach the point where student government is listened to with respect and accepted as an indispensable part of the Penn State governance.

0:20:35 to 0:21:43( Edit History Discussion )

In early December I had lunch with the mayor of State College borough, William Welch. Now if any of you were following the Collegian last fall—I wasn't here [in the fall], but before that I followed the Collegian for the past couple of years—you'd find that you would get the impression that Bill Welch really doesn't like students, and that Bill Welch is the [co-]chairman of President Spanier's Alcohol Task Force designed to harass the daylights out of you on drinking. He was in favor of the 'tap tax', that tax that would have put a 10% tax on every drink bought in State College, and a lot of other things. So this is the man I'm talking about. When it comes to alcohol and soforth, he's been very, very critical of students, and very in-favor of the harshest reactions to student drinking back then. Many of you have been very upset with many of the things he has been for.

0:22:21 to 0:23:23( Edit History Discussion )

You would think that the last thing that he wanted to hear was a 2,500-year old argument from Plato about drinking parties being good things for college students. So what was his reaction? I had no sooner started to tell him about it and pull out the book that he said "don't bother Ben, I know that story, I know Plato's argument." He said that was the argument that fundamentally students followed until about 1970 at Penn State. That was back in the period when they started the Phi Psi 500, and a lot of other things, when the borough was all in-favor of those things. He said "yeah, student drinking then was great." There was always some incident, but those where looked at as expectations. Most of the time they were pretty much under control and students could drink like fish and everyone loved them.

0:24:15 to 0:25:26( Edit History Discussion )

So, people drank. I won't go further into that, but drinking was pretty much welcomed and not much of a problem. I don't think that there is a student in this room, expect maybe one or two who have heard me before, that knows or understands how it was that the worst enemy actually agrees with drinking parties by college students. I'm not going to go through Plato's argument here, we'll save that for another time, but I hope that I've gotten you interested in it. But I will say this: you could utterly reverse the brough's attitudes towards students and drinking parties if you were willing to start listening to a few old stories. You would find that people around you, if you put them in terms of those old stories, might think "boy, you're pretty smart" and probably support you in a lot more things that you want to do. You could get credit for solving the problem that Graham Spanier hasn't been able to solve at all.