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.