We Are! Not Drunk!

The Daily Hampshire Gazette reports that Penn State University paid local bars and restaurants $186,000 to cease selling alcohol on March 1, a booze-fueled quasi-holiday known among students at “State Patty’s Day.” The university combined with local officials to produce another $25,000 to beer distributors to halt keg ad case sales that same day.

“That was probably the more significant strategy in reducing problems over the last two years,” State College Borough Police Chief Thomas King said in a telephone interview. “The problem is sustaining that over the long term because of the cost.”

“The campus and the town have been vexed by State Patty’s Day since its inception, but we’ve found a formula that has whittled it away to the point that it is no longer the problem it once was,” Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims said on the college’s online news site.

Proof of success? Local police arrested more than 200 partiers last year; the number this year was roughly half that.