While listening to this podcast about Penn State, my college, I felt overwhelmed by the size of the partying and binge drinking issue. As a Penn State student, I cannot say I was necessarily ashamed of this ranking, however, I was not exactly proud of it either. Using the audio clips of nights in town was a very apt portrayal of a typical Penn State weekend. Listening to the descriptions from the narrator placed me right into the scene and I could practically feel myself out in town, surrounded by hundreds of fellow drunk Penn Staters.
In the first two acts, ethos played an important role in for the arguer’s point of view. Listening to the State College residents talk about their property being violated strongly supported the fact that it is not morally right to damage another person’s property. On the other hand, students who were interviewed presented a rather weak ethical argument. There is not a lot that a student can say that would justify drunken acts such as urinating in someone’s lawn or pulling a street sign out of the ground.
Pathos was clearly present in the interviews of staff members and students. As faculty and staff spoke about the Penn State University binge drinking issue, it immediately invoked a sense of helplessness. These employees give everything possible to help students to be safe and most of their time and effort goes to waste. Another obvious pathos appeal was the student interview with the fraternity brother who gave the shots of whiskey to the freshman boy who died. In the interview, the brother became very emotional at the idea of how an innocent and normal night went so horribly wrong. As I listened to him, I thought about my own weekends and whether something like this could happen.
While listening to the podcast, I think I was most confused by the State College residents who complained about noise, drinking, and partying. Although I agree that all of those things can be frustrating to residents, I think that State College residents need to realize that living in a town that is so close to a large university is bound to have those issues. There are no ways to get around them, unfortunately. Residents need to realize that living in a college town means dealing with the college life that surrounds them.
The piece does an excellent job of appealing to logos using facts and statistics. For every claim, there are statistics and studies that back it up. For example, they use the statistic that “one quarter of students say drinking has led them to miss class or fall behind in school.” These concrete numbers make the partying issue much more real than just the general claims.
Many definitions are at stake in this piece. Smalls things, such as jackets worn to frats called “frackets”, or the “drunk bus” which refers to the CATA bus that takes hundreds of drunk and singing students downtown every night. On a larger scale, the definition of a party school plays an important role in the piece. It fits all of the criteria for a heavy drinking school, which includes the large amount of fraternities. Overall, this piece defines Penn State University as an out of control party school with a serious binge-drinking problem. Our academic success is not represented so it leaves merely the social aspect to define the school. In combination with the student interviews and the definition of PSU, the students are defined as oblivious and carefree people who do not realize the seriousness of the issue. And finally, the faculty is defined as caring and worried employees who care about the students and the reputation of the university as a whole.
