Growing up in a college town, I never thought twice about going downtown during the weekend, or eating at a restaurant close by on a Saturday with my family. It simply wasn’t an option. Too many crowds of drunken students, too much noise and “harmless fun” that my parents and grandparents refused to take part in. It’s a bit ironic that my mother, who attended Penn State years ago, warned me against partying and going to fraternities, immediately followed by a side story about partying at Indigo with her friends on her 21st birthday.

When I was younger, I used to say I wanted to go to college anywhere but where I grew up, proudly proclaiming that I didn’t see the point of football games and tailgates, (my family never really attended them) I would never be in a sorority, and I would never go to a party. Much to my dismay, my brother shot my dreams down when he said “you know Veronica, they do that stuff at every college, you won’t get away from it no matter where you go. Unless you go to a liberal arts college with a really bad football team or something.” And I’ll admit, that idea didn’t sound too appealing either.

I don’t know if it was fate, or social constructs, or priming from a young age, but whatever the case may be, I ended up at Penn State, commuting from my home just outside of the college town, walking the same streets I used to mostly avoid, attending those same football games I said I never would. At that first game, although I had no personal ties to the game of football or the players to instill a sense of pride, simply being there surrounded by my fellow students, chanting WE ARE- PENN STATE over and over again sent chills down my spine, and I was proud there for a split second.

I may not agree with the social constructs set in place by my peers, or what almost all of them were going to do following the game, but in that moment, swaying side to side with a bunch of strangers and a few of my friends, I felt at home. I was literally in my hometown, but it was something more than that, I swear. That’s when I started to understand what the big deal really was.

There are a few moral constructs I set for myself from a young age that I have kept, one of those being no swearing (Catholic school kinda scared me out of that one) and another is no alcohol or drugs. Yes, I’m one of those students. I can hear the eye rolling and the sighs from here. This decision alone is enough to ostracize me from certain students and certain events, but perhaps it is in place because of where I was raised. I know what people can do when they lose control because I’ve witnessed it in passing, and I vowed to myself that I’d never be that person.

The idolization of football and the alcohol that pairs with it has been engrained in my head ever since I can remember. Every business I visit has specials just for football weekends, or even just for Penn State students, sometimes even more than they have for senior citizens or veterans. Almost every car I’d watch from my booster seat driving around town with my family had a PSU bumper sticker. Some of my friends in elementary and middle school would discuss game stats and their favorite players during spare moments in class, and I’d politely ignore them. Still, it was everywhere.

When I got a bit older, I started to realize that the town I lived in wouldn’t be nearly as populated, or nearly as adorned with stores or restaurants or movie theaters that I regularly attended, if Penn State ceased to exist. I decided, much like an elderly resident who doesn’t have season tickets, that I would happily coexist with the college as long as I could live in its happy little surrounding bubble.

These ideologies presented themselves mostly as unconscious biases that I held within myself, and my personal biases are very different than those of my classmates whose families when tailgating every weekend, but even still, they resulted from being raised in a very specific culture of a college town. The assumption that all college students are slutty underage partiers who don’t care about studying is wrong, but that’s how it appears from the outside looking in. It’s what I wrongly assumed for the first half of my life, because that’s what I was told.

The #1 Party School Podcast presented by This American Life supports these same ideologies, that a school in the Northeast with a high ranked football team, fraternities, and a rural setting results in wild partying, students peeing in neighbors lawns, unearthing street signs, getting into physical confrontations, raping each other, and even ending up in the emergency room due to alcohol poisoning. I’ve seen it, or heard it through the grapevine, in the news, on TV, and I believe it. Though I will say, just like the majority of other media, their portrayal is a bit dramatized to enhance entertainment.

I remember a few years back, the only Arby’s in State College closed down after a car drove right through the front windows on a particularly crazy weekend. A few weeks later, the building had been completely repaired, and Arby’s quietly closed down. I remember not paying any mind because I didn’t care for Arby’s too much. After all, I could just go to Subway. Every few years my family would casually mention that another student fell out of a window to their death after drinking too much at a party, or that another student had committed suicide jumping off one of those giant cranes they were using to build those particularly tall apartment buildings. I would listen in silence, express my condolences for their family, saying I can’t even imagine, then go back to whatever I was doing.

During the day, as I power walk through campus to make it to my next class, I notice that everyone else bustling around alongside me, just trying to get their education in for the day, looks oddly innocent and even admirable. Those same streets, and those same people, come nightfall, doing unthinkable things, will leave a bad taste in any passerby’s mouth. It is this very love-hate relationship that keeps our campus alive. After all, we are Penn State, all of us. We are proud, in blind support of everything we stand for, and we are a force to be reckoned with. Despite the debris inevitably littered throughout the streets by night, by day, our buildings and statues stand tall, seemingly untouched.

I wish I could say that despite everything I have mentioned, I am one of many who bleed blue and white, without as shadow of a doubt. The truth is, I am still very skeptical when it comes to this town and those who inhabit it. However, one thing is for certain. I expect to be educated not only academically but socially and environmentally as well in my time at Penn State. I know there is still a lot for me to learn about my hometown and its history, and a lot to gain from feeling connected to this place. I wish anyone reading this, whether a student, teacher, administrator, or even just a passerby, as I once was long ago, a positive experience in whatever environment they find themselves in. It is in these communities that we highlight each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and thereby improve upon ourselves and our neighbors.

There is a certain strength in numbers, enough to move any single person. I felt that at my first game two Saturdays ago, and it may seem silly, but it’s small moments like these that keep us going, that stir our emotions to spark change. I hope to do just that.