Entry 5: Party School

The issue that This American Life is discussing is the naming of Penn State as the number one party school in America. They talk about how the drinking at Penn State is hurting students, and the community. First, the students grades and health are being worsened by the amount of drinking they do. Some students can't keep up with their school work after long nights. It is also hurting the community because drunken students can damage property and other people's belongings. And drunken students just create havoc in the surrounding communities.

The audience is people that listen to this program regularly. Their usual audience is middle aged adults, so they try to gear their discussions towards that group. This is why they bring up the topic of students also hurting the communities. Since their listeners aren't students, This American Life had to get their listeners connected. By saying that drunk students were damaging communities, the program was getting their older audience more connected.

The facts they present are mostly from interviews with various members of the community. Residents, policemen, and even pizza delivery guys. They all give insight to what the drunk students actually do, and the damage they cause. The resident said that people pee on their property and pull out road signs. The cop talked about continually getting calls about drunk kids walking into other people's homes and falling asleep in them. The delivery guy also had many stories about hungry drunks.

The conclusion they seem to draw is that from the outside, it looks like the drinking is causing harm, but from the inside people don't seem to mind it. The students love Penn State the way it is and they keep coming back and they keep giving back. So, if everyone loves Penn State the way it is, should they try to change?

They used a lot of dialogue in this piece. I will try to use dialogue in mine, so listening to this did give me some insight into how I could do that. But, I probably will not use as much as this piece did.

I did like listening to it. The amount of interviews they did enabled them to have many interesting and entertaining stories so those were fun to listen to.