Fleeting fun on campus

Hey Day is on the ropes. Penn's administration has made it clear that if the two-year-old "Hey Deja vu" -- where the seniors pelt the juniors with whatever's handy -- isn't curtailed, Hey Day will cease to be. Since I'm a junior, and given that I don't particularly like being struck with blunt objects, I hope the seniors tone it down.

However, the realization that a 75-year-old tradition could be canceled because of a few bad apples made me think about some of the other Penn traditions and customs that have been shut down. There has been, for a long time now, a steady "de-fun-ification" of Penn. In its wake, many things once loved have been left to rot.

The Palladium is three years banished. The Field Cry has long been censored. Spring Fling is ever more neutered. Fraternities are largely evicted from Locust Walk. And what was once a high-ball toast is now the Pepperidge Farm throw.

What's responsible for the long-term erosion of student freedoms is a three-headed monster born more than 20 years ago -- a combination of legal liability, political correctness and helicopter parents.

"The infantilization of students and the denial of their autonomous adult status really begins in the '80s," History professor Alan Charles Kors, a respected defender of student rights, said.

The legal liability factor is composed of two related threads. The first traces back to 1988, when Pennsylvania legislated that universities could be held liable for furnishing alcohol to minors if underage drinking occurs on property owned or controlled by the them. "As a consequence specifically of that law, the University had to change its administrative relationship to students, because the institution is breaking the law," explained Director of Student Life Fran Walker, who was at Penn during that time.

The second arose from a general nationwide fear of personal-injury lawsuits. "Unfortunately, in a litigious society, universities increasingly need to rely on an affirmative defense to show whatever happened, happened despite their best efforts," Kors said. Penn, legally vulnerable and not thinking of student freedom as martyrdom-worthy, buckled and began to crack down on college excesses.

Walker doesn't disagree.

"The whole legal climate has changed," she said. "That's mostly because of lawsuits. ... Anybody who is unhappy with anything a university does immediately takes it to court."

The political correctness part of this equation is more subtle, but it's there nonetheless. Take the Field Cry as an example. The song, once sung loudly at football and basketball games, unofficially contains the phrase: "Any ice today lady? No? Fuck you!" "At one point, people listening on the radio complained that they could hear the 'Fuck you!'" 1989 College alumnus Robert Tintner explained. "The administration told us we couldn't say that." But when this didn't stop the fans, "they told the band that if they kept playing the song they wouldn't be permitted to play," he said.

The song was soon gone from the Palestra.

Political correctness also reared its ugly head last year during the high-rise sex-photo incident. Fortunately, events did not spiral into the same level of lunacy as the infamous Water Buffalo affair of 1991, but the potential was there -- an overly PC sexual harassment code and a very public "violation."

The third factor is the phenomenon of helicopter parents.

Overprotective, nosy and generally annoying, helicopter parents make their opinions constantly heard. The cycle of in loco parentis -- the idea that colleges become students' parents -- "goes up and down, and this happens to be a cycle when parents think the university should be much stronger in taking care of their students. This generation of parents is on the phone at any possible opportunity," Walker said.

Penn's administrators have to do an awkward dance. They know the realities of campus life -- that college students drink, do drugs, make a mess and are generally obnoxious. Yet they have to pretend for the outside world that they're doing everything they can to eradicate such behavior. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to placate the monster constantly scratching at their door.

"Living under what you see as an oppressive set of regulations is a difficult place to be," Walker said. "But it doesn't mean that we have much choice in the matter."

I hate to wax poetic about the good old days, but I think in Penn's case there actually were good old days. The 1960s was a liberating time for college campuses, and from then into the early 1980s, Penn really was a hell of an enjoyable place to be. A zoo, maybe, but fun.

It's sad to know that a campus once so vibrant is now so sterilized.

Alex Weinstein is a junior history major from Bridgeport, W.V. Straight to Hell appears on Thursdays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.