By Zach Geiger
Collegian Staff Writer
Since the start of the semester two weeks ago, State College Police said they have seen a noticeable increase in criminal activity in the borough, despite no major events.
But don’t expect them to be unprepared for the first home football game.
During the weekend of August 20 there were 14 minor law violations, eight DUIs, five incidents of public drunkenness and one non-DUI felony aggravated assault with five defendants, police said.
And last weekend — the first weekend since classes began — police report there was an even larger increase in this type of activity. (more…)

Measure would triple price underage drinking offenders pay

The impact of alcohol-related crimes on municipal government and a proposal to raise the maximum fine for underage drinking to $1,000 will be the focus of a public hearing Monday in State College by the state Senate Majority Policy Committee. Sen. Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, plans this fall to introduce this legislation, which would also allow individual municipalities to “opt in” and charge those found guilty of any drinking-related offenses an extra $100 fee.
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By JEFFREY ROSEN
Published: July 19, 2010

Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.
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By ABBY GOODNOUGH and KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: July 24, 2010

The accident that killed Kathryn Underdown had all the markings of a drunken-driving case. The car that hit her as she rode her bicycle one May evening in Miller Place, N.Y., did not stop, the police said, until it crashed into another vehicle farther down the road.

The driver could not keep her eyes open during an interview with investigators, according to the complaint against her, and her speech was slow and slurred. But the driver told the police that she had not been drinking; instead, the complaint said, she had taken several prescription medications, including a sedative and a muscle relaxant.
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BY TERESA ANN BOECKEL
Daily Record/Sunday News
Updated: 07/10/2010 11:27:54 PM EDT

York County’s district attorney likes having the option; defense lawyers would like to see the mandatory minimum repealed.

Most of the City of York falls within a drug-free school zone, so an adult convicted of even a first-time offense could face time in state prison.

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Sara Ganim and Anne Danahy Centre Daily Times

STATE COLLEGE — The night that freshman Joseph Dado was found dead at the bottom of a campus stairwell, Penn State’s vice president for student affairs, Damon Sims, says he made a conscious decision not to have a knee-jerk reaction.
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FOCUS ON EXCESSIVE DRINKING
Community must find solutions together
Damon Sims and Tom Fountaine

One irony about the problem of dangerous drinking among Penn State students is that it can be either a wedge dividing town and gown or a common cause that binds our community as one.
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The Pennsylvania Superior Court dismissed a Montgomery County Underage Drinking citation where the Commonwealth relied on PBT results as the primary evidence of a sixteen year old’s guilt and introduced no evidence that the device had been calibrated as required by Pennsylvania law. 

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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Penn State University said nearly 30,000 individuals may have had their Social Security numbers exposed because of a privacy breach caused by infected university computers.

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