St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that gives college kids an excuse to get belligerently drunk. St. Patty’s is glorified at West Virginia University, but is this a good thing for our reputation?
It has been a little bit over a month now since St. Patrick’s Day, but I thought it would be important to shine light on the holiday that arguably cemented WVU as a top party school.
In 2012, the popular college partying social media presence “I’m Shmacked” released a video showing how crazy WVU gets on St. Patrick’s Day. The video went viral and people all around the nation started to think of WVU a little differently.
Months after St. Patrick’s day in 2012, WVU was named the number 1 party school in the nation by the Princeton Review. WVU can give some credit to I’m Shmacked for helping WVU be known universally as a “party school.”
Since the video was released, WVU has been doing all they can to control St. Patrick’s Day. “There’s been a number of significant changes over the last six or seven years related to changing the culture in and around the University and in the community,” said Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston. Since then, there have been changes in residential areas such as Sunnyside and new regulations surrounding Greek life. The city, school, and law enforcement have all been working together to make St. Patrick’s Day a safer holiday in Morgantown. For example, the holiday has been coinciding with spring break the last couple of years.
This past March, St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Sunday, a day where a lot of students were returning from Spring break. “As a result, we have planned on staffing up additional officers to work in our central business district around our nighttime entertainment,” said Police Chief Preston. The police also had extra patrols out during the day. UPD ended up issuing about 30 charges over the holiday weekend. Most of them being ABCC violations.
Of course, WVU Barstool had some quality St. Patrick’s Day content to share with us while advertising for St. Fatty’s Day. St. Fatty’s day took place a week ago at Fat Daddy’s bar in an attempt to break the record for most Jameson shots in one night because, who wouldn’t want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day again.
If you are still unaware of what St. Patrick’s day is like in Morgantown make sure to read this list. Even with police putting in their best efforts to control the wild holiday that is St. Patty’s, WVU students will still find a way to bring out their Irish side for a day. This student chose to document her 2019 St. Patrick’s Day.
My Reputation 
I remember St. Patricks day my sophomore year was crazy, people were skipping classes, everyone was running around the lair. It was also really enjoyable to have a fun night where everyone accepted people into their parties. It has been probably smart that St. Patricks day hasn’t been able to be truly celebrated the last couple years, but it is sad to think about the fun nostalgic times.
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I distinctly remember this video being very popular among West Virginians, and I would love to know more about the impact it had on our social reputation and image. Something that I’d be interested in looking into would be seeing party school statistics prior to the release of this video. Was this when the party reputation began, or was this just something that continued to expand on it? When did it officially begin?
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My Freshman year, St. Patricks day fell on a Friday and it was really cool to see almost the entire student body out an about all in green. And then the next year our spring break was pushed back a week, and conveniently our semester starts a week later next year, so students are still not in town for the beloved holiday. These changes, I believe, are because of the affects of this video. It was bad publicity for the school and they are doing all that they can to prevent this from happening again. I would be curious to see if a few years down the road if spring break doesn’t fall on the holiday, if the town would be as crazy as before considering the students shown in that video would be long gone.
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