Penn State Plans 'Full-Court Press' to Prevent Tailgating at Beaver Stadium
Penn State will host Ohio State on Halloween for its first home football game in 11 months. It's the biggest game of the Lions' season on a de facto national holiday for college students.
As a result, Penn State President Eric Barron already is imploring students and fans to stay away from Beaver Stadium that weekend.
"Please don’t come into our community," Barron said during a recent Penn State virtual town hall to discuss the university's response to COVID-19. "If you enjoy football and you enjoy those other fall sports, we need you to keep our community safe. That’s the only way we can keep playing."
During the Sept. 23 town hall presentation, Barron called Penn State's situation regarding virus mitigation "challenging" but said the university will continue to conduct in-person classes. Barron said that hospitalizations for COVID-19 remain at "very low levels" and that students are not passing the virus to faculty. Through Sept. 28, Penn State had reported 701 active cases of COVID-19 among students and none among employees.
To help maintain in-person classes, Barron said that fans will be discouraged from even visiting State College on football weekends. Parking lots and campus spaces will be closed for Penn State's four home football games this season, Barron said. Penn State is scheduled to host two of those games before the planned end to in-person classes Nov. 20.
As part of the vote to restore the 2020 Big Ten football season, Barron said that conference presidents and chancellors agreed to prohibit both public ticket sales and tailgating for all games. Further, Barron said that the university plans a "full-court press" with its public messaging about tailgating.
"A lot of these questions [in the town hall] addressed what it is I worry about all of the time," Barron said. "This is probably, in all of those different strategies, the thing that we worry about the most. ... [Tailgating] may be something that is difficult to stop, but we are going to do our best with a full-court press, working with community members, working with the borough, working with the townships, working with our students."
Barron also explained what prompted him to change his Aug. 11 vote to postpone Big Ten fall sports seasons. He cited several factors, notably the development of daily antigen rapid testing for players and the designation of a chief infection officer at each university.
"As soon as I listened to the strategies that were going to be employed, and then listened to one medical expert after another at the different Big Ten universities who, one by one, said under these conditions we could play, I changed my vote," Barron said. "But we're going to work hard to make sure that we continue to be safe, and if those protocols fall down, we will not play that game."
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