Kirk French talks Penn State tailgates during Football Friday lecture, Q&A

Penn State anthropology professor Kirk French, who teaches the popular Penn State course ANTH 140, the Anthropology of Alcohol, spoke about his research into alcohol consumption at football tailgates.

Back in 2017, he brought teams of students to Beaver Stadium during and after the tailgates to teach them how to run an anthropology study. He spoke about its process and findings during Friday’s Football Friday lecture and Q&A.

French said his students went to different tailgating lots around campus and interviewed the tailgaters. They gathered information about their age and gender along with how often they tailgate and how much money they spend on alcohol and food.

Though the students got a lot of information, French said there’s a reason he only did this study with his students once.

“There’s a point at which interviewing tailgaters can become almost dangerous,” French said. “Students were like, ‘Hey man, these people were violent. They were yelling at us, telling us to get,’ because they’re drunk already.”

From the interview findings, they found the more expensive lots closer to the stadium spent more on tailgates, as they had hypothesized.

The next day, French said he and his students hit the lots again before the cleaning crews got there to study the trash the partiers left behind.

“It was rough, but 17 students show up to do this, a couple of them had not slept at all, but they were still there to collect data,” he said.

As they expected, they found the more expensive lots had higher rates of alcohol and food compared to the cheaper lots, but all lots had an abundance of cheap alcohol as well. French said he believes the older partiers drink cheap alcohol at Penn State football tailgates because that was what they drank when they were in college.

Though the study hasn’t been repeated because of the students’ experiences with drunk tailgaters, French said the local tailgating and drinking culture was great for introducing students to anthropology.

Katie Knol is a senior majoring in digital/print journalism and political science. To contact her, email her at ktk5187@psu.edu.