There's a 'new
By EVE MARKOWITZ
Collegian Staff Writer
"On the front steps of the apartment building are two of the
evening’s victims. Wearing faded blue jeans and work shirts
4>rand appearing no more than sixteen, years old, they lie
sprawled on the pavement, covering their faces, as if to hide
some tremendous guilt, or perhaps merely to shield them
selves from the glare of street lights. The people who stroll or
stagger by ignore the traumatized couple coftipletely. Even
stranger, the police patrol that passes by regularly also ap
pears oblivious to the plight of these individuals. They are
j.truly non-entities, human refuse, developing rigor mortis in
v the bowels of the city.”
. The above excerpt is proof that just because a guy ends up
in prison he doesn’t necessarily exempt' English 3.
It is part of an essay written for the course by a participant
in Project New View, and though it describes a city scene, it
could just as easily describe the alienation most inmates say
they feel in prison.
O Since 1969, by way of Project New View, qualified inmates
anywhere from 18 months to two and a half years away from
parole have been able to attend classes on campus in order to
earn their baccalaureate degrees.
In spite of the hassles of having to take required, courses for
their majors most of the participants in Project New View say
that they are pleased with it.
Qi “It’ really turned my life around. I feel things happening in
a new direction,” said Dave, 25, who is attending classes on'
campus for the first time this term.
“I’m getting an idea of how to become productive and
benefit myself and society,” he said.
' Dave, convicted of burglary several years ago, said that
Project New View is “the greatest thing that ever happened in
my life.”
■ V “It’s an incredible experience being back in the world that
offers you a second chance when you let it down the first time.
Through this program we really have reached some deeper un
derstanding of the best and the worst.”
Dave and six other inmates are studying on campus this
term via New View. About 20 others are spending their first
three terms in the program at Rockview itself, taking required
courses taught by Penn State professors who commute there
. several evenings a week.
Jo Ann Farr, professor of psychology, taught a course at
Rockview last summer. “I have never taught a more highly
motivated group, of students. There was no un-motivated!
student in the class, she said. “What I found onerous, though,
was the tremendous competition for grades. I think they want
very much out of there. ”
p, One reason for this may be the difficult study conditions at
Rockview. While a study lounge is available, serious
“booking” will inevitably be attempted in the cells..
According to Greg, 28, another inmate on campus this term,
Rockview’s “blocks” of 250 men each can be noisy.
“The TV’s blasting,” he said. “You’re staring at your book
and repeating in your head ‘the standard deviation is, the stan
dard deviation is.’ Someone’s screaming at someone else
Across the hall, he’s gonna get him the first chance he gets.
And the bells—there are bells for everything. It’s rough.”
The participants in the program are good students despite
the difficulties. An intricate screening process at Rockview
allows very few people to participate.
“Out of 3,000 people, believe me it’s hard to find 25 inmates
Bearer of false 1.D., beware of the bouncer's eye
By GEORGE OSGOOD
Collegian Staff Writer
Perhaps the most thankless job in State College belongs to
those individuals called “carders" "proofers," “checkers,”
“bouncers” and a host of less-flattering names. They’re the
ones who guard the front doors in bars and check the iden
tification of everyone who looks younger than Santa Claus.
They are called on to cull the under-21’s from the crowd and
return theta to the mean streets of State College to go dry,
vdefy the dorms’ no-booze policy, or get quietly sloshed in the
"privacy of their own apartments (provided they can get the
liquor).
For most, the ID checkers have all the appeal of a stop sign
and the mercy of Genghis Khan. But they’re just doing their
job, and, unpleasant as that job is, it’s necessary if a bar is to
remain in business.
“I. don’t enjoy it at all,” said Dean Phillips, a bartender
jchecker at the Phyrst and member of State College’s
Municipal Council. “I am strongly in favor of lowering the
drinking age to 18; but until that comes about, 21 is the law and
we have to abide by it."
Checking becomes such an onerous chore that most State
College bars have a system of rotating shifts at the door. Each
bartender works a one-half to two-hour shift, depending on the
volume of business on a given night. All bars are very careful
. jwho they serve, because serving underage people can result in
stiff fines and even revocation of the bar's liquor license if the
Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board discovers more than one
violation in a relatively short period of time.
“If someone comes in with a fake ID or with no ID at all,
he’s asking the bartender and the checker to take two risks,
one from the management and one from the PLCB,” Phillips
said. “All of the bartenders on duty are responsible, not just
living
the one who lets the underage person in. ”
By all indications there is a significant number of people
who try to enter bars usings phony identification. Peter
Biesemeyer, who works at the Rathskeller, says that early in
the term as many as a hundred persons are turned away on a
Friday or Saturday night because of false identification, or
because the person has no identification at all. On football
weekends the total may be even higher, according to
Biesemeyer.
• Peking proof of age is a hard job, and the hardest part of it
IS .. A l,n ® a P® l,Boll that he or she can’t get into a bar.
, « lo .t of people make it very tough on you,” Phillips said.
They insult you and get very upset if you won’t accept their
obviously altered identification. We really try to be firm but
polite,”
Jim Dolphin, who sells beer and checks cards at the
Brewery, agrees with Phillips. “It’s tough sometimes, but we
really try to be polite. We explain to people that we’re just
doing our job and we explain why we can’t let them in,” he
says. “Sometimes people get really abusive but there’s
nothing we can do for them. There’s no way the person is going
to get in if we think an I.D. is false or if a person has ‘forgotten’
his I.D. It’s too big a risk to take, even if you believe the
person.”
In most bars a PLCB card or other legitimate photo I.D. is
necessary for admittance, but the types of I.D.s that people
try to use are quite diverse.
‘I ve gotten some really wierd stuff handed to me as proof
of age,” says Esther Delßosso, a waitress at the Rathskeller.
In the last year or so I’ve been shown British driver’s
licenses, Indian driver’s licenses, high school I.D.s that
people claim are four or five years old, birth certificates,
library cards, and even the ace of spades a couple of times.”
view' at Rockview—and it succeeds
who qualify,” said Dick Conaboy, a New View counselor.
‘You’d be surprised at the number of illiterate people in
prison—the 30 and 40-year-old men who can’t read or write. ”
Conaboy coordinates the program’s “Aftercare Office” in
Boucke where inmates attending classes can sit and relax dur
ing the day. The inmates all have completed their three terms
of requirements at Rockview and are now living together in
Halfway House, a farm in the country. Halfway House res
idents are bused to campus each morning at 8 a.m. and are
bused back'in the evening around 5 p.m.
According to Conaboy, certain crimes exempt prisoners
from being allowed to study on campus. Those convicted of
first degree murder with minimum and maximum life sen
tences aredisqualified.
“We try to stay away from people with hard drug or alcohol
abuse crimes,” Conaboy said. “We try to stay away from
sexual offenders because of the nature of putting them on cam
pus unguarded.”
“First-time offenders normally would be your best bet
because they may have just gotten involved with emotions. If
you get someone who’s been arrested 20 or 30 times you don’t
want to pour an education into him because he’ll probably end
up back in prison.”
Project New View’s recidivism figures are impressive.
Recidivism is the condition of inmates who end up back in jail
after they have been released.
“Our recividist rate is the lowest in the country,” Conaboy
said. Our rate is somewhere around nine per cent where most
national figures show a 50 per cent recidivist rate. ”
Why would a prisoner decide to rack his brains with Math 61,
the history of the Middle Ages or English 3 when he could sit
back and make roadside furniture—which is what they
manufacture at Rockview all day?
One reason is the prison salary. Top pay for an institutional
job, according to Conaboy, is $1.60 a day.
Ed, 42, another inmate serving time for burglary because
“I just got mad,” said, “The work assignments are primarily
there to consume time. New View is an opportunity to be self
* l . «'• '
‘ I get cards from Polish clubs “that you have to be 21 to
belong to,” aviator’s licenses, firearms registrations, and
one time a girl showed me a picture I.D. that belonged to a
friend of mine,” she says.
Despite the diligence of the checkers, people still try. And
undoubtedly, many of them get away with it. There are certain
techniques that are better than others, and particular fake
I.D. s that are of better quality than others. The best fake is
the PLCB card of a friend with the same physical charac
teristics as the person using it. According to Dolphin, this is an
almost foolproof method of getting into a bar.
The most common type of fake is the altered driver’s
license. Underage persons either erase or scrape off the
original date of birth and type in a new one that makes them 21
or older. This is probably the easiest type of phony I.D. to
create, but it also has its drawbacks.
Erasures and scraped I.D.s are the easiest fakes to spot,”
Dolphin says. “You just hold the driver’s liscense up to the
light, and where the erasure or scrape is, the light shows
through.”
Another drawback to this gambit is that if the police
discover an altered driver’s liscense, they invariably
prosecute the bearer. And that can get expensive. Some bars
destroy obviously false I.D.s in the presence of the bearer, and
if he or she refuses to allow the I.D. to be destroyed, the police
are called in. All in all, a messy situation.
One common ploy is for a person over 21 to use his driver’s
license to go into a bar after passing his PLCB card to an
underage companion.
“We get a lot of people trying to get in on someone else’s
cards,” Phillips says. “One guy will come in and show a
driver’s license and a PSU student I.D. and the guy behind
him will have a PLBC card'with the same name on it. That
A weekly look at the life
in the University community
supporting. Whatever dollars society has to spend for this
program is much less than what it has to pay to keep a guy in
prison.”
Ed said it costs the public just under $ll,OOO to support a man
in prison for one year.
One of the recurring controversies about Project New View
arises from its funding. The men are given $24 a week and $l2O
a term for books and clothing. Conaboy said that since state
funding has been reduced and there is no philanthropic money
expected, the program is operating on a low budget. He added
that many of the Rockview students are using veteran benefits
and loans to finance their educations.
“Studying gives you an opportunity to take a good look. If
you’re picking up rocks in a field you don’t take the time to
take that look,” Greg said.
Vegetating in prison isn’t exactly the best preparation for.-
joining the real world again, either, Greg Said.
“What are you going to do if you make roadside furniture for
4 years and they let you out? Make roadside furniture? ’’
"When I got to prison I looked around and said this is a place
I don’t want to spend time in. I was going to make this time
work for me. I’ll never end up back in jail after this because
they took something I can never get back—4 years of my life.”
Tom, 21, a rehabilitation major with a 3.9 average serving
rehabilitation experience” for him.
“I have a confession to make,” he said. “When I first came
into, the program I was playing a lot of games. But I’ve be
come more serious. I see opportunities. I’ve come to see a dis
tinct life in front of me. It’s become a better life, I guess.”
Bill Warnken, a.graduate assistant in English who teaches
English 1 and 3 at the prison, says he hears little complaining
about “revelency” in terms of these courses which one usually
can hear on campus.
“Revelency isn’t so much of a question there as it is here.
Many students have journals and diaries,” Warnken said.
He mentioned Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice" in which
Cleaver asks himself, “Why do I write?” and answers, “To
save myself.”
“They’re not going to become best-selling novelists, but this
can help them,” Warnken said.
The itinerate teachers usually commented that Rockview
classrooms were comfortable ones to teach in.
‘‘AH the students are male, so you don’t have to watch your
language,” said Mike Steffy, a graduate assistant in an
thropology.
Steffy recalled a unique discussion that arose in one of his
anthropology courses at the prison.
“We were discussing the Yanomamo Indians of Venezuela,
where the males, getting involved in shamanistic activities,
take hallocinogenic snuff. So the fellows were interested in this
and a number of them commented that they were in jail for
doing what the Yanomamos did in public. They said that that’s
the place to go.” v
Project New View students are caught on to a special kind of
excitement. It’s an enthusiasm that ifiay not enable them to
forget the past, but it will definitely help them to learn from it.
Be it Venezuela or elsewhere, Project New View students
are enthusiastic about, if not forgetting the past, learning from
it to get somewhere.
We have just make a mistake. We’re not habitual
criminals,” Dave said. “We can just get it together if they give
us a chance.”
happens a lot, and we usually pick it up and ask them to
leave.”
Another standard trick is to get someone’s PLCB card, slit
the plastic covering, and put another picture over the original.
Still another is to get the University to issue a document with
the wrong birthdate on it, according to Dolphin. “We’ll take
college I.D.s as backup, but not that alone,” he says. “Shields
is too easy to fool.”
If checkers are suspicious, they use a number of techniques
to make sure the person presenting the I.D. is the same one to
whom the I.D. was issued. A standard practice is to make the
individual sign his or her name. More than a few people can’t
even correctly spell the name on the I.D. they present, much
less match the signature, according to Dolphin.
“I also ask for addresses and zip codes and check to see if
physical characteristics match,” he says. “My favorite trick
is to ask a person for his zodiac sign. I know all of the signs and
the dates they correspond to, and people with borrowed ones
usually don’t think of checking on that. It usually catches
them.”
A consensus of the bartender-checkers asked said that there
were probably more men than women with altered I.D.s, but
that men usually got more abusive when turned away.
Checking I.D.s isn’t the most pleasant pasttime in the world,
and all of the checkers said they disliked it. Even though visits
by PLCB agents are rare, the threat that they will drop in is
always present, so a tight door-check is necessary at all times.
“It’s no fun, but it’s our job,” Phillips says. “It’s the only
way we can stay open and serve our legitimate customers. We
have absolutely no choice in the matter. We don’t try to get
anyone in trouble, we just don’t let underage people in, that’s
all. And that’s the way it has to be until the laws are changed.”
Friday, October 1, 1976—9
Carefully checking customers’
identification is a thankless job
but a necessary one, if the bar de
sires to keep its liquor license. Es
ther Delßosso, a waitress at the
Rathskeller diligently eyes the
“cards of two students. Delßosso
says she has seen students try to
pass off everything from British
driver’s licenses to library cards
to the ace of spades as proof of age.
Photos by Rex Brier)