Russell Frank knew what he was getting into.
In 1995, after spending the past 20 years in California, Frank moved to State College to take a position as features editor at the Centre Daily Times. His family moved into a house in the Highlands neighborhood, surrounded by fraternities and the late-night antics of Penn State students.
He did his research before moving to the neighborhood, and decided a bit of craziness would still be worth it. He would soon encounter the ‘woo people,’ the boisterous college students who nightly roamed the neighborhood emitting celebratory ‘woos’ and similar noises. In columns for the CDT, and since 2009 for StateCollege.com, Frank has depicted the peculiarities of life in a college town, ‘among the woo people.’
This month, Penn State University Press published ‘Among the Woo People: A Survival Guide for Living in a College Town,’ a collection of about 90 humorous and insightful essays penned by Frank over the past two decades, culled from more than 1,000 columns. They’re both ‘serious and silly,’ Frank says, sometimes both in one piece.
In 1998, Frank, a native New Yorker, moved to a faculty role in Penn State’s College of Communications, where he has been an associate professor since 2004. His new anthology explores not only living near fraternities, but also moving from the newsroom to the classroom, challenges of teaching at one of the nation’s largest universities, raising a family in Central Pennsylvania and local angles on national and world news.
The new book is Frank’s second in the past six years. He holds a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania and in 2011 authored the book ‘Newslore: Contemporary Folklore on the Internet,’
Earlier this year, his work on StateCollege.com was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists Keystone Chapter with first place for the category of Commentary-Non Daily.
Frank talked with us about ‘Among the Woo People’ and the lessons of living in State College for the past 22 years. His columns appear every other Wednesday on StateCollege.com.
SC: What is the origin of the term ‘Woo People?’
RF: I wish I could I say came up with ‘the woo people,’ but it was actually one of my neighbors. The term reminded me of the names of some of the indigenous peoples whose life ways I’d read about in some classic ethnographic works when I was a student, which was what inspired me to write about the students as if i were an anthropologist on a fieldwork expedition.
SC: How did your experience living ‘among the woo people’ compare to your expectations when you first moved to State College?
RF: Before I bought my house I walked the streets of the Highlands and asked everyone I met what the neighborhood was like. The consensus was that the students were loud but mostly harmless — at least to their neighbors. As we well know, they sometimes do great harm to themselves and each other when they’re drunk. I knew what I was getting into, but decided it was worth putting up with some craziness in exchange for being within walking distance of downtown and campus. The bonus was that living there provided so much grist for the column-writing mill.
SC: What are some the lessons you learned about managing life as a working professional while living in the middle of a college student population?
RF: One thing about working amid the hubbub of a newsroom, which i did for about a dozen years, is that you get really good at tuning out noise. Living in the Highlands just felt like more of the same, as far as I was concerned. Except after 2 a.m. That’s when I called the cops — but I only did so four times in 16 years. That’s not too bad.
SC: What were some of the enjoyable things about living where you did?
RF: It’s a particularly neighborly neighborhood. Knowing that living among students isn’t for everyone created a bond among us full-time residents — we like to think we’re made of sterner stuff than folks in the quieter parts of town. Of course, they think we’re nuts. But there were always stories to tell, always some new zaniness to be amused by. I mean, what can be more amusing than finding your car across the street, or thong underwear in the ornamental plum tree or a car door in the flower bed?
SC: You moved a few years back from the Highlands to a different neighborhood. What’s that like compared to where you were?
RF: I’m in East College Heights now, which is just as close to campus but a whole lot quieter, which I’m enjoying — apart from the North Atherton Street traffic, that is. I didn’t leave the Highlands because I got sick of the place, though — it had more to do with my three kids growing up and not wanting to live in a four-bedroom house by myself.
The downside of where I live now: Nothing crazy ever happens here, so there’s nothing to write about. When I visit the Highlands it feels like returning to a town I lived in a long time ago. I think to myself, ‘Oh, yeah, here are all these kids staggering around the neighborhood. I almost forgot about them.’
SC: Drawing from years of columns, what was the process like for deciding which ones you wanted to include? What was the overarching story you wanted to tell with this collection?
RF: I calculated there were about 1,000 columns in the can — 20 years’ worth. We were going to publish less than 100 so it took a long time to decide which ones to include. Complicating matters, not all the columns from my CDT days were electronically archived so I spent a fair amount of time rummaging around in a carton full of yellowing newspaper clippings and paging through a three-ring binder of print-outs that my loyal parents had kept. It was fun reading all this old stuff at first, but I spent ridiculous amounts of time moving columns in and out of the yes, no and maybe piles.
The organizing principle was to focus on raising a family in a student neighborhood, teaching at a big state university and living in the middle of Pennsylvania. Of course, the larger world impinges so there’s also a sprinkling of columns that try to make sense of national and international news. I also strove for a balance between serious and silly, but I’ve always thought that my best columns manage to be serious and silly.
‘Among the Woo People: A Survival Guide for Living in a College Town’ is available for purchase through Penn State University Press here.
