April 2, 2012 • 23 mins
The origin of spring break dates back to a Colgate University swim coach, and Fort Lauderdale was the first spring break capitol. Tune in to learn more about spring break, along with the relationship between spring break and sexual health.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Kristen. If I
(00:20):
had asked you a week ago what you thought were
the origins of Springbreak, what would have been your guests?
Someone had a hose, and someone was wearing what a
T shirt? A what T shirt contest? Maybe, and then
got what Yeah, someone ran through a sprinkler on a
beach somehow, and someone was serving jello and accidentally like whoops,
(00:43):
and Daisy poured a lot of vodka into it. I
like it that that's creative, but it's not at all
close to the origins of Springbreak in real life. Not
not a bunch of just happenstance mistakes that leads to
drunkenness and and wet T shirts. Not a series of
happy accident more like one happy accident. And then once
upon a time we had the casino pool in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
(01:07):
And so backing up a little bit, I'm getting ahead
of myself. It was cold up at Colgate University and
the swim coach did not want his students to get
out of shape over Christmas break. So one of his
students father, suggested that the team come down to Fort
Lauderdale and practice at the Casino Pool, which was the
first Olympic sized pool in Florida. It had been built
(01:28):
in the nineteen twenties. And so we did. So. All
these swimmers come down to Fort Lauderdale and they're enjoying
the warm weather and the warm welcome, and as it
tends to do, words spread among college students that this
was a cool thing to do, and the spring break
was born. And this is in nineteen thirty six that
Ingram first springs that Colgate University swim team down. I
(01:52):
had no idea that spring break, yeah, in the thirties,
even though some might say that, hey, the idea of
a spring celebration can be traced back to Greek and
Roman times with the bacchanals and the changing of the
seasons and he's getting warm, let's pour a bunch of wine,
um and but really, in the United States it started
(02:15):
more in the thirties. Although once you have kids going
off to college men and women, and the advent of
the car and the road trip. Then you start to
get kids getting a little frisky when they have some
time off from school. But the idea of spring break
and this whole let's go to the beach and have
a real good time starts all because of Fort Lauderdale
(02:39):
and this casino pool and Sam Ingram, who was yeah,
really really concerned about his swift but all that Christmas
Ham he was worried that they would get little swimmers guts.
So yeah, in six he brought the team down and
by eight more than three hundred swimmers were competing in
the college Coaches swim for um, this casino pool, and
(03:02):
according to the New York Times, a bucan All was born. Yeah.
The first mention of spring Break in Time magazine happened
in nineteen fifty nine, I believe, where one of the
revelers commented, it's not that we drink so much. It's
just that we drink beer all the time, right, so
(03:24):
keep it going. So little has changed since those early days.
And then in nineteen sixty spring break really enters into
mainstream culture with the Hollywood production Where the Boys Are,
which is a movie based on a book by the
same name starring George Hamilton's that h star of yesteryear
(03:47):
who was always so damned, always so damn. I think
I have a purse the color of George Hamilton. That's
actually the color. It's George Hamilton's Hamilton. Um. And it's
about these four midwestern college girls who spend their spring
break in where else, Fort Lauderdale, the first capital of
spring break. And I like how the plot line revolves
(04:08):
around all of their different ideas of premarital sex. Like
the main character is sort of the headstrong feminist who's
like prematal sex and say okay by me, And then
she meets George Hamilton and she's like, I could have
premarital sex with George Hamilton's But then the moral of
the story in this nineties sixty film is that she
doesn't have to do it before she's ready, right, And
(04:29):
that is the moral of spring Break as well. Um.
And by the seventies, this is according to Time Magazine's
brief History of spring Break, which is very interesting and
tells me all sorts of things that I had no
idea about. But they say that by the seventies things
started to get a little raunchier. There was a lot
of gratuitous PDA and balcony diving, which is when kids
(04:49):
would jump from one balcony to the other to try
to get to people's rooms. And there's actually a study
out there about spring break syndrome, which is referring to
the number are of accidental free fall injuries in spring
break atmosphere and how they're different from like, let's say,
a side impact injury of a car wreck. So all
these kids getting drunk and jumping from balcony to balcony,
(05:13):
a term was coined that reminds me of yoga drop foot.
It's from the from the yoga episode where very specific
injury um And then by nine five, more than three
hundred and seventy thousand students were heading to Fort Lauderdale
every year for spring break and things were getting out
of control. The mayor of Fort Lauderdale started freaking out
(05:36):
about it. Police started freaking out. In seventies, there were
a number of arrests that were happening every year on
the beach because kids were getting out of hand. A
lot of spring break syndrome spreading everywhere. People not falling
off of balconies but just just falling rights. Other types
of spring break syndromes, and you mentioned the mayor. He
(05:57):
actually went on Good Morning America to publicly state that
students were not welcome in his town anymore. And former
city Commissioner Robert Cox told The New York Times that
the commission voted to purchase a riot tank with a
water cannon to counteract any potential student rampages. And he
didn't stop there. Not only did he buy a freaking
riot tank, but when he became mayor, streets were reconfigured
(06:20):
to discourage cruising, and high end hotels and restaurants were
played the lower end student attracting dive bars and things.
So the thing that I was expecting with this idea
of talking about spring break for a podcast was that
it would start, I don't know, in the in the
eighties or the nineties. It's something a product of MTV
(06:42):
because growing up, MTV always had their televised spring break
weeks and it was a lot of you know, bands
and drinking and wet t shirt contests. But the fact
of the matter is that ever since large groups of
college kids have gathered in a war locale since the
late nineteen thirties, trouble has ensued. It's all swimmers faults.
(07:07):
It's it's dar Northern swimmers. But MTV does play a
role in this. In nineteen eighties six MTVS spring Break
debuted in beautiful Daytona Beach, not Fort Lauderdown. And I
think this is a really good example of popular culture
feeding what goes into the media, which then feeds back
(07:27):
into popular culture. And MTV Vice president Doug Hartzog said
that spring Break is a youth culture event. We wanted
to be a part of it for that reason. It
makes good sense for us to come down and go
live from the center of it because obviously the people
there are the kinds of people who watch MTV, so
it's a cycle. Like he saw these young people doing
all these crazy things and thought, yes, we need to
(07:48):
be a part of that. We need to put it
on TV to get more people watching it to boost
our ratings. And then the more people who watch MTV
spring Break, the more people go down to MTV spring Break.
Right because cements this idea in our our young and
impressionable minds, said hey, you know, for that one week
in March or April, that's what we're supposed to do, right,
(08:08):
black out every night, jello shot, not like what I
did my freshman year of college, which was go to
New York City in March. It was freezing and at
the same time that I went to New York City
with my friends. I don't know why I'm pointing down
New York City is up anyway, When when I went
to New York City and it was freezing and I
was wearing sweaters and standing in line to see Conan O'Brien,
(08:30):
my roommate went to Florida and one a wet t
shirt contest, which I think illustrates different perspectives very well.
The only spring break that I can remember making into
some kind of occasion during college because I was I
was probably working most spring breaks. Um was one beach
trip that my friends and I took camping down on St. Augustine.
(08:55):
But the way the timing of spring break was an
early early March and it was still cold, and I
remember going out there sitting on the beach with my
my swimsuit on but wrapped up in a top towel,
determined to have some fun in the freezing cold sun.
And there was these wind gusts would kick up and
(09:17):
just blow sand all over us, and UH and I
went home a day early. Yeah, I had a similar
experience when I was in middle school. Every year I
went to my aunt and uncle's house in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Same thing. I actually got bronchitis one year because it
was so cold that I was determined to go in
the pool. I'm gonna have fun. And yet again, we
(09:38):
drewn ourselves into Kathy comics from a young age. Not
on a more serious note, we do have to address
the wrist here behavior that does tend to go hand
in hand with these spring break romps. Yeah. A two
thousand and six study in the Annals of Tourism Research
found that students appear to participate in risk your behaviors
(10:01):
in the spring break environment then at home. And this
sounds like a no brainer. I mean, if you've ever
been to spring breaker, won't watch spring break shows on MTV,
you know that people are acting kind of crazy. Um,
But they look at why this is happening and they
found that it's your personal normative beliefs and situational expectations
that predict your intentions to binge, drink and take part
(10:23):
in it while you're on spring break. So basically it's
that thing of saying, hey, you know what I'm going
on spring break? I've seen what spring break looks like
um on MTV and in the nineteen sixty film where
the boys are starring George Hamilton's and I am expecting
to go down and have a party filled weekend and
I'm just gonna go bonkers, right, And similarly, intentions for
(10:46):
casual sex were predicted by attitudes again personal normative beliefs
and expectations, but the actual engagement in casual sex was
predicted by prior experience with it. So you might go
down thinking, oh, yeah, I'm gonna have all of this
crazy spring break sex and drinking, and then your actual
actions might not measure up exactly. And then the most
(11:09):
disconcerting finding from this two thousand six study was that
a majority of students who did in fact engage in
sexual activity rarely or never used condoms during spring break. Yeah,
that is scary. That's a lot of unprotected sex happening
with a lot of possibly intoxicated people. But speaking of numbers,
let's put some percentages around how many what proportion of
(11:33):
students are having sex? This is a little bit dated.
A n study of Canadian students from the Journal of
Sex Research. I found that not too surprisingly, more men
than women intended to have casual sex on spring break.
But when the numbers all shook out, the percentages of
guys and gals who actually did it pretty similar fifteen
(11:55):
percent of men and of women. So maybe the casual
sex not as rampant as we think could be. Maybe
people are just talking it up. And one thing that
researchers looked at in a in a two thousand and
six study from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol was
comparing springbreak behavior to normal behavior, because it could be
(12:16):
that people are never drinking during the year and going
crazy on spring break, or that they're drinking all the
time and it just continues when they go on vacation.
And so they conducted phone interviews with one hundred and
seventy six freshmen students over ten weeks to learn about
their typical behaviors and found that the people who drank
more during the regular semester are men, members of fraternities
(12:37):
and sororities, students on spring break, and those with higher
fun social expectancies, So the people who are just expecting
to have a better, more wild time in college. And
they found that alcohol used did not actually increase during
springbreak in general, but spring break travelers increased their alcohol
(12:57):
use during springbreak. So it's the been week. It was
the wake up crack of beer instead of having coffee
and just go until you can't go no more. And
that finding echoes the quote that you said earlier from
time about it's not that we drink so much that
we drink all the time. That's from nineteen Well, and
now that there's the whole thing of leaving the US
(13:18):
going to destinations like Cancoon where the drinking age is
eighteen to make it even easier, and then you go
to an all inclusive resort and it's just fountains of
mimosas and hurricanes. That is quite a bachan all. Yes,
So now that we've covered the risks and established the
fact that, yes, indeed, a lot of alcohol is consumed
(13:40):
on spring break and has been since the dawn of
spring break, let's talk about the business end of this, right,
because all of this alcohol consumption and hotel stays and
restaurant eating, well not eating of restaurants, but eating at restaurants.
Just to clarify, although some of those drunks because probably
have attempted to eat a shoot on a on a restaurant. Um. Yes,
(14:04):
so this means that business is booming in these springbreak towns.
And according to the Houston Chronicle on March eighteenth, hotel
bookings for Texas Week, which I had never heard of,
but I guess it's the big springbreak event of Texas
of Texas which ran from March eleventh. Um, we're at capacity,
according to the special event coordinator for the South Padre
(14:26):
Island Convention and Visitors Bureau. I actually know someone who
spent springbreak in South Padre Island and I did not
look at her pictures because I just think they'd be crazy.
And apparently South Padre Island is popping. And it's interesting,
Caroline that you mentioned that you did not choose to
look at her pictures, which I'm assuming we're posted on
(14:46):
the social network called Facebook. Because social media supposedly is
tamping down on the springbreak fund. These college students, who
have largely grown up with social media are so aware
of how easily they can be caught and broadcast doing
(15:08):
things such as wet T shirt contests and jello shots,
that they aren't partying as hard as they used to
be we'll see. Yeah. The New York Times identifies this
as a trend, but I question how much of a
trend it actually is. It might just it might just
be a part of these kids lives now because Facebook
is everything on Facebook and the internet is I mean,
(15:28):
it's just so prevalent and it's all intertwined, and it
might just be more of an attitude that they have now,
like Okay, well, I'm still going to go down and
have fun. I just don't want people taking pictures of
me so that potential employers will see them, you know,
because I feel like when I was in college facebook
uh or I got on Facebook in two thousand four,
which was my sophomore year of college, so I still
(15:49):
wasn't even for the rest of college. I wasn't thinking
about like, oh my gosh, someone's gonna see a picture
of me holding a beer and I'm gonna lose a job.
But maybe it's just so prevalent now that kids are
are really worried about it. And one year old bartender
is quoted in the Story of saying that the students
she sees are very prudish and that ten years ago
people were doing filthy, filthy things but it wasn't posted
(16:10):
on Facebook, So there's a little bit of nostalgia from
a year old. In a commentary about that New York
Times trend Peace, the blog Jezebel also brings up this
issue of whether or not women women are being more
slut shamed into sort of tamping down on their cruisier
spring break activity, because you also have to remember the
(16:31):
out of spring break culture. We have the whole girl's
Gone wild culture of filming pretty young women who are
usually pretty intoxicated, doing some pretty sexy types of things, right,
And I mean, I think I've told you this before, Kristen,
but my dad's only advice to me when I was
(16:52):
going to college was don't let me see you want
a commercial at three in the morning. So it is
a concern out there that our young ladies, are young
college ladies, will end up victims of girls gone wild.
But this, the whole social media thing, really isn't killing
springbreak revelry. I mean, plenty of people are still going.
And all these articles coming out of Florida this month
(17:14):
reporting on the spring break craziness down there basically said
that hotel occupancy is up in spite of the recession.
It's incredible. I saw on I think it was from
US News and World Report. The average college student will
spend eleven hundred dollars on a spring break getaway. This
is in a recession economy. I couldn't even do that
(17:35):
before the recession when I was in college. The Sun
Sentine Law March twelve reported that the Greater Fort Lauderdale
Convention and Visitors Bureau expected about one million visitors to
Broward County alone, and those one million visitors were expected
to spend oh, I don't know, just about a billion dollars.
So even though they are all these towns in Florida
(17:56):
who back in the eighties were like, enough, we don't
want to be that kind of town own. We don't
want to have a week long disruption in our lives.
They're finding ways to still attract and draw visitors, but
just hoping that it's not the same like craziness that
was so common in the eighties, not all that spring
break syndrome and balcony hopping spreading around, right, Because they're
(18:17):
actually attracting a lot of not just college students, but
some of the hotel people that they talked to for
this article, we're saying that there were a lot of
convention people and families to go down to the beach
for spring break, So there's a mix. Although I would
not want to be a family staying in a hotel
with a bunch of springbreak college kids. I would try
to stay somewhere. Yeah, I mean, that's got to be
part of the give and take of of being a
(18:38):
tourism driven city. Um. But we've been talking all about
this debauchery that goes along with springbreak because I think
that we can pretty conclusively say that the history of
springbreak has been kids getting in cars and planes and
going to a hot location to drink alcohol swimmers. But
there's also been the more recent rise of alternative spring breaks,
(19:02):
which is great. There are new options for going and
using your time to improve the world in a way,
whether that's doing um clean up after Hurricane Katrina, or
going to more remote location to do some kind of
humanitarian outreach, educating yourself, doing outward bound trips. Right, and
(19:24):
there's Breakaway, which is a nonprofit that provides training to colleges, universities,
and other nonprofits interested in creating lifelong, active citizens according
to their website, and so this is for people who, yeah,
who want to participate in things like Habitat for Humanity
and help build houses and things like that on spring
break and help better their community or you know, a
(19:44):
far away community, if they so choose, instead of going
and getting drunk. Right now, let's say that the alternative
spring break is probably one of the most positive outcomes
of springbreak. Not to say that when I was in college,
I did not look forward to having that week off,
and may be I did walk into this podcast a
little bitter that I don't still have that time off,
(20:06):
because I have friends who are now getting their masters,
are there in law school, and this is the time
when they're all going on spring break. Now I almost
forget what springbreak was like. It must have been so
nice for me to not do homework for a week,
to be able to sleep late shivering in New York City.
That was only one year. I honestly don't remember what
(20:27):
I did for springbreak for the rest of college. So
I hope that listeners will consider this our kind of
spring break gift to ourselves. Just just a fun little
podcast trying to figure out where this strange bakan all
came from, and it really just came from that sun
and alcohol and cheap airfare and George Hamilton's and my purse.
(20:50):
So please tell us about what you did or currently
do during spring break uh in college, if you went wilder,
if you maybe did some all turnative spring break stuff.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
send those letters. And we've had a couple of letters
here to share from our episode on women's wrestling, and
this first one is from Andrew, who is a big
(21:13):
fan of professional wrestling, and he writes. In recent years,
ww e's hiring policy of women has been to hire
models and train them to wrestle. Usually this sends up
poorly in the matches are train wrecks. However, ww E
has hired some women who are very talented who started
out on the independent wrestling scene, trained by themselves because
they loved what they did. Beth Phoenix, Nataila need Heart,
(21:36):
and Karma and ww E are good examples. Some of
the models even took to wrestling well, like Eve Torres,
who trains in Brazilian jiu jitsu. The independent scene has
a vast array of talents, such as Sarah Delray, cheerleader
Melissa and Mischief, whose day job consists of being a microbiologist.
If you want to check out a promotion in the
U s as talented female wrestlers, check out the Shimmer promotion,
(21:59):
and the promotion is based more off the wrestling than
sex appeal. So thanks for that insight on women and wrestling, Andrew. Okay,
this is from Shane. He has some thoughts to share
in wrestling as well. Um, I can get behind the
mixed wrestling at the college level, and I can get
behind more opportunities for girls wrestling at the high school level.
I don't think I can get behind mixed wrestling at
(22:20):
the high school level. And here is why. High school
is a time when boys and girls are learning appropriate
behavior in relation to sexuality. It is also a time
when hormones are running wild. While listening to your podcast,
I tried to think about what it was like for
me when I was in high school. Wrestling with a
girl would have posed some awkward problems. This sort of
a situation is just asking for an unintended sexual harassment suit,
(22:43):
not to mention the social stress associated. So thanks, that
makes sense. I can see how there could be some
some awkwardness in that tiny, tiny ring or Matt on
the mat. I would say ring for Matt you're thinking
of de wut you kids wrestling in the DeFi also
(23:04):
would be its weird defeat. Okay, well. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send your letters.
You can also find us on Facebook, leave a comment
there I guess if you'd like to, and you can
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. You can
also check out what we're doing during the week on
our website, how Stuff Works dot Com. Be sure to
(23:29):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
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(23:50):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Kristen. If I
(00:20):
had asked you a week ago what you thought were
the origins of Springbreak, what would have been your guests?
Someone had a hose, and someone was wearing what a
T shirt? A what T shirt contest? Maybe, and then
got what Yeah, someone ran through a sprinkler on a
beach somehow, and someone was serving jello and accidentally like whoops,
(00:43):
and Daisy poured a lot of vodka into it. I
like it that that's creative, but it's not at all
close to the origins of Springbreak in real life. Not
not a bunch of just happenstance mistakes that leads to
drunkenness and and wet T shirts. Not a series of
happy accident more like one happy accident. And then once
upon a time we had the casino pool in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
(01:07):
And so backing up a little bit, I'm getting ahead
of myself. It was cold up at Colgate University and
the swim coach did not want his students to get
out of shape over Christmas break. So one of his
students father, suggested that the team come down to Fort
Lauderdale and practice at the Casino Pool, which was the
first Olympic sized pool in Florida. It had been built
(01:28):
in the nineteen twenties. And so we did. So. All
these swimmers come down to Fort Lauderdale and they're enjoying
the warm weather and the warm welcome, and as it
tends to do, words spread among college students that this
was a cool thing to do, and the spring break
was born. And this is in nineteen thirty six that
Ingram first springs that Colgate University swim team down. I
(01:52):
had no idea that spring break, yeah, in the thirties,
even though some might say that, hey, the idea of
a spring celebration can be traced back to Greek and
Roman times with the bacchanals and the changing of the
seasons and he's getting warm, let's pour a bunch of wine,
um and but really, in the United States it started
(02:15):
more in the thirties. Although once you have kids going
off to college men and women, and the advent of
the car and the road trip. Then you start to
get kids getting a little frisky when they have some
time off from school. But the idea of spring break
and this whole let's go to the beach and have
a real good time starts all because of Fort Lauderdale
(02:39):
and this casino pool and Sam Ingram, who was yeah,
really really concerned about his swift but all that Christmas
Ham he was worried that they would get little swimmers guts.
So yeah, in six he brought the team down and
by eight more than three hundred swimmers were competing in
the college Coaches swim for um, this casino pool, and
(03:02):
according to the New York Times, a bucan All was born. Yeah.
The first mention of spring Break in Time magazine happened
in nineteen fifty nine, I believe, where one of the
revelers commented, it's not that we drink so much. It's
just that we drink beer all the time, right, so
(03:24):
keep it going. So little has changed since those early days.
And then in nineteen sixty spring break really enters into
mainstream culture with the Hollywood production Where the Boys Are,
which is a movie based on a book by the
same name starring George Hamilton's that h star of yesteryear
(03:47):
who was always so damned, always so damn. I think
I have a purse the color of George Hamilton. That's
actually the color. It's George Hamilton's Hamilton. Um. And it's
about these four midwestern college girls who spend their spring
break in where else, Fort Lauderdale, the first capital of
spring break. And I like how the plot line revolves
(04:08):
around all of their different ideas of premarital sex. Like
the main character is sort of the headstrong feminist who's
like prematal sex and say okay by me, And then
she meets George Hamilton and she's like, I could have
premarital sex with George Hamilton's But then the moral of
the story in this nineties sixty film is that she
doesn't have to do it before she's ready, right, And
(04:29):
that is the moral of spring Break as well. Um.
And by the seventies, this is according to Time Magazine's
brief History of spring Break, which is very interesting and
tells me all sorts of things that I had no
idea about. But they say that by the seventies things
started to get a little raunchier. There was a lot
of gratuitous PDA and balcony diving, which is when kids
(04:49):
would jump from one balcony to the other to try
to get to people's rooms. And there's actually a study
out there about spring break syndrome, which is referring to
the number are of accidental free fall injuries in spring
break atmosphere and how they're different from like, let's say,
a side impact injury of a car wreck. So all
these kids getting drunk and jumping from balcony to balcony,
(05:13):
a term was coined that reminds me of yoga drop foot.
It's from the from the yoga episode where very specific
injury um And then by nine five, more than three
hundred and seventy thousand students were heading to Fort Lauderdale
every year for spring break and things were getting out
of control. The mayor of Fort Lauderdale started freaking out
(05:36):
about it. Police started freaking out. In seventies, there were
a number of arrests that were happening every year on
the beach because kids were getting out of hand. A
lot of spring break syndrome spreading everywhere. People not falling
off of balconies but just just falling rights. Other types
of spring break syndromes, and you mentioned the mayor. He
(05:57):
actually went on Good Morning America to publicly state that
students were not welcome in his town anymore. And former
city Commissioner Robert Cox told The New York Times that
the commission voted to purchase a riot tank with a
water cannon to counteract any potential student rampages. And he
didn't stop there. Not only did he buy a freaking
riot tank, but when he became mayor, streets were reconfigured
(06:20):
to discourage cruising, and high end hotels and restaurants were
played the lower end student attracting dive bars and things.
So the thing that I was expecting with this idea
of talking about spring break for a podcast was that
it would start, I don't know, in the in the
eighties or the nineties. It's something a product of MTV
(06:42):
because growing up, MTV always had their televised spring break
weeks and it was a lot of you know, bands
and drinking and wet t shirt contests. But the fact
of the matter is that ever since large groups of
college kids have gathered in a war locale since the
late nineteen thirties, trouble has ensued. It's all swimmers faults.
(07:07):
It's it's dar Northern swimmers. But MTV does play a
role in this. In nineteen eighties six MTVS spring Break
debuted in beautiful Daytona Beach, not Fort Lauderdown. And I
think this is a really good example of popular culture
feeding what goes into the media, which then feeds back
(07:27):
into popular culture. And MTV Vice president Doug Hartzog said
that spring Break is a youth culture event. We wanted
to be a part of it for that reason. It
makes good sense for us to come down and go
live from the center of it because obviously the people
there are the kinds of people who watch MTV, so
it's a cycle. Like he saw these young people doing
all these crazy things and thought, yes, we need to
(07:48):
be a part of that. We need to put it
on TV to get more people watching it to boost
our ratings. And then the more people who watch MTV
spring Break, the more people go down to MTV spring Break.
Right because cements this idea in our our young and
impressionable minds, said hey, you know, for that one week
in March or April, that's what we're supposed to do, right,
(08:08):
black out every night, jello shot, not like what I
did my freshman year of college, which was go to
New York City in March. It was freezing and at
the same time that I went to New York City
with my friends. I don't know why I'm pointing down
New York City is up anyway, When when I went
to New York City and it was freezing and I
was wearing sweaters and standing in line to see Conan O'Brien,
(08:30):
my roommate went to Florida and one a wet t
shirt contest, which I think illustrates different perspectives very well.
The only spring break that I can remember making into
some kind of occasion during college because I was I
was probably working most spring breaks. Um was one beach
trip that my friends and I took camping down on St. Augustine.
(08:55):
But the way the timing of spring break was an
early early March and it was still cold, and I
remember going out there sitting on the beach with my
my swimsuit on but wrapped up in a top towel,
determined to have some fun in the freezing cold sun.
And there was these wind gusts would kick up and
(09:17):
just blow sand all over us, and UH and I
went home a day early. Yeah, I had a similar
experience when I was in middle school. Every year I
went to my aunt and uncle's house in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Same thing. I actually got bronchitis one year because it
was so cold that I was determined to go in
the pool. I'm gonna have fun. And yet again, we
(09:38):
drewn ourselves into Kathy comics from a young age. Not
on a more serious note, we do have to address
the wrist here behavior that does tend to go hand
in hand with these spring break romps. Yeah. A two
thousand and six study in the Annals of Tourism Research
found that students appear to participate in risk your behaviors
(10:01):
in the spring break environment then at home. And this
sounds like a no brainer. I mean, if you've ever
been to spring breaker, won't watch spring break shows on MTV,
you know that people are acting kind of crazy. Um,
But they look at why this is happening and they
found that it's your personal normative beliefs and situational expectations
that predict your intentions to binge, drink and take part
(10:23):
in it while you're on spring break. So basically it's
that thing of saying, hey, you know what I'm going
on spring break? I've seen what spring break looks like
um on MTV and in the nineteen sixty film where
the boys are starring George Hamilton's and I am expecting
to go down and have a party filled weekend and
I'm just gonna go bonkers, right, And similarly, intentions for
(10:46):
casual sex were predicted by attitudes again personal normative beliefs
and expectations, but the actual engagement in casual sex was
predicted by prior experience with it. So you might go
down thinking, oh, yeah, I'm gonna have all of this
crazy spring break sex and drinking, and then your actual
actions might not measure up exactly. And then the most
(11:09):
disconcerting finding from this two thousand six study was that
a majority of students who did in fact engage in
sexual activity rarely or never used condoms during spring break. Yeah,
that is scary. That's a lot of unprotected sex happening
with a lot of possibly intoxicated people. But speaking of numbers,
let's put some percentages around how many what proportion of
(11:33):
students are having sex? This is a little bit dated.
A n study of Canadian students from the Journal of
Sex Research. I found that not too surprisingly, more men
than women intended to have casual sex on spring break.
But when the numbers all shook out, the percentages of
guys and gals who actually did it pretty similar fifteen
(11:55):
percent of men and of women. So maybe the casual
sex not as rampant as we think could be. Maybe
people are just talking it up. And one thing that
researchers looked at in a in a two thousand and
six study from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol was
comparing springbreak behavior to normal behavior, because it could be
(12:16):
that people are never drinking during the year and going
crazy on spring break, or that they're drinking all the
time and it just continues when they go on vacation.
And so they conducted phone interviews with one hundred and
seventy six freshmen students over ten weeks to learn about
their typical behaviors and found that the people who drank
more during the regular semester are men, members of fraternities
(12:37):
and sororities, students on spring break, and those with higher
fun social expectancies, So the people who are just expecting
to have a better, more wild time in college. And
they found that alcohol used did not actually increase during
springbreak in general, but spring break travelers increased their alcohol
(12:57):
use during springbreak. So it's the been week. It was
the wake up crack of beer instead of having coffee
and just go until you can't go no more. And
that finding echoes the quote that you said earlier from
time about it's not that we drink so much that
we drink all the time. That's from nineteen Well, and
now that there's the whole thing of leaving the US
(13:18):
going to destinations like Cancoon where the drinking age is
eighteen to make it even easier, and then you go
to an all inclusive resort and it's just fountains of
mimosas and hurricanes. That is quite a bachan all. Yes,
So now that we've covered the risks and established the
fact that, yes, indeed, a lot of alcohol is consumed
(13:40):
on spring break and has been since the dawn of
spring break, let's talk about the business end of this, right,
because all of this alcohol consumption and hotel stays and
restaurant eating, well not eating of restaurants, but eating at restaurants.
Just to clarify, although some of those drunks because probably
have attempted to eat a shoot on a on a restaurant. Um. Yes,
(14:04):
so this means that business is booming in these springbreak towns.
And according to the Houston Chronicle on March eighteenth, hotel
bookings for Texas Week, which I had never heard of,
but I guess it's the big springbreak event of Texas
of Texas which ran from March eleventh. Um, we're at capacity,
according to the special event coordinator for the South Padre
(14:26):
Island Convention and Visitors Bureau. I actually know someone who
spent springbreak in South Padre Island and I did not
look at her pictures because I just think they'd be crazy.
And apparently South Padre Island is popping. And it's interesting,
Caroline that you mentioned that you did not choose to
look at her pictures, which I'm assuming we're posted on
(14:46):
the social network called Facebook. Because social media supposedly is
tamping down on the springbreak fund. These college students, who
have largely grown up with social media are so aware
of how easily they can be caught and broadcast doing
(15:08):
things such as wet T shirt contests and jello shots,
that they aren't partying as hard as they used to
be we'll see. Yeah. The New York Times identifies this
as a trend, but I question how much of a
trend it actually is. It might just it might just
be a part of these kids lives now because Facebook
is everything on Facebook and the internet is I mean,
(15:28):
it's just so prevalent and it's all intertwined, and it
might just be more of an attitude that they have now,
like Okay, well, I'm still going to go down and
have fun. I just don't want people taking pictures of
me so that potential employers will see them, you know,
because I feel like when I was in college facebook
uh or I got on Facebook in two thousand four,
which was my sophomore year of college, so I still
(15:49):
wasn't even for the rest of college. I wasn't thinking
about like, oh my gosh, someone's gonna see a picture
of me holding a beer and I'm gonna lose a job.
But maybe it's just so prevalent now that kids are
are really worried about it. And one year old bartender
is quoted in the Story of saying that the students
she sees are very prudish and that ten years ago
people were doing filthy, filthy things but it wasn't posted
(16:10):
on Facebook, So there's a little bit of nostalgia from
a year old. In a commentary about that New York
Times trend Peace, the blog Jezebel also brings up this
issue of whether or not women women are being more
slut shamed into sort of tamping down on their cruisier
spring break activity, because you also have to remember the
(16:31):
out of spring break culture. We have the whole girl's
Gone wild culture of filming pretty young women who are
usually pretty intoxicated, doing some pretty sexy types of things, right,
And I mean, I think I've told you this before, Kristen,
but my dad's only advice to me when I was
(16:52):
going to college was don't let me see you want
a commercial at three in the morning. So it is
a concern out there that our young ladies, are young
college ladies, will end up victims of girls gone wild.
But this, the whole social media thing, really isn't killing
springbreak revelry. I mean, plenty of people are still going.
And all these articles coming out of Florida this month
(17:14):
reporting on the spring break craziness down there basically said
that hotel occupancy is up in spite of the recession.
It's incredible. I saw on I think it was from
US News and World Report. The average college student will
spend eleven hundred dollars on a spring break getaway. This
is in a recession economy. I couldn't even do that
(17:35):
before the recession when I was in college. The Sun
Sentine Law March twelve reported that the Greater Fort Lauderdale
Convention and Visitors Bureau expected about one million visitors to
Broward County alone, and those one million visitors were expected
to spend oh, I don't know, just about a billion dollars.
So even though they are all these towns in Florida
(17:56):
who back in the eighties were like, enough, we don't
want to be that kind of town own. We don't
want to have a week long disruption in our lives.
They're finding ways to still attract and draw visitors, but
just hoping that it's not the same like craziness that
was so common in the eighties, not all that spring
break syndrome and balcony hopping spreading around, right, Because they're
(18:17):
actually attracting a lot of not just college students, but
some of the hotel people that they talked to for
this article, we're saying that there were a lot of
convention people and families to go down to the beach
for spring break, So there's a mix. Although I would
not want to be a family staying in a hotel
with a bunch of springbreak college kids. I would try
to stay somewhere. Yeah, I mean, that's got to be
part of the give and take of of being a
(18:38):
tourism driven city. Um. But we've been talking all about
this debauchery that goes along with springbreak because I think
that we can pretty conclusively say that the history of
springbreak has been kids getting in cars and planes and
going to a hot location to drink alcohol swimmers. But
there's also been the more recent rise of alternative spring breaks,
(19:02):
which is great. There are new options for going and
using your time to improve the world in a way,
whether that's doing um clean up after Hurricane Katrina, or
going to more remote location to do some kind of
humanitarian outreach, educating yourself, doing outward bound trips. Right, and
(19:24):
there's Breakaway, which is a nonprofit that provides training to colleges, universities,
and other nonprofits interested in creating lifelong, active citizens according
to their website, and so this is for people who, yeah,
who want to participate in things like Habitat for Humanity
and help build houses and things like that on spring
break and help better their community or you know, a
(19:44):
far away community, if they so choose, instead of going
and getting drunk. Right now, let's say that the alternative
spring break is probably one of the most positive outcomes
of springbreak. Not to say that when I was in college,
I did not look forward to having that week off,
and may be I did walk into this podcast a
little bitter that I don't still have that time off,
(20:06):
because I have friends who are now getting their masters,
are there in law school, and this is the time
when they're all going on spring break. Now I almost
forget what springbreak was like. It must have been so
nice for me to not do homework for a week,
to be able to sleep late shivering in New York City.
That was only one year. I honestly don't remember what
(20:27):
I did for springbreak for the rest of college. So
I hope that listeners will consider this our kind of
spring break gift to ourselves. Just just a fun little
podcast trying to figure out where this strange bakan all
came from, and it really just came from that sun
and alcohol and cheap airfare and George Hamilton's and my purse.
(20:50):
So please tell us about what you did or currently
do during spring break uh in college, if you went wilder,
if you maybe did some all turnative spring break stuff.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
send those letters. And we've had a couple of letters
here to share from our episode on women's wrestling, and
this first one is from Andrew, who is a big
(21:13):
fan of professional wrestling, and he writes. In recent years,
ww e's hiring policy of women has been to hire
models and train them to wrestle. Usually this sends up
poorly in the matches are train wrecks. However, ww E
has hired some women who are very talented who started
out on the independent wrestling scene, trained by themselves because
they loved what they did. Beth Phoenix, Nataila need Heart,
(21:36):
and Karma and ww E are good examples. Some of
the models even took to wrestling well, like Eve Torres,
who trains in Brazilian jiu jitsu. The independent scene has
a vast array of talents, such as Sarah Delray, cheerleader
Melissa and Mischief, whose day job consists of being a microbiologist.
If you want to check out a promotion in the
U s as talented female wrestlers, check out the Shimmer promotion,
(21:59):
and the promotion is based more off the wrestling than
sex appeal. So thanks for that insight on women and wrestling, Andrew. Okay,
this is from Shane. He has some thoughts to share
in wrestling as well. Um, I can get behind the
mixed wrestling at the college level, and I can get
behind more opportunities for girls wrestling at the high school level.
I don't think I can get behind mixed wrestling at
(22:20):
the high school level. And here is why. High school
is a time when boys and girls are learning appropriate
behavior in relation to sexuality. It is also a time
when hormones are running wild. While listening to your podcast,
I tried to think about what it was like for
me when I was in high school. Wrestling with a
girl would have posed some awkward problems. This sort of
a situation is just asking for an unintended sexual harassment suit,
(22:43):
not to mention the social stress associated. So thanks, that
makes sense. I can see how there could be some
some awkwardness in that tiny, tiny ring or Matt on
the mat. I would say ring for Matt you're thinking
of de wut you kids wrestling in the DeFi also
(23:04):
would be its weird defeat. Okay, well. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send your letters.
You can also find us on Facebook, leave a comment
there I guess if you'd like to, and you can
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. You can
also check out what we're doing during the week on
our website, how Stuff Works dot Com. Be sure to
(23:29):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works
iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought
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(23:50):
are you
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