COLUMN: Spring break: Fun or fraud?

From Siona Listokin's, "Think Different," Fall '00 From Siona Listokin's, "Think Different," Fall '00The guy just would not shut up. I begged him to stop. Since when does "no" not mean "no?" (*Round-trip flight not included, meals extra, price based on quadruple occupancy.) No, thank you. No, I understand that you get a free trip if you sell 25 packages. No, I don't want it even if you throw in a "South Padre Spring Break 2000" T-shirt. Since today is Thursday, most people have made their spring break plans already. With the coordination required of a large army quartermaster, troops of friends have already agreed on price, locale and accoutrements. The student population is split in its spring break destinations. Basically, there are those that go and those that absolutely do not. For the entire month of March, the world has only two locations: someplace beautiful and crowded and nude, and everywhere else. People that go tend to gush about babes in the sand. Everyone is super-friendly. Everyone is totally trashed. Drinks on the beach, casual sex and sunny hangovers await the participants. Sounds like being locked in Smoke's for a week in a bathing suit. You must decide if that is your idea of heaven or hell. What separates the goers from the noers? The spring break schism is about more than ideals of fun. It is about the choice to start college all over again, if only for a single week, and about going back to our roots of sublime misdirection. I find it amusing how people morph in Miami. The same students who do not say a word to each other in elevators and classes are suddenly congeniality freaks to complete strangers. Snobs who normally barely consider anyone out of their major worthy of conversation hold court with good-looking All-Americans from Mediocre Midwest Community College. The fact that about half of America's college students migrate to Jamaica is proof that there is nothing like the rejuvenating spring break experience. Thousands of pretty people, all of the same maturely irresponsible age, jam into a seven-block radius and do the same activities every day. Never mind that this happens all the time during the regular semester. It's Acapulco, after all. Kegs allowed on the beach! Cancon gives us the chance to see what college would have been like if we went to a real party school. (You will excuse me, but the "party Ivy" does not mean anything to the young freshman from Florida State.) What we would have been like if we had not lived on our floor in the Quad. What we would talk about if we had not chosen our majors. It is a chance to pretend it is September of freshman year all over again, when an avalanche of names was all that occupied our thoughts at nighttime and sharing a room offered camaraderie rather than claustrophobia. The three dozen students that do not go tend to be violent in their refusal. You can pick them out by their milky white faces come a week from Monday. Maybe they felt that one freshman experience was enough. Maybe they are happy where they are. Maybe they went to Mexico last year and decided they like Aspen better. Regardless, spring break offers the opportunity to be a complete idiot with only 25 of your friends watching and recording. Heaven or hell? That is up to you.