Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vog obam Here, if you can smell the unmistakable
Speaker 1: odor of stale beer and sunscreen, it must be that
Speaker 1: time of year again, spring break, when hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of American college students descend on resort towns in Florida, Mexico,
Speaker 1: and the Caribbean for a week of day drinking, bass thumping,
Speaker 1: foam parties, and perhaps more than a few poor decisions.
Speaker 1: But how exactly did spring break become a booze fueled
Speaker 1: rite of passage for American co eds? And do today's
Speaker 1: college kids still get psyched about a week of sunburn,
Speaker 1: hangovers and fried shrimp specials? Or have they moved on
Speaker 1: to more respectable choices. Let's start with some history, ancient history.
Speaker 1: It turns out you can trace the roots of spring
Speaker 1: break all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Apparently
Speaker 1: it could get stressful inventing democracy and Western philosophy all day,
Speaker 1: so the Greeks like to blow off some steam each
Speaker 1: spring with a three day awakening dedicated to Dionysus, the
Speaker 1: god of wine and fertility. But the real start of
Speaker 1: spring break as we know it was in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties when a swimming coach from Colgate University in
Speaker 1: frigid Upstate, New York decided to take his team down
Speaker 1: to Florida for some early training at a brand new
Speaker 1: Olympic sized pool in sunny Fort Lauderdale. The idea clicked
Speaker 1: with other college swim coaches, and soon the spring training
Speaker 1: migration became an annual tradition for swimmers nationwide. Since you
Speaker 1: can only swim so much, though the college athletes also
Speaker 1: excelled in partying, word got back to campus that Florida
Speaker 1: wasn't a bad place to spend Easter break, and the
Speaker 1: flow of northern college students to southern beaches started to
Speaker 1: pick up through the nineteen forties and fifties. But the
Speaker 1: uncontested landmark moment in spring break history was the publication
Speaker 1: of a little book originally titled On Holy Spring but
Speaker 1: smartly changed to Where the Boys Are in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: Glendon Swarthout was an English professor at Michigan State University
Speaker 1: who tagged along with his students to witness their beat
Speaker 1: nick Arish Shenanigans in Fort Lauderdale. Back then, hooking up
Speaker 1: was called house and Swarthout witnessed enough house playing, beach cruising,
Speaker 1: and beer chugging in Fort Lauderdale to fill his breakout novel,
Speaker 1: published in nineteen sixty. Mgm quickly turned Where the Boys
Speaker 1: Are into a blockbuster romantic comedy that made spring Break
Speaker 1: in Florida seemed like Paradise, or at least a version
Speaker 1: of Paradise where you sleep twenty people to a hotel room,
Speaker 1: but the cute guy has a yacht. After Where the
Speaker 1: Boys Are, these spring break floodgates were officially wide open
Speaker 1: seemingly overnight. The numbers of college students visiting Fort Lauderdale
Speaker 1: over Easter vacation went from twenty thousand to fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: and estimated three hundred and fifty thousand students mobbed Fort
Speaker 1: Lauderdale during spring break. In response, the town passed tougher
Speaker 1: public drinking laws, and the mayor even went on Good
Speaker 1: Morning America to tell spring breakers to take their balcony diving,
Speaker 1: drunk driving antics somewhere else, which they did. Other Florida
Speaker 1: beaches had already begun to pick up the overflow from
Speaker 1: Fort Lauderdale, including Panama City Beach and Daytona Beach. The
Speaker 1: latter became the shooting location for mtvs first ever spring
Speaker 1: Break special, broadcast in nine six. By the midnighteteen nineties,
Speaker 1: MTVS annual Skinfest had become a cultural institution, showcasing live
Speaker 1: music performances and lots of Carmen Electra and a bikini
Speaker 1: from spring break destinations like Cancoon and Jamaica. Around the
Speaker 1: same time, another spring break tradition was born, far from
Speaker 1: the beaches of Florida or Mexico. In n three, some
Speaker 1: black college students in Atlanta, Georgia organized a picnic for
Speaker 1: kids who were stuck on campus over spring break. This
Speaker 1: was a few years after the number one disco hit
Speaker 1: left Freak and Rick james Is Super Freak was still big,
Speaker 1: so the organizers decided to call their picnic gathering Freakneck.
Speaker 1: What started as a small get together with burgers, hot
Speaker 1: dogs and a boom box would explode over the next
Speaker 1: decade into the spring break destination for black college students
Speaker 1: and high school students and anyone else who felt like coming.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of black co eds would cruise into
Speaker 1: Atlanta for Freakneck, clogging traffic day and night for a
Speaker 1: multi day street party. Freaknick cemented Atlanta as a mecca
Speaker 1: of black culture, but the party fizzled out around nine
Speaker 1: as the mayor cracked down hard on cruising. Gone are
Speaker 1: the heydays of MTV and Freaknik. But is spring break
Speaker 1: still a big deal for today's college kids. Numbers are
Speaker 1: hard to come by, but as recently as Panama City
Speaker 1: Beach was drawing five hundred thousand people a year to
Speaker 1: its sugary white shores. Then after a particularly nasty spring
Speaker 1: break in Panama City, officials voted to ban all alcohol
Speaker 1: conception on the beach, which has apparently drained the life
Speaker 1: out of the party. What's clear is that college students
Speaker 1: today have a lot more choices for how they want
Speaker 1: to spend their spring break. The beaches are definitely still popular.
Speaker 1: According to a survey, fifty of college students planned to
Speaker 1: go somewhere warm for spring break, but so are trips
Speaker 1: that emphasized meaning over mayhem. In nine, Habitat for Humanity
Speaker 1: became one of the first volunteer organizations to offer an
Speaker 1: alternative spring break to college students looking to give back
Speaker 1: over vacation. Since then, more than two hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: thousand students have participated in Habitats Collegiate Challenge, including seven thousand,
Speaker 1: according to a Habitat spokesperson. Today, there are hundreds of
Speaker 1: Alternative Spring Break chapters at colleges and universities across the
Speaker 1: United States. Kelly Center is a sophomore psychology major at
Speaker 1: Michigan State University, where she's the education coordinator for Alternative
Speaker 1: Spartan Breaks, which organizes seventeen different trips each year for
Speaker 1: activities like trail construction or HIV advocacy. In an email,
Speaker 1: a Center says that more than two hundred m s
Speaker 1: U students sign up each year, even though they don't
Speaker 1: know where they're going until they're accepted into the program.
Speaker 1: For them, it's about the experience, not the destination. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other hard partying topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet pow stuff work stock Com