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I.
There’s this thing the college students in my hometown used to do that lacked any and all common sense. Actually, there were a lot of things like that, but this one felt particularly absurd, because it involved the use of marshmallows as projectiles for no apparent reason.
How it began, I do not know, but at some point it became a tradition to sneak entire bags of marshmallows into a football game and then hurl them at each other in a snowy and viscous flurry. (Can we all just agree that outside of the s’more and the Stay Puft empire, marshmallows are an unequivocally disgusting culinary product?) Often, those marshmallows would land in the end zone and become a glutinous hazard to the players’ cleats; on a cold day, when all that sugar and corn syrup and gelatin hardened into a frozen projectile, they could even be moderately dangerous.
And so eventually, the university chose to ban marshmallows from the stadium. And over the course of the next few years, students instead began hurling plastic soda cups at each other, until that practice became even more dangerous than the marshmallows, and was also banned. But even after that, college students were going to find a way to do something stupid.
II.
There are certain things you observe growing up in a college town, only to realize, later in life, just how bizarre they truly were.1 Here is what I wrote back in 2011, in a different context—the wake of the uneasy gatherings that occurred after the firing of Joe Paterno at Penn State:
There is a place in my hometown known as Beaver Canyon, a stretch of downtown street bounded on both sides by towering student apartment buildings. In 1998, during an annual summer craft fair and alumni bacchanalia known as Arts Fest, someone hurled a garbage can off a balcony, and then someone else threw one of those party-ball kegs into the road, thereby sparking a riot that provoked the spraying of tear gas and multiple arrests…
…We do this a lot at Penn State, gather in spontaneous groups to celebrate football victories or party weekends or nothing at all, and even when I was involved with it, I couldn’t explain why. Back before they figured out ways to collapse goalposts, we rushed the field to take them down ourselves. In 1990, when Craig Fayak kicked the game-winning field goal, a group of students leapt the fences of Beaver Stadium, tore down the goalposts, and deposited them on the front lawn of Joe Paterno’s house, all of which wouldn’t seem so odd except that the game was played in South Bend, 500 miles away. In 1993, when the Phillies won the National League pennant, we clogged Beaver Canyon, jumped around for a while, and then went home. When bin Laden was killed, thousands of students clogged the streets, chanted “U-S-A!,” and then went away.
Of course, I have a broad theory as to why these gatherings occur, and it relates back to the hurling of marshmallows and the throwing of plastic cups, because it’s all of a piece, because one’s college years—whether spent at an actual college or not—are the first steps toward independence and adulthood. And in the midst of that daunting journey into the void, we want to know we’re not alone, and that we belong to a larger community. So we gather in groups and do nonsensical things, in order to feel slightly less alone. And it is easy to lose sight of that purpose once you’re an adult.
III.
There is a tendency to nostalgize a lot of the stupid things we did and felt when we were young, and to blame their eradication on the hand-wringing of a small minority and a few overzealous lawyers. This is, quite often, an idiotic line of thinking that is used to argue against the necessity of social change. I don’t think anyone would argue that society was better off when, for instance, drunk driving was condoned. (This attitude also becomes a rationale to excuse bigger societal problems, like racism or misogyny, a “back in my day” mentality that becomes an excuse for terrible behavior by awful people, some of whom wind up running for president.)
But on rare occasions, the moral consternation over young people being young people actually does go too far, and I think that’s happened over the past few weeks, when a movement to ban the postgame storming of college basketball courts swelled to a crescendo. There are certainly good reasons to have this discussion, particularly after two high-profile players suffered minor injuries in attempting to escape the post-game hijinx; but there is a self-righteous streak to the ensuing discussion that is kind of ridiculous in itself. And it’s fueled by the collective righteous indignation of a bunch of adults who have forgotten what it’s like to be 19 years old.
“This would stop if the home team had to forfeit any game where the field/court was stormed,” one power-conference athletic director told Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde. “Draconian, but it would end the practice. If we truly wanted to change fan behavior, that would do it.”
Here’s the thing, though: I really don’t think this is something that’s worth being draconian about. The idea of rushing the court is driven by positivity; it is a joyous and spontaneous gathering that allows college students to commune with each other in a way that doesn’t have to be particularly harmful.
Should there be a concrete way to protect the visiting team as they leave the court, and to ideally slow the momentum of the actual rush? Definitely. Should it be limited to one or two times per season, per team? Probably. In other words, we should find ways to regulate it. But what does banning it really do? It doesn’t just remove the most stunning visual in college basketball; it strips a bunch of college kids of a moment of joy at a time when there isn’t a whole lot to be joyous about on college campuses.
This energy is going to be released somehow. In this case, why wouldn’t we at least try to find a way to channel that positivity without making it go away altogether? Of all the dumb things young people do in pursuit of joy, this is far from the dumbest. In a lot of ways, unlike the marshmallow, it’s actually kind of beautiful.
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There used to be, in my hometown, a relay race of public drunkenness called the Phi Psi 500, which was essentially sanctioned by both the town and the university. You may be shocked—shocked, I tell you—to learn that this race spiraled completely out of control before it finally went away.
Marshmallows are the absolute worst, except the ones in Lucky Charms.
I personally don’t mind marshmallows 😅