The History of Spring Break: I am an old man

For college kids spring break  is synonymous with sun baked debauchery. For parents of school aged children it is either an opportunity to take the kids and escape the cold, or the torturous task of a weeks worth of rearranged schedules and event planning. To what or to whom do we owe thanks?

Colgate University’s swim team.

 

In 1936 the Colgate swim team’s coach took his boys down to Fort Lauderdale to get a jump start on training in the Olympic sized Casino Pool. Now mind you back in those days Colgate was an all men’s, somewhat elite, possibly elitist school and that was a time when for the most part college was meant to prepare rich white kids to become rich white adults.

Part of becoming a rich white adult is meeting others likewise destined. Within a couple years this  Florida trip wasn’t a practice it was a meet (there is a pun in there).

This Florida swim meet/party became so notorious that one year a professor tagged along, wrote a book about it, and that book became the movie “Where the Boys are”. Twenty Five years later MTV was broadcasting unseemly things live from Daytona.

Ahh the decline and fall of the American empire.

I have my own tales of spring breaks passed, but none of them involve debauchery. They mostly involve taking the kids to the beach or Chuck E’ Cheese… but there was that one road trip to Rosarito.

Scripps: not a sister but it should be.

By 1926 all seven women’s colleges that made up the prestigious “seven sisters”, had been established, along with the ivy league schools with which they were affiliated.

Sometimes when affiliations are being established, the affiliaters miss out on things.

In this case the sisters missed out on Scripps.

The school was founded as an all girls school joining the newly formed Claremont University Consortium. The consortium at that time consisted of Pomona College, the Claremont Graduate University, and then Scripps.

 

They weren’t trying to be the sisters, or even the ivies, they were modelling themselves after Oxford.

This modelling was referring to the academics of course, as the architecture is much more Mexico than England. When you go there today it is much more California than it is New England.

Too often the little sister, the one who didn’t get picked to join the sorority, the one who wasn’t first, is thought to be a little less. In this case that would be a mistake.

Scripps is the #24 best liberal arts college in the country and the third best all-women’s school. This means it outranks Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Mt. Holyoke.

And at Scripps, it never snows.