Less wild, less crazy

According to MTV, spring break for college students -- and sometimes even some in high school -- consists of white, hot beaches, star-studded revelries and makeshift dance stages that throb with young, exposed bodies.

Other sources warn of the perils of the season. Newspaper headlines and government reports announce that spring break is a trap for irresponsible spending, underage drinking, promiscuous sex, drugs, orgies and death. A “CSI: Miami” episode ties spring break to murder. The recent TV movie “Spring Break: Shark Attack” shows students being devoured by great whites.

According to Snoop Dogg, Playboy and almost any Internet search, spring break is full of bare breasts and other spectacles only those 18 and older can view.

Yes, spring break is just a week or two. But there’s no denying that it has a very big reputation.

Consider: In the last few weeks 100,000 teens and young adults have headed for Mexico’s hotspots, according to the U.S. embassy there. What’s more, Andria Piekarz, a spokesman for STA Travel, says many more flocked to places such as Jamaica, Rio and the Bahamas.

The spring break fantasy is so much a part of our culture that it may be difficult for some of us to imagine a vacationing student who doesn’t have a beer in hand while wandering a tropical shore.

Not so long ago, I had the option to go be a reckless student in Cancun as well. I passed. But I’ve been wondering if I’m the only person who decided to do something else, and sometimes wonder if I missed out on anything special.

Perhaps the answers might come from a random survey of USC students, who recently returned from spring break.

Maggie Walenga, 19, is sprawled out on a grassy patch with a friend, sunning in a bikini bottom and T-shirt. It’s really the same thing she might have done during, say, a trip to the Bahamas, but she says that a vacation like that wouldn’t be right for her.

“Everyone in the media thinks it is what all college kids do, but it isn’t,” Walenga says. “It seems like it is more for the Greek system, those who live more of a party life and have more money.”

Seniors Kimberly Peterson, 21, and Jennifer Cohen, 22, lounge nearby. Neither found themselves on the shores of a tropical beach. They spent their spring break hanging out in L.A. And they have no regrets.

“In theory, it sounds like fun, going somewhere beautiful and full of college students,” Cohen says hesitantly.

“But, if I had a wild and crazy spring break, I would need a whole other week just to recoup,” Peterson adds.

I head up the street, to fraternity row. Surely I’d meet one of those ultimate spring breakers, somebody who can’t remember whom they slept with.

Maybe it was going to be the boy outside the frat house, blond and shirtless, watching his friends play catch.

“What did you do for spring break?” I ask.

“I went to China on a research project,” says Bo Nasmyth Loy, who is 22. No getting naked with six college girls -- instead, he observed businesses throughout the country, and highlights included meeting heads of companies and exploring the Great Wall in his downtime.

Some of his fraternity brothers did go to Cabo San Lucas. In fact they have gone every year, and every year Loy has had something better to do.

“Part of me is a little jealous of it -- the ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ kind of thing is fun,” Loy says. “A friend said, ‘Go to the Bahamas. I’ll pay for your ticket.’ I bet it was a blast, but, it’s like, that or going to China.”

I need to talk to some students who live in sororities, but unlike the frat houses, there is no one playing catch on the lawn or drinking a beer on the porch. So Loy phones his friend Laura Mann, who agrees to chat about her trip to Mexico.

We sit in the mock living room of her sorority house, the name of which she asks me not to disclose.

“Yeah, me and six other girls went to Puerto Vallarta,” she offers. “But we mostly lounged by the pool and ate tacos.”

What about getting wasted? Regrettable indiscretions? What about Snoop Dogg?

“If anything, it’s that stuff on TV that steered us away from going to some places,” she says. For Mann, spring break is getting killed by its own hype. Kind of like Ugg boots.

That night I get on the phone with Occidental College senior Will Mead. He went to a Zen monastery. There were hot springs, but no one was naked. And he woke up every morning at 5:30 to meditate.

“The people who are going to Cancun, that’s what they are looking for and that is what they are going to get. That’s what the economy there is built for,” he says. “Whether they find happiness, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be happy there.”

“I think the media creates an ideal,” Mead continues. “I remember, as a little kid in middle school, watching MTV spring break and it was this exotic, cool thing. I wanted to go. But now I think it is pretty empty.”

In the end, I never did speak with the ultimate spring breaker. They do exist -- those students on TV aren’t actors. But I already know their story. Don’t we all?