Please close your eyes for just a second. Shoot, wait. Open those eyes! Doggonnit, now most of you won't be able to read this. Aw shucks. For those of you who didn't follow my faulty first direction (the wisest of my small group of readers, I suppose), I ask that you instead imagine for a short time, with your bulbs bursting from their sockets, that you are magically transported to the environment that I am about to describe to you. Try to hypothetically take in all the sounds and the smells of these conjured surroundings. Really make an effort to get into the moment so that when people see you consumed by this brief ideal existence, they'll slap you straight across the face or hurl a whole slew of obscenities at you.
Here it is: You're in a gymnasium. Before you lies a spotless hardwood floor, mopped so shiny that you can see the reflection of a cartoonish glint from your freshly brushed teeth. The lights that shine down on you are blindingly bright, not because you've developed a temporary sensitivity to the hanging luminosities, but because you are standing at the tippy-top of a crowded set of blue bleachers. The curved plastic "ground" below you starts to quake, your legs wobbling back and forth from the reverberations, as the people packed in the stands begin to stomp and shout. Your ears are attacked by eclectic pronunciations and endless clapping routines.
Emerging from the corner of the gym are 15 burly men adorned in tight-fitting jumpsuits dribbling leather balls. And then: a deafening roar! The man to your left begins to foam at the mouth from his uncontrollable excitement, while the girl to your right is downright hysterical, screeching so loud and so high that her uvula palatina is shaking at a rate of a thousand times per second. Unsure of what to do or even how to react, a previously unknown force from within compels you to raise your arms and commence jumping. Soon your whole body becomes wracked with frenetic energy. The pungent smell of human perspiration overwhelms your nostrils. Your head begins to swirl. "This, this is madness!" you exclaim. To that, the mascot dressed in his avarian costume removes his detachable head, turns around to you, and says, "Yes, March Madness."
The aforementioned scene occurred at the Goldfarb Gymnasium last Friday night when the men's basketball team took on Villa Julie in the first round of the Division III NCAA Tournament. With over 1,500 of the Hopkins faithful present -- young and old, fair-weather and steadfast -- the atmosphere became simply electric. There was a united community of periwinkle blue chanting in unison, an overflow of rowdy fanatics constantly breaching the court boundaries, a pumped-up team battling back from a seemingly insurmountable deficit, and a spirit that I had never known existed here at Homewood. Heck, there was even a pathetic attempt to storm the court after the victory.
As I watch other mid-major colleges like tiny Davidson (1,700 undergraduates) and small Belmont (4,500) revel in the joys of winning their respective conference tournaments, I wonder where that kind of fanatic ecstasy can be had at Hopkins. Save for the occasional lacrosse match and last week's rare thrill, there seems to be a genuine disinterest in sports among the student population. The "madness" that seems to overtake other schools when football season rolls around or when midnight practices mark the start of the basketball schedule is generally missing from the unaffected Jays who saunter the campus' brick-laden paths. The only "madness" people seem to be overcome by is that of a finals-week pressure-cooker or midterm panic. Cheering or exhibiting some level of support at athletic contests is so scarce that D-level, more often than not, has more people in attendance than a men's soccer championship contest or a critical water polo game would. For this, I am ashamed.
I refuse to hang my head low for long. No, instead, I want to celebrate the great turn-outs at Saturday's lacrosse match and the two men's basketball tournament games this past weekend. I want to encourage future support for Hopkins athletics and increase the amount of school spirit. I desire to administer shots of a virus called "Blue Jay fever" to every registered freshman, sophomore and junior. Okay, maybe that's taking it too far.
What I'm suggesting is that perhaps there are ways to lure people to the stadium or the gym from out of the dungeon that is the Hut. Let's make it a requirement for resident advisors to organize a floor-wide spirit weekend to get people feeling like there is some connection between their neighbors and the teams that represent their school.
Let's get the faculty involved. Those pretty little million-dollar professors don't need to be researching and book-reading all the time. How about dunk tanks? Trampolines? Fist fights? Let's capture a wild blue jay (or if we can't find that, a Baltimore rat will do) for every sporting event and set it free during an arbitrary intermission. Freeing live animals always has a liberating effect for onlookers. Let's get a professional sports figure to deliver our commencement address. See, we can already check one off the list.
In the end, I guess I just want to imagine that I'm still stuck in the stands at last Friday's game again.
I think I'll close my eyes now.
