So it was late one night last week at the Wellness Center when my trendy, hipster apartment mates and I were looking for a court to ball on after getting kicked off another by some oversized-intramural frat boys. Before long, we found an open half-court allowing us to relieve our built-up stress through some friendly three-on-three.
However, after playing a few games, we found ourselves surprised to hear the guys on the opposite side of the court asking us to move our game elsewhere so that they could have the whole court at their disposal. The problem was that there were no other open courts, au contraire to what they had us believing.
After previously being designated as the diasporas of the Wellness Center, we refused to leave and resumed our game. Apparently they didn’t understand our decision and consequently tried to pull a blitzkrieg on us by playing full court without our consent. Meanwhile, all we could do was stare at them with bewilderment, for this was truly remarkable.
My first thought was nothing, because I couldn’t comprehend the incredible stupidity of their act, but my second was, “Wow, there are mad bros on this campus.”
If the term “bro” in its colloquial sense is foreign to you, I would suggest watching a specific YouTube video, which I probably shouldn’t mention here but your non-bro friends will know about it (hint: it’s by Derrick Comedy and starts with the word “bro”).
In brief, as you can infer from the video, “bros” are the ubiquitous male college students often seen sporting pink, popped-collar, (sometimes multiple) polo shirts, Birkenstocks, and khaki cargo shorts. They can frequently be heard conversing about the endless cheap brews they imbibed the previous night while “working their game” with all-too-many “friendly” sorority girls.
If you happened to accidentally stumble into one of their dorm rooms or frat houses during one of their too-common chillout sessions, your ears might be graced by the melodious music of Dave Matthews, or if lucky enough, a live-but out-of-tune version of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”
Running into them on campus is another story in itself. Too many times, I’ve had to pull out my emergency oxygen tank in order to prevent myself from choking to death on body spray.
If, like me, you have experienced this disturbing phenomenon that continues to permeate our campus and others across the country, you may be wondering what kind of helpful action you can take. Unfortunately, the truth is that besides folding down their consistently popped collars and pointing and laughing while they work on their man-tans at the pool, there’s not much that can be done.
Sure, you could spend your time writing op-ed articles in an attempt to alter the rigid opinions of our student body, but is it really worth it? The omnipotent influence of an MTV-based suburban society is a hard thing to counter, and will continue to transform more and more of our youth into the culturally decadent bros that exist today. In my opinion, the best way to deal with this pandemic problem is to forget it ever existed.
Miles Kenney-Lazar is a sophomore majoring in geography and international studies. He may be contacted at m.kenneylazar@umiami.edu.