While campus dining halls offer little choice among notoriously bad food, the present state of athletic privilege also makes them the one stage where an average student can witness college athletes riding free through school. Although the main drawing point to me was the unlimited quantities of three bean salad, at Carolina Court I spied on basketball stars both male and female, as well as the much-ogled women volleyball players, all of whom carelessly handed the cafeteria workers their cards, muttering “athletics” as much information about which account to take meals off of as a manner of explaining their boredom with the world. Appropriately, the cafeteria workers for whom it is assumed had never lived out their finest moments in college, smiled open-mouthed at these famous people. Those of us living out our glory days in college had learned to close our mouths, but still felt jealous and in awe.
After school politics ended mandatory meal plans and I made the move off campus, my distance from the world of college athletics increased. However infrequently games happened, I only noticed when their direct effect was to send streams of people into town, glutting the roads, or when trees around campus were littered with toilet paper, or, as in the recent Final Four playoffs, the games inspired true Carolina fans to shut down Franklin Street completely.
When Carolina basketball won a spot at the Final Four, noise from drive-by honkers and screechers, which was really the same red truck driving around and around the block, met me as I walked toward Franklin Street. A few minutes later, the main block was shut down by Chapel Hill police. I crossed the street and made my way towards Peppers Pizza for supper. Suddenly in front of me was an individual engaged in the behavior which had become the major temporary marker that we had won a game: toilet papering tall objects. The fool in question carried a plastic bag of unwrapped blue toilet paper. Disguised in Carolina sweatshirt, shorts and hat, he unknowingly made his way towards me , intent on finishing his job of draping the blue stuff on every parking meter on that block. Behind him stood the fruits of his long labor: two trees filled with the pastel shit-wiping.
This is how our conversation went:
Me: What are you doing with this fucking stuff?
Him: (pause) Excuse me?
Me: You’re putting fucking toilet paper all over the parking meters. Just because some team won a game, doesn’t mean you should cover our town with blue toilet paper.
Him: I’m decorating.
Me: What the fuck are you talking about, decorating? This isn’t decorating, it’s fucking toilet paper.
Him: I’m decorating.
Me: Do you know what the hell you’re doing? This shit is going to be in the trees and on the streets for weeks. Why the hell do you think this is appropriate?
Him: Carolina won, and I’m celebrating by decorating. It’ll wash away when it rains.
Me: No it fucking won’t. This shit is going to be all over the streets, and if gets washed away, it’s going to go down storm drains and end up polluting the environment. Why the fuck do you think this is worth it?
Him: I’m decorating.
Me: Do you understand that this stuff will end up at wastewater treatment plants, it’ll require more chemicals to make it clump and fall out of the water. You’re making our wastewater treatment plants work harder just because you want to celebrate a win you had nothing to do with.
Him: Toilet paper is biodegradable. It’s made to go down the toilet. And if I was using it for its real purpose, it would be covered with shit.
Me: What the fuck are you talking about?
Him: It would take more energy for me not to do this than it takes to run the wastewater treatment plant.
Me: What the fuck are you saying?
We exchanged dirty looks, and he walked away. Enraged, I asked the nearest policewoman how people could get away with what they were doing without getting ticketed.
“The town council passed some sort of law that gives people a certain amount of time after big games to celebrate.” she told me, eyeing a burning sofa nearby.
“Damn,” I thought, “they have permission.” I mounted the sidewalk in front of one of those Carolina merchandise stores, one of three on Franklin Street. They were closed, as were most other stores. Not to be compared with the number of closings on the day Carolina played its Final Four game and lost, when only two restaurants were open, and when the Gap and Sunglass Hut boarded up their glass fronts. There was no celebration that night, but cops were out anyway to keep drunken and depressed fans from making trouble.
The day after that loss, Chapel Hill Town Manager Cal Horton told me there was no law, existed or planned on, allowing people to take to the streets.
“We know it’s going to happen, so we do what we can to control it. We do everything possible to discourage people from going out and celebrating.” Horton said. Indeed, the Gap and others were responding to a town warning as well as past experience when they closed their doors that Saturday.
“It’s like Gandhi said about the British,” Horton mused. “A couple hundred soldiers can’t control all those Indians. I’m paraphrasing, but a couple dozen policemen can’t control those thousand of fans,” he finished.
Maybe it’s the fact that these people interfered with me and a meal that sets me off. But no, the aggregate effects of sports fanaticism makes Chapel Hill a living hell when it happens. Which isn’t to say people shouldn’t have things which they enjoy, and shouldn’t be able to make it public. Something in the drunken eyes of fans who take to the streets makes me wary and pissed off. Something about the knowledge that it’ll never be a celebration of a local gay rights ordinance that makes people set fire to their home furnishings.
Sarah Corbitt
Here’s another student demonstrating “team spirit” in spite of the authorities