Two of my roommates got married over a traffic cone once. Not legitimately, but the beauty of the moment can’t be taken from those of us in attendance by way of some legal jargon.
Let me set the scene: I was a wide-eyed freshman experiencing my first college party. Some 100-or-so young adults were packed into a home that certainly was not meant to hold even half that amount of bodies. A massive bowl labeled “Jungle Juice” containing unidentifiable ingredients, most of which were certainly alcohol, sat on the dining room table. The bass was pumped up so loud that I swear I could feel my bones rattling.
The real party, however, happened on the sidewalk outside of this house. A gaggle of us not fit for the stuffy, sweaty interior gathered around a big traffic cone, contemplating the best way to get it off of the street and into our dorm unnoticed. I’m not sure why, but at some point in this ordeal, one of my good friends knelt down and proposed to another, spurring an impromptu wedding — a completely normal sequence of events. The traffic cone in question lay between the two drunken lovers as some stranger who, allegedly, was legally trained to be a marriage officiant — the jury is still out on the validity of her claim — held an imaginary Bible in her hands as my teary-eyed friends and I took in the beautiful scene.
Neither the cone nor any official marriage documents made it home with us that night — a pitiful haul for what was once a promising evening. Yet, despite being physically empty-handed upon return, I was unwittingly introduced to a phenomenon that plagues college campuses everywhere: college students’ inherent thirst for traffic cone theft, or, as a guilty conscience may phrase it, traffic cone liberation.
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Every morning when I open up my blinds, I’m greeted by the lovely sight of the gravel parking lot behind my college home, alongside a fairly unobstructed view into my neighbors’ backyard. For the past two years, two street signs have sat unused and untouched leaning against their back fence. While undoubtedly stolen in a drunken stupor, the signs are functionally useless. What the hell are you going to do with a “road work ahead” sign? Certainly the sign would be much more useful in a construction zone on a street somewhere, but here it is, sitting ignored in some college kids’ backyard.
But it’s not just my neighbors. Nearly without fail, when I enter a college house I will see a traffic cone tucked into the corner, collecting dust. Or sometimes, the neon orange hunk of plastic is conspicuously displayed, leaning against the side of the home. But that traffic cone isn’t just languishing in its corner. It tells me a story. It whispers a tale of the night it was kidnapped off of South Forest Avenue and dragged all the way down Packard Street. But most of all, it tells me that youthful delinquency isn’t dead.
Now, let me cover all of my bases here. I’m not trying to glorify theft, and I’ve never stolen a traffic cone myself. Rather, I am seeking to further understand a campus phenomenon.
College campuses are not real places and college students are not real people. This is a hill I am willing to stake my last breath on. Every time I walk by a house in Ann Arbor that is clearly not owned by college students, I say to my friends, “Real people must live here.” I never have to explain what I mean. It’s a joke, but this joke also implies a deeper social structure that we all inherently agree with. If those are “real” people, then we must be “non-real.”
The activities many college students partake in are either social taboos outside the bounds of campus or simply illegal. There’s an old adage I’ve heard parroted many times throughout my three years in Ann Arbor: “You can’t be an alcoholic if you’re in college.” While mostly said in jest, it represents the underlying conception that many students hold — the idea that what you do in college doesn’t matter. This idea is exemplified to its fullest extent with many students’ absolute disregard for underage drinking laws. To circumvent the drinking age problem, many undergraduates turn to fake government identifications to fabricate their age. It’s hard to know just how many students employ this strategy, but a study done in 2014 suggested that around 66% of undergrads had, at some point, utilized a fake ID. Possessing and using a fake ID with intent to deceive is a felony. But since campus isn’t a real place and students aren’t real people, the worst outcome of being caught with a fake ID is that it gets taken away. In a non-real place, why would real laws be applied?
When we are convinced nothing we do matters until we cross the stage to graduate, why would petty theft laws be the exception? College students regularly commit more egregious crimes, for example the fake IDs, so when many have already crossed the felony boundary, a misdemeanor for stealing a traffic cone looks like child’s play. Breaking bigger rules and getting away with it provides a proverbial force field around these students — if they can get away with breaking one law, what is standing between them and owning a traffic cone?
But let’s be real. Breaking rules is fun. There’s this rush of emotion that makes me feel lightheaded when I’m being devious; I can always feel a mischievous giggle rising up from my stomach. But for much of our lives, that feeling is a guilty pleasure. With constant surveillance from those who love us, it’s hard to break the rules. For many, college is the first time escaping the watchful scrutiny of parental figures, the first semblance of freedom. And part of gaining freedom is testing the limits of it and finding out just how much one can get away with. What’s the point of being free if you don’t escape your previous jail cell?
Growing up, I was a rule-follower. I have always respected authority that I deem fair and just. If my parents told me to do something, I did it. If they told me to not do something, I wouldn’t. I know I’m not alone in this, as it’s been a fairly common trait in my friends throughout the years. But in college, the lust for following rules seems to dissipate in favor of the elusive college life — one not bound by a laundry-list of dos and don’ts. In many ways, a traffic cone or a street sign collecting dust in the corner of a room is a dog whistle for that kind of freedom — a non-verbal signal that the people that live there have escaped from their previous surveillance and have achieved independence, in a way.
But now, more than ever, that surveillance of day’s past is following students into their college life. I have several friends in their 20s that still have their parents tracking their every move on Life360. People have cameras on their front porches — hell there are four high-tech security cameras on the Diag watching my every move. A place that once felt freeing and open now feels dystopian and closed. Everything you do and say is tracked now, no matter how hard you work to avoid it.
All of these forms of surveillance have one main goal: create a safer community. And for the most part, they appear successful on the surface. A study in 2020 concluded that CCTV cameras prompted a 13% decrease in crimes like burglary and theft. This appears to be an unequivocal good, but the reward of a more obedient society comes at the death of juvenile mischief.
My parents and older relatives told me plenty of stories about their rule-breaking college days before I moved into my freshman year dorm. They recalled with great fondness the delinquent exploits of their youth, eventually trailing off with a wistful, “We were so stupid then.” Sure, people who take a traffic cone off the street are stupid. But we all deserve to be stupid at some point, right? Sometimes, being stupid can harm others, either directly or indirectly. But if college kids being stupid is an inevitability, perhaps some traffic cones are a small price to pay.
At the end of the day, it was never really a thirst for traffic cones. It’s a thirst for juvenile delinquency — one final grasp at being a kid before we exit the liminal college space and get thrust into the real world.
So when I think back to the impromptu wedding at a random house party my freshman year, the whole scenario feels strangely poetic. My two close friends standing hand-in-hand with only a traffic cone in between them.
The traffic cone and the college student, together, in sickness and in health. That is, until we graduate.
Statement Contributor Eli Trese can be reached at elitrese@umich.edu.
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