As Blarney Blowout approached this year, I had the idea to write about what the morning after looked like at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. When I followed up that thought with some research, I couldn’t find anything that had ever been written about the Blowout’s morning after on campus, and I found a certain thrill in writing about that which has never been written about before.

For the benefit of readers who don’t know, the Blarney Blowout takes place in early March every year, ostensibly to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. It primarily involves UMass Amherst students, although despite parking bans and dormitory room visitor sleepover bans, young people come from elsewhere to join in the goings-on. 

The word that comes to mind to best capture the spirit and essence of the Blarney Blowout is “bacchanal,” a definition of which is “a wild drunken and noisy celebration … key characteristics of which include hedonistic revelry, uncontrolled behavior and intense partying.”

Since so many of today’s college students utilize artificial intelligence, I decided to ask AI if the Blarney Blowout does indeed qualify as a bacchanal. It answered, “Yes, the Blarney Blowout could be considered a ‘bacchanal.'”

The university knows the Blowout is not a plus for town-gown relations or for the U’s reputation. It has developed what it calls “Spring Blast,” which offers students a plethora of campus activities and field trips as alternatives to standing shoulder to shoulder at off-campus apartment complexes ingesting alcohol until their brains cave in. The university reported 2,000 students took part in those alternatives this year.

Anyway, I got up early enough on Sunday, March 8 — this after losing one hour because of turning the clocks ahead — to get to the UMass campus before sunrise. I don’t know how many readers remember that morning, but it seemed to me to be the foggiest morning of the year. I took this to be a metaphor for conditions in the brains of many who would awaken that morning. 

On my first drive through the heart of campus on North Pleasant Street, I did not see a single soul, nor did I see a single light on in any of the dorm rooms that loomed over me. 

I then began to drive around and about campus as the sun rose. 

At 7:24 a.m., 10 minutes after sunrise, I saw a tall, slender lad with a thick head of hair taking a morning run. He looked like he should be carrying a briefcase filled with important papers (think John Kerry). If the university wanted to illustrate that not all its students had, in some cases literally, “partied ’til they dropped” the night before and were sleeping it off, they could have paid this young man to lope around campus all morning as a work-study job.

Within minutes I saw a female jogger, also looking quite dignified and also quite worthy of work-study hire. 

Over the course of my driving around campus over and over for the next hour, I saw a few other joggers and what I’ll estimate to be up to fifty individuals walking, mostly by themselves. The young people I saw walking seemed to have a purposeful stride and not be stragglers or suffering after-effects from the night before. Many of them had backpacks, which I took to contain books and not beers. Again, if the university wanted to make the point not all its students were Blowout-ters, it couldn’t have found a better lot to do so. 

While I’m on the subject of walkers, I want to note something I found very unusual in this day and age — not one of the walkers was looking at their phones! 

In addition to homo sapiens, I saw a few squirrels, oblivious to it being Blarney Blowout weekend.

At one point I saw a man wearing a safety vest, obviously working for the university, picking up a solitary beer can. I don’t know if such picking up of empties took place through the night, but it was the only bottle or can I saw.

I did see one couple holding hands, a young man and young woman heading toward a parking lot, he with his other hand on a coffee mug. I had the thought to stop and interview them about their involvement, or lack thereof, in the Blowout, but doing so seemed outside my role of silent observer.

During my circuits of campus, I passed some fraternity houses, their parking lots full. They seemed to be even more deeply still than other living spaces on campus. I felt an almost palpable “non-stirring” emanating from them. It was as if they had given their everything to the Blowout, left it all on the beer-pong tables, as it were, and earned absolute and solemn rest on the morning after. Of one thing I thought I was sure — there would be no study groups taking place in fraternity houses that morning.

I left the campus an hour after sunrise, with still hardly a light on in a dorm room and pedestrian traffic minimal. I found myself smiling at the thought that I had become presumably the first person ever to do what I’d done and take notes to write about it, a cause for celebration in my world, tame as it may be.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.