College Urban Legend On Horse Play & Breaking The Rules
School campuses have always been a place known for strict rules and regulatory means to get students to follow suit. Some have seen school as a institution to pass on culture, while others see it as a place that forces one to confirm. However, natural events can often occur that reinforce the need to following the rules. These come in the form of what some have come to call urban legends. Urban legends can be defined much like that of a rumor. Author Henry B. Dunn choses to define them as “a hypothesis offered in the absence of verifiable information regarding uncertain circumstances that are important to those individuals who are subsequently anxious about their lack of control resulting from this uncertainty” (Henry B. Dunn 2).
Urban legends also tend to be lengthy narrated versions of rumors. Two examples of urban legends that exist on college campuses comes through the stories of the freshmen Parkour Tricks club and the boy who cried wolf; the universal experience that they depict could be seen in the need to obey school authorities and to never create fake drama on school campuses.
The first example comes from the group of boys from Parkour Tricks who learned their lesson from a terrible fall from a six floor building near the Los Angeles district towers. The boys who attended University of California Los Angeles (not original details) disregarded all local authorities on campus to perform their dangerous activities. The group of six at the time left from a nearby rooftop, safety clearing half of their routine before two free-runners collided in the air and one fell to his death where he laid head first in a ditch. The group of local free-runners consisted of freshmen who have since been expelled from the school. This urban legend goes to teach that it is better to take precautions while also obeying local authorities on school campuses.
The second urban legend come from the boy who cried wolf. The story come from Pullman, Washington (not original details), where one local student of Washington State University had constantly gone out hiking. Each time the student had gone out, he would tell of great stories and lies about how certain beasts had been seen in the woods. However, one time he spotted what he thought to be “big-foot” no one believed him. Although not a story with a bad ending, this urban legend goes to show how it is better to be seen as honest and not tell fake stories to the school newspaper because then no one will ever believe you when you are telling the truth (story still needs to be linked to actual news worth article).
In reflection urban legends have the ability to teach, and when these stories are linked to college campuses they have more relevance for the youth and student population around many of the largest cultural institutions in society. Being the center for gossip and rumors, schools also provide a breeding ground for the quick spreading of news articles that one day could become a famous urban legend.
