The wonders of grass

I know what you're thinking. Finally, she's going to post something about weed! Sorry, not that kind of grass :P I'm a good girl. Well, relatively good anyway. I don't smoke weed, put it that way. So since I'm not really experienced enough to write a long dissertion on the finer points of drugs, I'm going to talk about grass in the sense of the green stuff that you sit on. The stuff cows eat. The stuff that makes up the many beautiful lawns at Rhodes.

By now the Rhodents among you would have realised where I am going with this. To you - and to other readers - I pose this question: why on earth are Rhodes students so attached to grass?? It's as if the moment the sun comes out, Rhodents feel the need to sit down on the nearest patch of grass they can find and, more often than not, fall asleep. It baffles me. Walking between lectures today, I didn't see a single empty patch of grass. There were students studying up near the bicycles, chattering in groups around the fountain quad, and a scarily high number of them dozing on Drostdy lawns. I remember one occasion last year when I came out of the law department, and spotted a random guy fast asleep on the lawns next to the chapel. Not under a tree or with a group of friends; he was stretched out all by himself in the middle of nowhere, his bag tucked under his head like a pillow.

Now I've developed a couple of theories as to why Rhodents do this. The first theory is that our distant, less-evolved ancestors saw grass as a comfortable resting spot, and thus the simple green beauty of the Rhodes lawns awakens an evolutionary desire in us to relax.
The second theory is that at some point in the distant past, a group of 'cool' people had a day-mare (read: got drunk during the day) and passed out on the grass. Seeing them and assuming they were sleeping, the first years were socially pressured into believing that this was the cool thing to do, and so the trend began.
The third - and most likely theory - is that Rhodes students spend so many late nights either studying, working on assignments or partying that they simply cannot stay awake for a full day. Rather than returning to their residences (especially those on the hill) they simply crash on the nearest comfortable spot: the grass.

Now I am not one to judge the students who do this; I know for a fact that I've dozed off on Drostdy lawns by myself before (I was reading Hamlet. Can you blame me?). I just find it awesome that the right to equality even extends to the grass at Rhodes: no patch must be left out! So if you see a lonely patch of grass, don't let the poor thing feel unloved and unwanted. Do the right thing.
Sit on it.