By Sean Sullivan Lagniappe columnist

Well it is officially here, the days and nights have evened up in length and now it is springtime. You might not have noticed the longer days since it is dark when you leave for work and you are inside watching “Idol” when the sun sets but the signs of the season are everywhere, the blooming flowers and trees with their pollen coating your car, the mystical once a year appearance of Cadbury Cream Eggs and spring breakers descending on the Gulf Coast.

The phenomenon of spring break, which seemed logical to me years ago when I was a participant, now seems incredibly ridiculous.

“Spring break from what,” I ask, “the tedium of partying on or around the college campus?” Do our young budding minds really need a week off to funnel beers on a condo balcony at the beach versus the grind of having to play quarters on a Thursday night at their neighbor’s apartment?

The throng of our best and brightest, outfitted in their theme party t-shirts, flip-flops and visors, will migrate to south Alabama’s and northwest Florida’s beaches and pump lots of their parents’ money into the local economy getting the beach season kicked off well before any of us locals would dare get into the water. I guess a youthful circulatory system and plenty of Keystone Light insulates them from the chilly Gulf water. With that, my indictment of Spring Break ends and my promotion of the education vacation begins, as does my idea to nip the current recession.

The Bush administration has their plan to spur the economy onward. It involves a refund check of some of the money the government took from you last year. If they didn’t need that money to run the government why did they take it in the first place? I guess that discussion is moot at this point.

In the shadow of an unsure economic future these refund checks will be used for one or all of the following three things, two of them fueled by fear and one by foolishness. They are paying off debt, funding savings or buying shiny plastic boxes that entertain us while none of these choices will do much to resuscitate the U.S. economy at least two of them help folks weather hard times.

In contrast, I have an easy recession fix for the puppeteers of the American economy that will not involve rebate checks or savings or even paying off consumer debt and that is extending Spring Break. There are a few industries that weather recessions well: automotive repair, health care, grocery stores, energy suppliers, booze, smokes, drugs with the last three (the vice trifecta) being the building blocks of spring break!

If the federal government put pressure on the nation’s colleges and universities to double the length of spring break we would be out of this economic slump by the time exams started. Spring breaking college kids aren’t encumbered with the economic worries you and I have. While their Moms and Dads might be a little hesitant to spend money freely when their minds are occupied by a gloomy economic forecast, their spring breaking children are not and given an extra week to party the spring breakers will more than double the economic impact on the economy.

Think of the local impact of an extended spring break makes with the increase in restaurant sales, beer sales, condo rentals, visor sales, increased bail monies paid to local municipalities and the opportunity for Widespread Panic to have a six-night stand at The Wharf!

This isn’t trickle down economics, it is “party down” economics I am proposing here. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke had to have headed to the beach with a trunk full of beer once or twice in his college days and you know President Bush will pick up what I’m puttin’ down.

I’m ready to look past the fact college kids don’t really need a break for the sake of our faltering economy. Hell, I believe in the idea so much I may grab the flip-flops, stretch out an old theme party t-shirt and join the extended spring break …for the good of the country of course…now where is my beer funnel?

Sean Sullivan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact him at ssullivan@lagniappemobile.com.

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