03/21/2025
Ft Lauderdale is exactly where this Spartan went for spring break! Goooo Green!! 💚🤍
One MSU Professor Singlehandedly Started Spring Break
- Before Glendon Swarthout’s popular book, the annual trek south to Ft. Lauderdale wasn’t really a thing.
- In 1960, when he was teaching English at MSU, Prof. Swarthout wrote a book called “Where the Boys Are,” a semi-fictional account of three Michigan State co-eds who travel to Ft. Lauderdale over Easter break for a week of boy-chasing, s*x, drinking, and fun.
- The book was well-reviewed and became a New York Times bestseller, and in almost no time, MGM snapped up the movie rights and turned it into a film—all in less than 12 months.
- The box-office smash made college kids across the country realize that they, too, needed to start going to Ft. Lauderdale in the spring.
- The legacy lives on this spring and every spring as carloads and planeloads of college kids from Michigan and every other cold place descend on Florida. Whether they realize it or not, they owe it all to Glendon Swarthout.
