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Want to Hang Out? Some Colleges Say No to Hammocks
Hammocks are booming in popularity, but Michigan State bans them
By
Rachel Bachman
Rachel.Bachman@wsj.comUpdated Sept. 24, 2015 12:54 a.m. ET
EAST LANSING, Mich.—The Michigan State University Hammocking Club has a problem. Hammocks aren’t allowed on campus.
“It’s hammock at your own risk,” the club’s president, Alex Valigura, a sophomore studying jazz performance and music education, told members at a recent meeting on the grass, surrounded by tantalizing and forbidden trees. “But I hammock pretty much every day.”
Hammocks are booming in popularity across the U.S., especially with college students always looking for a new way to hang out. Frazzled students say hammocks provide a calming escape just a few steps away from the dorm.
Last spring, 17 students at Kansas State University clambered into 14 hammocks stacked as high as 30 feet between two trees. A photo and video of the feat went viral. “Overachievers!” Kansas State President Kirk Schulz bragged in a tweet.
But some colleges have outlawed hammocks or limited their sway, citing tree damage and safety hazards.
Margo MacIntyre is curator of Coker Arboretum on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. She recalls hearing a cracking noise two years ago and arriving to find an embarrassed student, his hammock and the downed branch of an American basswood.
“He didn’t get hurt,” she says. “He helped us clean it up.”
Ms. MacIntyre later learned that hammocking is prohibited on campus. Sling-loving students had been taking refuge in the arboretum. After she began enforcing the no-hammock rule at the arboretum, hammocking there plummeted, she says.
Hammocks have been around for centuries, often made from rope stretched between two trees. These days, the most popular ones weigh about a pound, are made from fabrics like breathable nylon taffeta, and scrunch into a pouch the size of a grapefruit. Instead of screws or a supporting base, the hammocks attach with easily adjustable straps.
This year has brought “by far the most hammock sales we’ve ever seen,” says Mike McCarty, category merchandising manager at REI Inc. The outdoor retailer’s top-selling brand is Eagles Nest Outfitters Inc., based in Asheville, N.C., and begun in 1999 by two brothers who sold homemade hammocks out of a minivan at music festivals.
An ENO spokeswoman says sales at the closely held company have doubled each year for the past five years. Dozens of other companies make similar hammocks. Most cost less than $100, including straps, and some retailers offer discounts to college hammocking clubs.
Hammocking is a rite of passage at Auburn University in Alabama, says senior Libby Knizley, whose older sister gave her a hammock when she started college. Ms. Knizley recalls a “moment of panic” a few years ago when rumors surfaced of a hammock ban at Auburn.
It was a false alarm. Still, Auburn officials are “looking for ways to accommodate hammock use while preventing tree damage,” says Mike Clardy, an Auburn spokesman.
The University of Florida Hammock Club’s end-of-the-year party in April drew so many RSVPs on Facebook▲ that organizers moved the party to an off-campus park, says Jefferson Packer, a club co-founder. About 700 students showed up.
The University of Central Arkansas recently erected two “hammock farms,” or groupings of wooden posts that can hold as many as nine hammocks. The farms sprouted after students made a habit of hammocking among eight Corinthian columns that frame a prominent fountain on campus. College officials worried that the columns “might not be structurally sound for hammock use,” school spokeswoman Christina Madsen says.
The hammock debate is in full swing at Michigan State. Its entire campus is an arboretum, and seven full-time arborists care for the college’s 21,653 cataloged trees.
When students tie and untie hammocks over and over in popular spots, the straps can erode a tree’s bark and expose the sensitive layer beneath, threatening the tree’s health, says Frank Telewski, a Michigan State plant biology professor and curator of the campus arboretum.
“We’re not anti-hammock,” says Mr. Telewski, noting that he likes relaxing in hammocks while traveling. “We’re anti-tree damage.”
Last spring, Michigan State arborists erected “No hammocking, please” signs in hammocking hot spots such as along the Red Cedar River through campus and in a stand of century-old pine trees near the ice-hockey arena.
The Hammocking Club petitioned Michigan State officials on the website Change.org to designate a hammocking area or amend the decades-old ordinance that prohibits damage to trees on campus to allow “responsible hammocking.”
The petition requested “empirical data” that hammocking hurts trees and gathered nearly 1,000 signatures.
A meeting between Hammocking Club executive-board members and college officials was amicable but largely fruitless. Club members still are pining to hammock on campus, but arborists see no way to allow it without harming their beloved woods.
Driving around on a golf cart recently, Michigan State arborist Paul Swartz came across a few students hammocking. Each time, he hopped out and handed the student a notice about the ban.
Michigan State officials haven’t pursued penalties for hammocking violations, which can include a $100 fine or 90 days in jail, but say they could fine students found responsible for damaging trees.
Sophomore Victoria Blust bemoaned the crackdown in an essay on the website Odyssey earlier this month.
“What they don’t realize is that they didn’t just get rid of little pieces of fabric that hang between trees, they got rid of a community, a stress reliever and a big part of a lot of our lives,” she wrote. “There are no words to describe the love I have for my hammock.”
One morning earlier this month, Taylor Ling, a Michigan State senior studying graphic design, relaxed between two Norway spruces with a sketchbook that included his rendering of a friend hammocking at a nature preserve.
He said he didn’t know about Michigan State’s hammock ban. “Unless someone tells me to stop, I’m going to keep doing it,” Mr. Ling said.
For now, the Hammocking Club is planning off-campus outings and hoping for the best, says Maryssa Trupiano, the club’s vice president.
But temptation is everywhere. She swept an arm toward a towering stand of pine trees and said: “This was made for hammocking.”
Write to Rachel Bachman at
rachel.bachman@wsj.com