Between November and February, students dashing from class to class bundled up from head-to-toe will throw shocked and mystified stares at sophomore Daniel Visnovsky, who strides through campus in a sweatshirt, a hat, a scarf, and shockingly, shorts.
Men who wear shorts in the cold represent a localized northern U.S. campus phenomenon that garners strange looks, comments, and the question, “Aren’t you cold?!” from the toasty lay people who prefer fleece-lined leggings or long johns underneath jeans.
Sophomore Cecilia Bellet shook her head in disbelief. “Why would you want to abuse your body like that?”
Visnovsky’s response to the incredulous, seasonally-conscious masses was, “There’s no school rule that I have to defend my ‘fashion sense,’ fashion sense in quotes.”
Beyond “fashion sense,” most shorts-wearing people see their choice as more practical.
Senior Aaron Shreck, who labels himself a “reformed winter-shorts-wearer,” explained that at Hillsdale, “you only have to walk a very short distance from your car to school.” He said since he was in an environment where he didn’t have to go outside very much, “I found myself getting hot in buildings in the winter time, so I would wear shorts.”
Senior Erich Steger, from Wisconsin, wore pants and a sweater when he explained his shorts-wearing habit. “I’m required to wear pants for fraternity dress code and labs,” he said. “It’s more appropriate to wear pants and shoes.”
Students can identify Steger by his athletic shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops, playing ping-pong in the union when it’s snowing, and running around on the quad barefoot when it’s mild enough to play Ultimate Frisbee.
“For me, my legs and arms are fine,” he said. “My core will get cold, so I’ll wear coats and hats. Everything else is just extra.” He gestured at his dressy-casual sweater. “Sweaters are too much.”
While Visnovsky’s decision to pair a tightly wound scarf with his dark cargo shorts surprises most, Visnovsky conceded that the winter wear “compensates” during the few walking minutes.
“I spend most of my time in the same computer lab, and it’s not very cold in there,” Visnovsky said. “Other than that, I make the joke that I’m one-eighth Norwegian so it’s in my blood. I just don’t care.”
Being Norwegian may have something to do with it, but Visnovsky, who is from Grand Rapids, said that Hillsdale’s climate “an improvement.”
For Florida native sophomore David Stone, climate doesn’t have everything to do with it.
Before his freshman year, Stone had never seen snow or experienced temperature below 35 degrees. “In Florida, people wear socks with flip flops,” Stone said. “That’s like our winter boot.” When most Floridians who migrate to Michigan would see 25 degrees as the snowpacolypse, Stone decided it was time to adapt to the cold by wearing shorts.
“I get a lot of people who say, ‘You should be bundled up right now!’” Stone said. “They don’t expect a guy from Florida to be wearing shorts. I get crazy looks.”
Stone pointed out that there are two types of shorts-wearers: guys with higher body temperatures and guys who “push themselves unnecessarily hard.” According to him, the same guys who push themselves too hard to get 4.0s every semester will also choose to wear shorts when everyone else has opted for one or two pairs of pants.
If some do it to push themselves, others, according to senior Colin Wilson, probably do it for the attention. He said the assumption among pants-people is that shorts-people reject winter norms just so they can answer the question, ‘Aren’t you cold?’ with ‘no, I’m from insert-colder-region-here, I’m used to it!’
Whether it’s because they’re always indoors or because it’s in their blood, for Norwegian Visnovsky, “reformed-shorts-wearer” Shreck, flip-flop loving Steger, and Floridian Stone, one thing is for certain: the bizarre looks won’t cause them to compromise comfort.
