Making a joke out of danger

In a noise that made the lounge where I was sitting burst into laughter, Sam, the female cheetah, moans out loud. Her friend Perry the elephant asks what’s wrong, and Sam says she’s “sooo hungover.”

Being a bit of a lumbering creature, Perry feels compelled to ask her whether she drank too much last night. Sam ignores him, saying her head is “filled with seawater,” and she needs a Diet Coke.

Perry then attempts to admonish her that she should have paced herself, but it’s too late. Sam is on the floor, having gone “fetal.”

Just in time, the tag line appears — “Even cheetahs have to pace themselves. Know your limit and stick to it.”

Welcome to college. This is Indiana. Animal style.

The cheetah ad, one of four viewable on Youtube, is part of IU’s new ad campaign, Street Smart Party Animals.

Developed by student interns in conjunction with IU Communications, the ad campaign follows twelve adorably cute animal figurines (Hank the giraffe, Minnie the panda, Ed the dog, etc.) as they quest across IU and get into sticky situations.

According to its website, Street Smart Party Animals, a campaign with the slogan “Play it safe, party animal,” takes a light-hearted tone needed to appeal to students to address the serious issues surrounding campus safety.

Well, they’ve got at least half of it right.

In the past year, there have been at least four deaths, two assaults and two robberies on campus, and a student disappearance.

Pedestrian safety has remained a worry since a student was killed crossing Fee Lane, and alcohol-related excess remains an accident waiting to happen.

Of course, all campuses face these issues because crime and casualty are unavoidable in the real world. What is really happening here is a gradual shift in perception.

Our idyllic paradise of Bloomington is becoming a place where people question when the next crime will occur.

With some basis in truth, campus officials have been pushing back on that narrative, but I fear the Pandora’s box has been opened. The doubts about campus safety that lurk on the tip of parents’ tongues and in the back of students’ minds are here to stay. And with that, IU needs an answer.

If this campaign is our answer, then we should be worried because there should be serious questions about the tone and the message of this campaign.

In light of what has happened, how can we pay respect to victims with an ad centered on a poor analogy to cheetahs?

In light of Lauren Spierer, how can the optics of this goofy campaign work? After all, they’re silly animals teaching us how to behave.

If we need animals to teach us how to behave, what does that make us as college students? Protozoans?

Furthermore, what messages are these ads promoting? In “Sam Pushed the Limit,” her friend tells her she should have paced herself the morning after. Might that be a little late?

In another ad, “Panzebraphant,” Perry the elephant and Fred the bull have to carry the drunk animals home on their backs as they shout various ridiculous drunk things. Sign me up to be a designated driver right away!

But even if we take the messages of these ads at their intended value, will they be effective?

After all, college students know these things — to take a designated driver, to pace themselves — and they continue to ignore them with frightening ease.

­— sidfletc@indiana.edu