For my intervention, I put a dozen beach balls on the ground of the freshman quad and watched to see what people’s reactions would be.
I sat with them for about 25-30 minutes and people mostly just ignored them. There were around 25 people out of the maybe 50 who walked by that actually interacted with them. Many of the people just walked by without even glancing at them, and most others just kicked at them a bit as they walked. There was also a truck that just kind of drove through without making any effort to go around them. Luckily none of them were particularly in the way.
There was one girl who was walking with a friend and she stopped to kick a few of them. She yelled for her friend to wait, but he kept walking, so she moved on. A different girl however, was REALLY into the beach balls.
She made a game where she wanted to see how far she could kick them, but didn’t get any of them too far due to the fact that a lot of them had deflated a bit and the wind kept them from going in a straight line.
One guy simply picked one up and walked away.
I think for the most part it would have been better to get bigger beach balls, and maybe to get more of them. The place I bought them from said they were supposed to be 14 inches in diameter, which was obviously a lie. I also would have waited for a less dreary day. Over all though, it was fun to watch people walk by and just absent-mindedly kick at the beach balls, and it was funnier that so many people just ignored them.