She said
Ericka Ravettine
Notre Dame is one weird place when it comes to gender relations and commitment between men and women. I think to have commitment, relationships are necessary; and those seem few and far between here at ND.
Let's examine the Notre Dame relationship, shall we. We'll begin with freshmen year: This is a time when crowds of first-year students can be seen roaming campus (and the off-campus apartment complexes) on Friday and Saturday nights. These groups participate in dorm-hopping. They move from building to building looking for a good time. Many of these students engage in multiple random hook-ups those first few months of school. They're looking for a good time in a dark corner with an unfamiliar face. Someone they can brag to their friends about, or more likely, avoid in the dining hall for the next four years.
The darker side to the freshman idea of the relationship — the permanent commitment. These not-so-rare people find another like-minded individual and begin the dating ritual. These people want to continue on the Notre Dame family — personally. Before you know it, it is four years later and the couple is trying to decide which city could provide themselves and their children with the best opportunities. How does it happen? Why isn't their an exorbitant amount of relationship-hopping going on? The answer, my friends, comes in the form of an example: the SYR.
Ah, the SYR. This is a dance no one really wants to go to, but everyone must. It's a rite of passage for the Notre Dame and Saint Mary's student. However, with the dance comes the undue pressure of "who do I take?" This is the trouble.
By the time the dance draws near, you are ready to invite just about anyone — a friend, a friend's friend, that person who sits next to you in class, some guy/girl that passes you in the dining hall or the first cute picture you come to in the Dog Book.
Though everyone experiences this feeling of desperation, the invitee always reads too much into the invitation. Fleeting thoughts of "Oh, he/she must really like me" and "Next spring will be our one year anniversary" are pervasive throughout the evening. The problem (in this example) lies in the mixed-up mindset of the invitee; commitment and dating relationships will not ever be normal here if men and women can't learn to talk to each other, rather than jumping to grand conclusions on their own.
So, what does that leave us with? By senior year, you will know a handful of couples getting married after graduation; you will actually know a few couples who are tying the knot before that. The rest of your friends, however, will still be in that dark dorm room corner from freshman year, still terrified of any kind of commitment.
All Scene Stories for Friday, February 11, 2000
