By Katherine Holt
Having fun means something different for everybody; some people enjoy playing sports while others enjoy spending their day cuddled up with a good book.
At the College, there are hundreds of different clubs and activities for students to get involved in, but for many young adults, the main source of “having a good time” is typically associated with going out to parties.
Most of us have been exposed to the sticky cement floors and strange odors of fraternity house basements, even though almost anywhere else in the world is a better alternative for spending leisure time.
Every weekend, hundreds of students put on their most flattering outfits and head to the same stinky basements to go and have a good time, regardless of the location.
As someone who always loved having a good time in high school, I could never understand why I seemed to be one of the only people that could never see the appeal in spending Saturday nights this way.
After being exposed to what a typical “college party” was like, I found myself being more drawn to spending my weekends doing other things. However, it wasn’t that I just did not like the smell of the house or the lack of toilet paper in the bathroom — it was just that I never had a good time.
I asked myself what was different about it compared to other social gatherings I had attended before, and realized that “hooking up” seemed to be the main priority for most people in attendance, and that was something I was not looking to do considering I am in a long-term relationship.
In high school, my friends and I looked forward to taking control of the aux cord and blasting our favorite song of the summer on repeat all night at parties. We went out with friends to dance and laugh, and those of us who were single would flirt appropriately.
In college, despite how often they seem to go out, most of my friends tell me that there are many nights they either leave early or are tempted to because they are simply not having fun.
It seems that what are often now considered the wildest nights are not the ones that everyone stays up all night dancing, but rather the ones with the most amount of hookups. The morning-after-stories you hear from your friends consist of little talk about what they were doing the night before, but rather about who they were doing.
More and more of my friends who loved going out when they were single feel less inclined to go out now that they are in relationships, but shouldn’t a party just be about having fun regardless of your relationship status?
I hope that the glorious age of 21 will bring some bigger and better opportunities for having a good time. Hopefully, all of my friends, both single and taken, and I can go out and focus on just being together and enjoying the night.
Students share opinions around campus
"Does hookup culture dominate the College's party scene?"
"It really depends on what you want to get out of it. I don't know if it dominates."
"When you're a freshman it does, but as you get older it loses its luster."
