As you read this, hundreds of wide-eyed high school students will witness the wonders of South Campus — and only South Campus.
I know most prospective students will have fun as they stare at the dorms lining Sheridan Road. Still, regardless of the insanity or boredom they witness, nothing prospies see is indicative of what actually goes on here.
Sorry, kids. Isn’t the Lakefill pretty, though?
Last year, for example, my girlfriend ended up without a host and was ditched with 10 other prospies in a dorm lounge. She later was taken to two different parties where her host got drunk and stoned to the point of immobility. She then had to navigate her way back to campus, with only the sober prospies as guides.
A year earlier, my then-prospie friend Russ Riggins, now a McCormick junior, said he ended up staying in Theta Chi. They took him to a bar in Rogers Park. While there, he got the stunningly authentic taste of Chicago life that only a limousine full of prostitutes can provide.
The wasted-and-ditched story is all too comMonday, and it leads many people to think we are a party school. These isolated incidents just form a front. We’re really dorks. We know the interesting people who love to party are sent to darker corners of the earth — like Dartmouth.
Then there are the protective parents who accost random students. Take last summer, for instance. I lived in a nondescript apartment on a side street of Evanston. I walked outside to see a middle-aged couple get out of their illegally parked car, leaving their doe-eyed 16-year-old daughter inside.
“Hey,” asked the father, “do you go to Northwestern?”
“Uh, yeah,” I replied.
“How much sex have you had here?”
“Er … not a whole lot … lately …”
But this guy was on a mission. “What percentage of NU students come here virgins and end up having sex by the end of their freshman year?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Is your daughter going to be a theatre major?”
Worse than the questions are the generalizations prospies often hear during their visits. Walking past a tour guide in front of Norris University Center, I picked up the following: “That up there, that’s North Campus. I don’t go up there often. A lot of really weird and smart people live there.”
As a resident of Slivka Residential College, I burst out laughing, and at least five heads in the group turned. Everyone here knows nobody on North Campus is smart.
I tried to dispel my concerns of prospie misinformation by going on a guided tour Tuesday. I was told that one of the positive aspects of deferred fraternity and sorority rush was that you “learn how to do your own laundry” before you entrench yourself in the wonderful world of debauchery that is Greek life. Maybe pledging implies a sudden switch to edible underwear, but I haven’t been able to confirm anything yet.
None of this matters, though. As a prospie I spent my night in Bobb Hall, got ditched by my hosts, woke up next to a puddle of vomit and still ended up coming here. How’s that for a night of all NU has to offer?
