If you can remember a time when Pasquale’s was called Big Daddy’s, when Club Liquid hosted free open bars and when Newing College still looked like Dickinson Community, you probably haven’t been drinking enough. More importantly, you’re probably not a freshman anymore.
With every fall semester comes a new flock of overexcited freshmen waiting to unleash every “Animal House” fantasy they’ve replayed in their minds over and over, just as with every new fall semester comes a new herd of sorority-girls-to-be who will be sure to ruin spandex in a way the ‘80s never got a chance to.
The diverse population within Binghamton University never ceases to amaze me. It’s as though “Escape from New York” became a reality. Except in this case it’s Long Island, and the convicts are the ones trying to escape. Luckily, they’re probably too young to understand the reference.
These cookie-cutter clone princesses are a generation all of their own. Long Island is the center of this assembly line, forging teenage drama queens with the only three stops being Uggs, spandex and North Face. Though I must say that a certain respect must be paid to the girls who have collectively decided to trade in style and class for comfort.
It can also be said that at BU, freshmen are the most popular class of students, for about all of two weeks, when students befriend people temporarily, usually their “Orientation friends,” only to realize how much they actually hate them.
Orientation friends, along with the general crowd you surround yourself with during the first couple weeks of your college career, will be the ghouls that will eventually awkwardly haunt you for the rest of your four years here. Across every hallway and behind every door will be an unavoidable acquaintance.
People will try to reason and tell themselves that it’s nice to be polite and say “hello,” but is it actually? Isn’t a fake display of manners realistically more discourteous than not having any manners at all?
This feeble display of companionship leads to another prevalent issue questioning the basic motor skills of these freshmen. These drones are bred with the notions that it is not only acceptable, but absolutely necessary, to text as you walk. Walking without a phone in hand for balance becomes impossible.
In fact, it becomes socially unacceptable to lend a single second to yourself without texting your grandmother for her domestically famous matzo ball soup recipe or going on Facebook to check how many friends you have now.
Despite all this, there is undoubtedly a great amount of thrill during the first year at BU that you can’t quite get back after it’s gone. Whether it’s a blurry Friday night, a brief relationship in passing or the exaggerated stories that result, they’re events that will probably never be forgotten. Cliché as it is, there will come a day in the future when we’re going to be the ones telling our kids about how crazy college was in the 2010s, while they ignore us over the sound of their jetpacks.
Everything seems exciting when it’s new. It’s when you exit the snow globe you’ve been living in that you realize there’s an entire independently functioning world outside, along with actual snow. After all, this is Binghamton.