I came to UCLA expecting to find vomit everywhere. It would be carried out by the bucketful. It would coat the walls; I’d be constantly knee-deep in partially digested Bruin Café. Much to my dismay, I’ve only seen about as much as you can fit into your hands when you cup them together. (Actually, that’s exactly how much I’ve seen because that’s how much the guy barfing was holding in his own hands.)
College students love to tell horror stories about how all of their friends drank too much, threw up on all of their stuff, and can’t walk around their room barefoot anymore. They describe scenes of uncontrollable projectile vomit comparable with that of the puppet in Team America.
However, they’re liars.
Most of these tall tales begin in fraternity houses and end on the walls and in the bathrooms of the dorms. The rest revolve around the competitive nature of girls in the sorority houses and their never-ending quest to be the hottest, skinniest sister. In as much as it is only halfway through fall quarter, there has been zero vomiting in my hall (with the exception of my roommate, who had the flu and told me that she threw up a little in her mouth) and all of the sorority girls I’ve seen look relatively healthy.
Unfortunately in my experience, the stereotype of every sorority girl acting like Elle Woods is a reality. The two girls in a sorority who live next door to me look like airbrushed print models all the time. I saw one on her way to the gym in the morning, and she looked like she stepped out of a bebe Sport ad. When they get ready to go out, I see two baby Paris Hiltons walking through my hall.
As far as I’m concerned, sorority houses are where the girls who would be ranked a 10 on the one-to-10 attractiveness scale bump themselves down to sevens. If those girls hung out with the people on my floor they would absolutely be pretty stiff competition, but they choose to hang out with other attractive people, and that knocks them down on the ratings scale. Bad choice.
Fraternity guys are a little less judgemental, but that might just come with the beer goggles. Their main objective is getting girls to drink, then drinking, then getting girls. Thus far, the brotherhood at UCLA has absolutely lived up to everything I thought it would be.
The best decision any of these guys could ever make is to avoid living in their fraternity houses. Besides living in a house of shenanigans, the combination of their party’s leftover beer goo and the ever-wafting scent of cheap cologne will end every relationship they attempt to have within two weeks of dating.
Vomit is the glue holding together the bonds of Greek organizations. According to the UCLA Department of Student Affairs, 13 percent of the student population is committed to a fraternity or sorority but even more attend Greek parties and bond in a sea of stomach bile. The absence of firsthand experiences comparable to the stories I’ve heard is making me question what other tales of collegiate rites of passage aren’t quite what they’re talked up to be.
Sheila Hull, a first-year psychobiology student, said, “I came here thinking that the dorms would be crazy, but living in Rieber, its been not like that at all. When you see movies and hear people talking it sounds like no one would be able to study. I haven’t had anything like that.”
Movies such as “Van Wilder” and “Old School” make college appear to be more about parties and less about education.
I suppose it’s for the best that my experiences haven’t been comparable with the movie “The Rules of Attraction” and I haven’t woken up to someone throwing up on me. College life gets talked up a lot at the expense of students’ reputation, but when only 13 percent of Bruins take part in the infamous party scene, it’s a wonder that the entire student body is assumed to be the hard-partying, reckless college kids.
If only bad raps were purged as easily as so much alcohol.
If you want to send in your party pictures then e-mail Nikki at njagerman@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.