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BY BONNIE DATT
PHOTO BY BARBARA WITz,
CALIFORNIA STATE U., LONG BEACH
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATT LAFLEUR, SYRACUSE U.
REMEMBER IT WELL. SHE WORE FLANNEL
- ripped. Her nose ring glistened like
a morning dewdrop. She danced with
1 ease, never once spilling her beer.
Damn. Of all the dollar-pitcher
joints in all the college towns
in the world - she had
to walk into mine.
Ah, college ro-
mance. Instead of
dressing up,
spritzing on
cologne and
trying to re-
member which.
is the salad fork,
we're hooking up,
popping in gum to
cover beer breath and
trying to remember what
name we gave to the person
we're dancing with.
t f op < ! tc (1ff '

The answer may be pathetically simple: poverty.
We aren't dating in the traditional style because
we're broke. Hanging out in groups and meeting
people at parties is much more economical than
going on individual dates.
"It's costing more and more to go to college, and
parents and students aren't making more and
more," points out Anita Cory, coordinator of Greek
affairs for sororities at Washington State U. "Stu-

dents can't afford dating the stereotypical way. It
becomes studying together or going to campus
events.
And when someone goes on an actual date, it is a
campus event, Cory says.
"There's this student I know pretty well who
asked a girl out, and after the first date, he sent her
flowers. All of the students were just amazed. It was
such a novel idea."
Group dates, however, allow you to take inven-
tory, to decide if you're ready to commit to the big-
ger investment of a real date.
"Mostly, I meet girls at a party, then ask
them to go out on a date," says Jason Wil-
ley, a senior at Marshall U. in West Vir-
ginia. "I don't go out on too many
dates. Sometimes I'll see them
again at another party and go
from there."
The answer may be
even more simple: We
don't date because we
don't have to. If there
are always other fish
in the sea, the Cam-
pus Ocean is where
to cast your line.
See, dating used to
be something you
did for awhile before
you had sex. These
days, it's often the
other way around.
"Dating is more like
a drunken hook-up than
a nice dinner and a
movie," says Jeanne Fugate,
a senior at the U. of North
Carolina. "Last night I heard
some guys talking. One of them
was going on about how he actually
took a girl out to dinner - spent proba-
bly $10 - and was upset because she
wouldn't have sex with him."
Our parents didn't have this problem. But they

August/September 1995 " U. Magazine 25