According to urbandictionary.com, college is “a magical place where it is rumored that learning takes place.”
Described as “a [beautiful] land in which beer flows in amber currents and where virgins lie naked with gentle smiles upon their calm, inviting faces; but more precisely, a Shangri-La rite of passage into adulthood which involves rampant consumption of alcoholic beverages, flagrant and promiscuous sexual behavior, and a general and fundamental disregard for any form of responsibility.”
Wait, wait, what? “Virgins lying naked with gentle smiles upon their calm, inviting faces?” Seriously? You have got to be kidding me.
I don’t remember seeing anyone lying on the floor and I certainly don’t think I could have possibly missed the amber currents of beer flowing throughout the walkways while walking to class last week.
So maybe urbandictionary.com, is a way for visitors of their website to give the most ridiculous and exaggerated definitions of words but it seems as if this definition is really what people are beginning to believe college is entirely about.
Take for example, Urban Dictionary’s Twitter account who has over 210,000 followers without even being a verified twitter account. Oxford Dictionaries, who happen to be a verified Twitter account with 116,000 followers.
Let’s be real now. Is this the way our generation is going to continue to define college? Are we really okay with allowing words related to “college” to be synonymous with sex, party, beer, drunk, alcohol, pot, frats and blacking out?
It is not okay for college to continue to be defined this way.
In college, we have students studying countless hours on different subject areas.
We have full-time students with full-time jobs. Students who care about their future and who are working hard to get to where they want to be.
Both sororities and fraternities are to blame for this conception that college is about partying like a rockstar or drinking until you’re someone else’s problem.
According to dictionary.com, a fraternity is “any group or class of persons having common purposes, interests, etc.,” Seems to be that the only commonality these group of people actually have are contributing to the ridiculous conception of college being nothing but partying and sleeping around.
How about posting more pictures on your Instagram’s of the philanthropism you guys claim to be a part of rather than continue to fill our news feeds with your “big’s and little’s” performing keg stands?
Then we’ve got the annual list of party schools being released such as fiestafrog.com’s “Top 100 college party schools and universities: 2013-2014.” As if that kind of information should dictate what schools students apply and go to.
Enough destroying the college conception.
College is not the time to just party and let loose. We have people spending thousands of dollars for their education and for the rest of the world to sit back and believe, let alone read this nonsense is ridiculous.
In college we have students who may be stressed at times, but the same students who would appreciate a more positive view on what college really is.
