It’s the last seven days of your college career. It’s the last seven days you will ever see most of these people ever again. And most importantly, it’s the last seven days you can make the most of that crush – or crushes – you have been secretly fantasizing about for four years.
Many colleges across the country have traditions that capitalize on the no-strings-attached hook-up scene of college and compress four years of missed opportunities into one uninhibited week before graduation.
The best part? There’s no fear of rejection.
“Seven days, seven people.”
At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, a selected organizer emails the entire senior class right before senior week and directs them to www.seniorseven.com, a website designed by a Bowdoin graduate that guarantees anonymity. Each student who wants to participate logs in to the website and enters in the names of seven classmates he or she wants to hook up with before graduation. The program automatically processes the lists and emails students who made a match, but you only get an email if both students entered in each other’s names. If there are no matches, your unrequited crush is not notified and is none the wiser.
A recent Bowdoin graduate explained, “Picking seven people was kind of like the college application process. Everyone had their ‘safeties’ and ‘reaches’ and then the people in between.”
While it may be a little awkward to have the, “Hey, so, did you get that email? The one about, you know,” conversation, a little last-chance determination and no fear of rejection helps ease the process along.
The Last Chance Dance
At Harvard University, one of the first nights of freshman week is the “First Chance Dance,” which has a traffic light themed dress code: wear red if you are taken, yellow if you have an undecided relationship status, and green if you are single. Then, the last night of senior week is the “Last Chance Dance,” also known as the last chance to make any magic happen with someone in your graduating class. Students can enter up to fifteen secret crushes into the “Last Chance Match” site by logging in with their Harvard username. Students get an email if they were matched with their crushes, and Stephanie Kaplan, recent Harvard graduate and Her Campus Editor-in-Chief, explained “you also get an email anytime any one puts you in – but it doesn’t tell you who put you.” This whets your appetite and makes you want to log in and enter some crushes, in the hopes that you’ll enter the same person who put you.
At Yale University, there is a similar online matching process but students have the option of remaining completely anonymous. For example, students can give clues to their identity instead of their names, and a match will read something like, “student from your freshman art class.” Then, rather than leaving the entire senior week open for hooking up with matches, students also focus on the “Last Chance Dance.” According to a New York Times article on the tradition, students spend “the better part of the night before the dance scouring the university student directory (it has pictures) searching for students to list.”
At Carleton College, students get an email invitation to a website where you can enter up to five seniors at LastChanceDance.net who they would like to try to hook up with, and the site emphasizes that names do not have to be ranked in order of preference and a match “does not equal consent.”
[pagebreak]
How Do Students Feel About the Traditions?
Of course, any tradition that encourages promiscuity is bound to incite strong reactions and differing opinions. The Last Chance Dance at Harvard stirred some controversy when students wanted to hand out condoms at the dance.
In an opinion article from the Harvard Crimson, the writer argued, “At this rate, why not be even more direct? We could have students create some kind of hand signal that indicates: ‘Let’s have sex, right now.’”
In an article published in The Bowdoin Orient , a student expressed concern that “if Bowdoin students are the confident, intellectual and enthusiastic people that we think we and other people think we are, then there is no real reason to have an event such as the Senior Seven to motivate students to talk to other people.”
However, it seems most students embrace the tradition and enjoy making the most of their last week in college, even if that means having random hook-ups. “I think it’s great,” said an eager Bowdoin senior who was already making headway on choosing seven guys for her list.
“It’s the last seven days you can still get completely wasted and manage to end up somewhere nearby with someone you know (at least a little bit) and can stumble back across campus and into your bed safe and sound. That kind of behavior isn’t exactly acceptable, or smart, in the real world. College hook-ups are the way they are because they can be, and you don’t know how good you had it until it’s gone,” said an anonymous recent Bowdoin graduate.
“People were really into Senior Seven ‘stats’ (how many out of seven you were matched with). To me that just meant you liked a ton of people, they knew it, and you were all too lame to act on it [without the Senior Seven tradition],” said a member of Bowdoin’s Class of 2010. “But Senior Week was one of the best weeks I had at Bowdoin. You are about to enter the real world, so if you want some, go get some!”
What do you think about these senior week traditions that shamelessly encourage flings before graduation? Is it best to just live up the college fling experience? Or is it just perpetuating the purely physical (and most likely intoxicated) sexual encounters of college life? Would you participate in your school’s senior week hook-up tradition?
Sources:
Anonymous alumni and current students
http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article.php?date=2010-05-07§ion=3&id=4
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/class2010/lastchancematch/register.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/nyregion/before-graduation-at-yale-a-last-chance-for-romance.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/4/14/making-out-alright-at-harvard-a/
Picture sources:
http://intothedustbowl.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/blog-6-degrees-netzwerk.jpg
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/10/1029_college_costs/image/bowdoin.jpg