Commitment, college years are officially divorced

  Ariana Brookes Brookes is a third-year
English student who mourns the loss of flannel and River Phoenix.
E-mail her at [email protected].
Click Here for more articles by Ariana Brookes

My mother met her first husband while sitting in a history
class, as a junior, here at UCLA in the 1970s. She was sitting
there, waiting for the lecture to begin, when a cute guy literally
jumped over a row of chairs to sit next to her. Two years later,
she married that guy. If this scene doesn’t sound familiar to
you, don’t worry, it has never happened to me either.

Here’s a more likely scenario. You are a junior sitting in
your history class, waiting for the lecture to begin. Not only do
no cute guys jump over chairs to sit next to you, you don’t
even see any promising looking guys in the class at all. Even if
you were to meet a cute guy in your class, the chances of him being
interested in a committed relationship, let alone one which would
lead to marriage, are slim to none.

While 30 years ago college was seen as the premier place to meet
your future husband, nowadays it’s a rarity to even have a
boyfriend while in college. Apparently, the days of the
“M.R.S.” degree are over.

What has changed in the last few decades that has made people
wary of commitment? When my mother went here in the ’70s, the
sexual revolution had made its impression and women’s rights
were top priority. Yet couples were the norm rather than the
exception in college life.

You would think that now that our society seems to be swinging
back to its formerly conservative ways, there would be an influx of
the “going-steady” mind-set which was prevalent prior
to the liberalist ’70s. And yet, it is a rarity to see a
couple holding hands on campus, and when you do, you are so
pleasantly surprised that you just have to stop, smile and say,
“Golly, isn’t the world beautiful?”

  Illustration by RODERICK ROXAS/Daily Bruin I don’t
know about you, but I can count the number of couples among my
friends on one hand. In addition, most of the people whom I know in
a relationship are in one that began in high school. The typical
college relationship has a shelf-life of a few months. Forget about
marriage, you practically get a medal if you make it to your one
year anniversary.

What I don’t understand is why this is so. What is it
about our generation that makes us so adverse to the idea of having
a relationship? Perhaps it is the emphasis on career versus
marriage that has changed college dating habits.

Thirty years ago, coeds’ parents were still in the
’50s mind-set of the “M.R.S.” degree, pressuring
their daughters and sons to find a nice guy/girl to settle down
with. Now our parents are pressuring us to commit to a major, get
into graduate school and forge a career for ourselves. Marriage is
not something that we see in our near future, thus, we do not place
emphasis on coupling-up and finding our future mate.

On the other hand, maybe we are living in the abyss that the
sexual revolution left in its wake. In other words, why deal with
the stress of a relationship when we can make love, not war? Who
needs a significant other when you can have the occasional random
hook-up to satisfy your sexual needs and friends to hang out
with?

In essence, a boyfriend or girlfriend is a combination of both
of those, with a lot of stress, jealousy and drama thrown in. Why,
then, would anyone want to deal with that mess?

I’ll tell you why. Watch the television show “Sex
and the City,” about a group of women in their 30s who live
in New York City. They are way past college, do not (for the most
part) have boyfriends, and are frantically trying to find spouses
while wondering if they were absent from school the day they were
supposed to be taught how to have relationships.

Can you imagine still having to worry about that stuff when you
are 33? The thought sends shivers down my spine. It makes you
wonder if this is what those “no strings attached”
hook-ups are leading to.

Are we going to regret our present decisions later on? Maybe
college is supposed to be about more than just a lesson in
book-smarts? I mean, hey, our campus is a microcosm of the real
world. We have our own newspaper, government, businesses, etc. We
are training ourselves politically and economically for life in the
real world, so maybe we should be training ourselves socially, as
well.

If our college years are meant to be formative of our adult,
post-college selves, then it seems that we are training ourselves
to be non-committal toward future relationships. Where does this
all seem to be leading to? Refer back to the “Sex and the
City” example; that should be answer enough.

So what am I trying to say? Am I suggesting that everyone throw
up their hands and make a mad dash toward the nearest possible
relationship? Am I saying that our classes, work and friends should
not take precedent? Am I implying that by not having serious
relationships now we are absolutely impairing ourselves from ever
having successful relationships in our adult lives?

No, of course not. After all, we are, for the most part, only in
our early 20s, and college should be enjoyable, not stressful. We
shouldn’t see relationships as duties similar to going to
class. We should be having fun and loving life, if people are right
about these being the best years of it.

I do think, however, that a certain element is missing from our
generation in that interpersonal relationships are becoming less
and less important. The Internet is full of singles chat rooms, and
most of the people I know were bemoaning their fate of a lonely
Valentine’s Day.

Instead of waiting around for that cute guy or girl to jump over
chairs to meet us, we should be moving with the times. In other
words, go sit next to them. Chances are that they are waiting for
the same thing you are. If you don’t want to be in a
relationship, don’t feel that you have to be.

But if you are part of the huge group of us who miss those
“sock-hop” days, get up and do something about it.
Don’t be afraid to walk down Bruin Walk hand in hand. Do your
part in bringing back the “good old days.”