Parties, classes fail to foster new relationships

De Son is a fourth-year history and

political science student.

By Jason De Son

UCLA is not a friendly place for the timid. The social
activities college students engage in do not help us meet other
people. More often they are simply events that allow people who
already know each other, to see each other over and over again.
This can be very intimidating for someone new to the social scene.
And since academic life and social life at UCLA are connected, if
you do not have a good social life, it will inevitably affect your
academic life.

How often do I hear the laughing and music playing in the floors
below me in my apartment building on the far end of Gayley? When I
go to bed, all I can hear is the yelling of bar patrons returning
home after last call. When you hear all of this, part of you feels
regret. You regret that you weren’t out there meeting people.
But another part of you also wonders, if you were out, could you
have met someone?

It was another Friday night, when everyone gets together to
celebrate the end of the week and there is suddenly time to relax
between homework assignments. I was invited to attend a party on
Landfair, but as with every party I have ever been to during my
stay at UCLA, it was well below expectations.

I can’t seem to understand why we like to spend our nights
packed in someone’s apartment or fraternity. The bars are no
exception either. I don’t know how people meet each other at
these places ““ in dark rooms crammed wall to wall with
people, with the music so loud you don’t even know what
people are trying to say to you.

But attending class at UCLA is not much different. In my
political science and history classes of 300 or more people,
you’re lucky if you can meet a few people and establish long
term friendships. Sure, you might meet a couple of people who sit
around you, and then, at the end of the quarter you say
“Maybe I will see around.” But you don’t. It is
not like community college where you knew the names of everyone in
your class, and you did end up “seeing them
around.”

One of the most intimidating elements of the social atmosphere
of UCLA parties is that everyone seems to already know each other.
In every party there are several cliques who mingle with only those
in their group. Because of this, you become afraid to talk to
someone since they probably came with someone else who they would
rather be with.

Like many students I notice around campus, I must say these
factors have helped me fail socially at UCLA. I keep busy with my
academic and extracurricular stuff, but the rest of my day is spent
staring at a computer screen.

There are students who devote their time to academics in order
to compensate for their social failure. But the irony of it all is
that these individuals never meet each other. They stay in their
rooms and don’t go out because they either have no one to go
with, or they would rather read ““ the result is shy people
never meet each other. They go out to Starbucks to study instead,
hoping they might run into somebody they know, hoping lightning
might strike.

As a transfer student, I entered the game a little late. And
that is the moral of this fable. Those who do not take advantage of
college social life from the very beginning are doomed to solitude.
And that solitude spreads beyond the party to the classroom and
every other facet of college life, eventually affecting your morale
for such things you previously enjoyed such as academics. Because
transfer students do not have the opportunity to meet people in the
dorms during their first and second years, they are most likely to
encounter these emotions.

My advise to those who are out and about on those Thursdays and
Fridays at the fraternities, the apartments or bars, is to look for
those who seem out of place, the one who does not have anyone to
talk to. The one who may pass a glance then look back at his or her
drink. Give them a hello; it may brighten their day because it
really sucks to have to go through college completely alone,
without any fun.

College is not simply an education; it is an experience that
only happens once. We owe it to each other, to see to it that
everybody has a chance to enjoy it. Get those timid people and
transfers students out of their rooms and show them the real UCLA
experience ““ build a campus community.