Dating games

Part 3

by Amy Beaudry

Parties have been organized in off-campus locations as alternatives to the weekly fraternity blowouts. However, these parties fill up quickly with everyone who does not want to or can not attend the WPI fraternity parties, and usually after several hours, the police shut them down.

Joe Parrillo, a junior at Assumption College and vice president of the school's student government, is also not actively searching for a committed relationship. He believes it is better to see many people than to be attached to one person. "[If you're] caught up in a commitment, you don't do as much as you want to do," Parrillo says.

At a small college like Assumption rumors can spread easily, stripping someone of their "single" status in a matter of days. There are only four hundred to five hundred people per class and almost 90 percent of the population lives on campus, so most of the students know one another through classes or because they live in the same dorm.

Parrillo does not see Assumption as having "any party scene," though the college regularly sponsors dances, which are well attended. He says freshmen and sophomore females, looking for a party, often go to the WPI fraternity houses. And on weekday nights, sometimes his friends go the Palladium or to bars. "A lot of people think [bars] are a good thing, a good place to meet people," Parrillo says.

Jim Strickulis, a senior at Clark University, likes to take people off campus for dates. He thinks there is a lot to do in Worcester, citing the Higgins Armory Museum and the Worcester Art Museum as two great places to explore with a daytime date. For nighttime dates, Strickulis proposes going to the Aku Aku, Sakura Tokyo, one of the restaurants in Main South, or the Palladium, which he calls "[one of the] better choices around" for clubs. Strickulis also likes to hang out at "greasy spoons in the middle of Worcester" or bars such as Moynihan's.

Most of the students he knows go on "friendly, casual dates" and are not interested in searching for Mr. or Miss Right. "A relationship hinders the ability to have fun [which students are] striving for," Strickulis says. A few of his friends have had relationships from time to time, but none lasted. Strickulis says he and his friends are of the "`I'm only young once' frame of mind."

Strickulis, who previously lived on campus, says living in a coed dorm is a "great opportunity to mingle with the opposite sex without feeling limited." Compared to other Worcester college students, not as many Clark students have casual sex, he says. Those students who engage in it practice "responsible casual hooking up," he says. "[They] know the safeties and the dangers. [There is] nothing to the point of danger or of hearing about the same person hooking up every night."

However, Strickulis has witnessed the dangerous side of a monogamous relationship. One of his female friends was dating a guy who became possessive and jealous whenever other guys were around. When the boyfriend made a surprise visit to her dorm, he found his girlfriend with a male friend who had his arm around her shoulder. "He knocked the guy out, and was yelling, screaming, and making a big fuss," Strickulis says.

Jack Hoppin, a Holy Cross senior, has also seen students give one another a hassle about dating. However, it is not couples he notices harassing each another. "Friends give friends a hard time about dates," Hoppin says. "If a guy spends a lot of time with a girl he gets a hard time from his friends for not spending time with them."

Hoppin remembers lending his car to a friend who wanted to take a female student out for dinner. The car was a standard and when they were leaving for the restaurant his friend could not find reverse. There was snow on the ground, and the guy was dressed up, but instead of asking for help he "pushed the car out of the parking spot." Hoppin says, "[Once] they got to the restaurant, he couldn't find the button to release the keys, and they couldn't just go in and eat because the keys were trapped in the ignition." After calling friends, he eventually figured out how to free the keys, and they went inside and had dinner. "Actually, these people ended up dating for a while," Hoppin says.

Who knows, maybe having a mini-disaster date can be the not-so-romantic start of a lasting relationship. At the least, it makes for a humorous story to tell friends. And it certainly beats sitting in your gloomy dorm room, listening to depressing music and whining that there is no one cool to date and nothing, nothing at all, to do in Worcester.