Orientation week: Sexual oasis or overhyped gimmick?

By: Helenaz Hajifattahi

Arguably, college life is best epitomized in the 1978 American classic, Animal House, a film that explores all the finer qualities of life away from home ( a life defined by the the ooze, togas and ladies). Thirty years later,it is hard to say that college campuses do not still purport these earlier qualities, only there have been small modifications, like the addition of beer pong tournaments.

Without a doubt, when this year’s first years received their frosh kits, they, like so many college freshmen before them, were tingling with anticipation. Whether because of stories of roommate situations breeding irrevocable “bromances,” tales of first dates solidifying romances, or simply too much American Pie, they had a few ideas of what university life would be like, and most of these ideas had some connection with sex.

But, when frosh week came to a close, was it all about sex? Would sex even have been a thing if upper years the week by throwing condoms at frosh, and concluded it by encouraging the first years to under the moonlight with nothing but bedsheets holding their ‘selves’ together?

we have informative events like talks with the Sexual Education Centre, we also chant that “Our priests can have sex!” to other colleges during the parade.

This points to column’s ultimate question: Is frosh week naturally about sex or do we, the frosh from years past – the gyrating Trojan warriors – make it that way?

Pier Paolo Pasolini, an acclaimed Italian intellectual of the 1970′s, once voiced his opinion on the sexualization of humanity by saying that sexual promiscuity “is really only an obligation, a social anxiety, [and] a necessary feature of the consumers way of life.” Essentially, he says that we obsess about sex because we are told to do so. So, normative society espouses that orientation week is all about sex, but it doesn’t have to be the case.

Sex is everywhere because we put it everywhere, and frosh week is about hookups because we say , but it is important to recall the other side of Frosh Week.

Recount the tours, the boat cruise, and the beach day. Remember the awkward lunch, and how you laughed about it, totally at ease, with your new friends, just seven days later. Most of the week is not about sex but about encouraging some old G-rated fun.

In the end, Frosh Week may have nudged some into the deep, dark realms of night time activities; . Hey, one or two may have even the world of ‘Trincest!’

But, let’s be honest – the overtly sexual nature of orientation week probably turned them off the whole thing.