Nonexistent. When asked to describe the Bowdoin dating scene, most students we interviewed laughed and chose this word. Yet, as published in last week's edition of the Orient, 43 percent of respondents to the sex survey stated they were in monogamous, sexually active relationships.
So while relationships and sex don't always coincide, for nearly half of Bowdoin students, they do. These contradictory results point to cognitive dissonance in the collective Bowdoin psyche: nearly half of us currently engage in relationships, but still we deny the reality of a dating scene.
How do we explain this discrepancy? Most students we talked with pointed out that people at Bowdoin do not actually date. The student body stands divided.
People are either in committed, long-term relationships ("married" was the word of choice), or committed to a series of drunken weekend hookups. No middle ground exists. Even those we interviewed who are currently in monogamous relationships seemed confused as to how they ended up there.
Several noted the difficulty of switching from one pole to the other. Uncomfortable assumptions about a date implying a serious commitment have closed the avenue for casual dating. "What, is coffee sex now?" asked one respondent.
The claustrophobia of a cloistered campus in a small town makes dating more difficult. Bowdoin is not necessarily a gossip-ridden campus, but everyone certainly seems to know each other's business.
People seem to get nervous about asking each other out in part because of the high visibility associated with living on a college campus.
Your correspondents suggest another, not often cited reason. As life expectancy and years spent in school have increased, the threshold age of adulthood has been pushed back.
A large portion of the college-age population doesn't take dating seriously because we don't feel any rush to settle down. In America, the average marrying age for men is 27.7 and 25.6 for women. We don't imagine that our relationships will amount to anything because marriage seems like part of the distant future.
Last year, the Orient published an article ("Hung up on hookups" Dec. 8, 2008) after conducting an extensive survey of the student body. Last year, just as it is now, people were resoundingly exasperated with the dating scene here at Bowdoin.
As of last December, an appalling 63 percent of Bowdoin students had never asked someone on a date, 18 percent had avoided relationships due to time constraints, and only 17 percent were satisfied or very satisfied with the dating scene.
Unfortunately, we have brought this calamity upon ourselves. On the upside, this means that we have the power to change the situation. One interviewee advised, "Stop whining, and do something about it."
While there are some (and should be more) large initiatives to instigate dating such as Date Week, the student body needs to take charge in order to change the dating scene.