Very Active Social Lives During the First Year (and evidently every year thereafter...(Prompt 8)

by Grace Han Cunningham

I'm not sure what the adults were thinking would happen, but putting together a bunch of excited, young 15 and 16 years in a semi-supervised living situation resulted in a lot of PDA.  :)  Many of us found our first boyfriends or girlfriends within weeks of being on campus.

I remember that while members of the opposite sex were not allowed in dorm rooms, they were allowed in the lobby, and the lobby of Hill House was always full of visitors in the evenings. Students would hang out in the lobby of Warren's World on the third floor of the Bryan Center. I recall Warren would roll his eyes at couples who would sit and kiss all evening long on the blue couches there. 

At Hill House, there was a  huge message/bulletin board in the lobby where notes, flowers and stuff could be left pinned up under your name. Nope, there were no smart phones and you couldn't just text your peeps - these were dinosaur days.  :) There were always people hanging out in the lobby of Hill House.

Since rules were meant to be broken, couples managed to find a lot of privacy on a mostly deserted campus - so many rooms and buildings were still accessible even though they were technically off limits. There was a security guard or two but they mainly walked around the buildings exteriors at night to keep folks out of the area, but did not often bother the students. 

Students went everywhere for a little privacy - closed classrooms in the basement of Hill, closed off areas of Bryan, and closed buildings not in use. The hospital area, technically off limits, was a great place to find empty rooms even just to 'hang out' - as there wasn't a student center or any designated hang out area, so students found their own, indoors and out.

I recall many couples forming in the first few weeks as everyone found a group to belong to. Roomies became your bestie right off the bat. And for once, I believed everyone on campus felt like they finally fit in and that there weren't any cliques that sought to exclude others. Everyone found a friend or three. Its amazing to see several high school couples still going strong, almost 45 years later! Who would've guessed that lifelong ties would have been found at such an early age.