The Rice Thresher

Location: http://the.ricethresher.org/opinion/2007/09/07/misha_is_not_creepy

September 7, 2007 > Opinion > Words of wisdom from an alum: Rice University is an asexual campus

Words of wisdom from an alum: Rice University is an asexual campus

By Misha Teplitskiy | Thresher Editorial Staff

Disclaimer: Do not read this if you are not interested in premarital sex. I believe every issue here applies symmetrically to both genders. Whenever I refer to sex, I am actually referring to sex, dating, intimacy, communication, etc. I am speaking in general — there are exceptions to everything below.

If you have been at Rice for more than a week, you have probably heard complaints about the social scene. Among those are sexual complaints. Examples are, “Rice girls are ugly,” “Rice guys aren’t assertive,” and my personal favorite, “I got drunk and forgot to talk to girls.” For about four years, although with decreasing conviction, I defended our institution’s social scene against these complaints.

“Rice girls aren’t that bad,” “Rice guys aren’t that bad,” and, “Hey, it’s tough to get laid everywhere,” I would say. After all, who knows what it is really like at other schools. They have parties, we have parties. They drink, we drink. How different can places be? My conviction decreased as my exposure to other schools increased. Before graduating, I spent summers at University of Texas and Iowa State and a semester at the University of Oslo. I am now spending a semester at UT-Dallas after a summer at Texas A&M. I have no more doubts. All I can say is: Wake up, people!

The Rice campus is so deprived of every erotic emotion and action that, without any exaggeration, I can say that the campus is asexual. Let me explain.

People at Rice do not have enough sex. “Whatever, I have sex twice a day,” you say. Shut up, re-read the disclaimer. A good thing about the random placement of students into colleges is that it makes it possible to think about one’s college and generalize reasonably well to the entire campus. My senior year, I estimate that three to five people of the fifty on my floor regularly had sex. Did you hear what I said? Three to five out of fifty! Surely some students did not desire to be sexually active, but I think most did. Figures elsewhere on campus are probably similar. This is not normal at other (non-nerd) schools.

But the lack of sex is symptomatic of a larger problem — Rice students are not sexual. Wearing a short skirt on a Friday night does not indicate sexual — it just says that one can follow some unwritten rules. A decent barometer of sexual is sex; another one is “the gaze.”

The gaze is a certain look that people give to each other that belies a sexual interest, or at least, consideration. The gaze is completely absent at Rice and abundant at other schools and places. I cannot take five steps at UT-Dallas without locking eyes with some girl and feeling primal parts of our brains being engaged. The same happens at Target. I would say 30 percent of girls within my age and sight ranges give me the gaze. I could not pay a girl at Rice to do the same. If I look and smile at a girl in a UT-Dallas class, she might reciprocate. At Rice, a girl would immediately avert her eyes as if we were both north poles of a magnet. “Oh my gosh,” she would say at lunch to her friends, “This dude kept on staring at me in class! Rice guys are such creeps.”

The lack of sexual behavior is not without consequences. We hear that sex is healthy and whatnot. And so is the gaze. For me, the gaze has had two effects. Firstly, I realized that I am actually attractive. In retrospect, I am surprised anyone at Rice feels attractive. Secondly, and this is huge, I finally confirmed that girls and I are on the same page when it comes to sex. With so few people having, openly discussing and openly looking for sex — the asexual campus — I wondered if I was some sort of a strange horndog. Nope, and now I know for sure, girls want sex too.

Horndog. I have been called that too many times at Rice. And that is why I write this column. I would have appreciated if someone told me freshman year that things are FUBAR at Rice when it comes to sex. That would have been a tranquilizer; I would have felt normal and realized that just about everyone else is not. Well, I want to do you that favor. Yours is an asexual campus. If you want sex and are not getting it, chances are you are not doing anything wrong.

So why is this place asexual? I have several answers and half a solution. The reasons are students’ dating inexperience, the college system and the campus size, ugliness and the amount of homework.

Homework first. Students at other (non-nerd) schools do significantly less homework. I can confirm this now, having taken upper level classes at two other universities. Sure, it is obvious that you are not going to find a mate when you are in your room messing with Matlab. But the Herculean amount of homework also depletes our mental resources. The omnipresent sense of guilt about doing anything other than homework, with which oh so many of us identify, adulterates the time spent in other activities. Even in a mate-rich environment — e.g., party — that nagging guilt reminds us that we are on the clock: “I have only a few hours tonight and tomorrow night to make something happen.” This tremendous pressure forces people to act counterproductively, like drink too much, act creepily, so on and so forth.

Another big component of this pressure is the dire lack of attractive people. It is nearly impossible to feel sexual when there is nobody sexy around you. The scarcity of attractiveness and small campus size also affect people’s risk tolerance. If I strike out with a cute girl at UT-Dallas, who cares? There is another one just around the corner. In other words, I can afford to tolerate serious risk. At Rice, there may be but five attractive girls in an entire college. If I strike out with one of the five, I am in trouble.

And god forbid I strike out in a bad way — the girl will inform her four hot friends, killing my chances with them before I even express interest. To make matters worse, the college system is there to make sure you do not run into the five hot girls from other colleges too often. Point is, it pays to avoid risk at Rice.

Unfortunately, everywhere, including Rice, avoiding risk is almost synonymous with not getting dates. At best, it is synonymous with waiting a painfully long time.

And let me tell you, it is not difficult to strike out in a “bad” way at Rice. There was a Thresher article about two years ago titled “Confessions of a creepy guy: We’re not that bad”

(Oct. 7, 2005). I recommend the article because almost every joke in it will not be interpreted as a joke at any non-nerd school. One of the jokes: “The last creepy thing I did was when I looked over at the cute redhead in class and smiled when she happened to look in my general direction.” This is mildly humorous to me, because I can imagine this situation, the guy looking, the girl freaking out, the guy thinking he is creepy. Any UT-Dallas student will ask, “Where is the punch line?” And that is the sad part. Striking out (read: seeming creepy) at Rice takes as little as saying “hi” to a girl you don’t know. I blame this freaking out on inexperience.

Generally speaking, the girls and guys that come to Rice are not only virgins, but have never really been hit on. As a result, hitting on a girl at Rice is akin to approaching an unhealthy-looking deer, at night, with your headlights on. The deer has never dealt with this before, so she has no idea what to do. She just stands there and does nothing. The car has bad brakes, so the deer dies and the driver feels ashamed. Similarly, the girl thinks, “Oh my gosh, he is hitting on me. I have seen this in movies. What do I do? I don’t know. I better do nothing to avoid doing anything wrong.” The guy is not Don Juan, he can’t rescue the awkward situation, and everyone loses.

The good news is that by the time they are seniors, many of the students will be more experienced and these problems will largely go away. The bad news is that it will be a “dry season” until then and, if you’re taking risks, you will be labeled creepy, a difficult label to shake off.

It is customary to end any criticism with constructive solutions. I do not have any. Actually, the solution is admissions — admit more, better looking, more flirtatious people who care less about their grades. We are admitting more students but I don’t see the better looking and more flirtatious ever happening.

So if you want a lot of sex, transfer. Otherwise, stay put, get the good education and remember: If you are a sexual person, you are normal. You are not creepy, and a world of opportunity is awaiting you just beyond the Sallyport.

Misha Teplitskiy graduated from Jones College in 2007.

End of article

Back to top