Is Love Still in The Air? Or Just COVID?

Picture this, it’s a Friday night and you just got dinner with your roommates at your favorite dining hall. You do not have to worry about wearing a mask, sanitizing the table before you sit down or sitting six feet from someone else. After dinner, you take the five-minute walk back to your dorm. On the way, you run into a few people that your roommate knows and just like that, you made five new friends. Later that night, you take a trip down to the lounge on your floor and watch a movie with fifteen other students and you talk about how excited you are for the upcoming campus concert. Maybe you are feeling brave and decide to make it out to a fraternity or sorority party where there are hundreds of people crowded together in a basement, the music so loud you can barely think. Carefree college days, the best. Reminiscing back to three years ago, when I was a freshman in my sorority, it was so easy to hang out, meet new people and even potential romantic interests, serious or casual.  

This has got me thinking… how are these poor students supposed to meet and mingle with one another? Don’t worry, for boys in fraternities, it’s no big deal, their houses are off campus. Fraternity brothers get to meet new love interests left and right while living through a pandemic. I am shocked by the lenience that fraternities and their national organizations give these young men in college. Every weekend (and sometimes even during the weekdays) you can find parties at many fraternity houses. They may be smaller, but they are happening. I am a member of a sorority here at JMU and the lock down that both the university and our national organization has us on is very strict. Our sorority house is located on campus and is managed by the Office of Residence Life and under their watchful eye. Sorority sisters have to pay full dues and are prohibited to attend any social gatherings especially our favorite date function events with potential love interests. Sororities are required by our national organizations to rush remotely to maintain our enrollment numbers. Recruitment is a large part of our social life and meeting new potential members remotely is not the same, but the off-campus fraternities can meet new members easily in their houses.

For women in sororities, the college atmosphere went from encouraging you to socialize to punishing you for it. Two weeks of quarantine here, two weeks there. Stay within your bubble, no more than ten people congregating at a time and don’t dare forget your mask. If you are hanging out with another sister off campus, NEVER post a photo of it on social media. We are constantly being reminded of these rules. Don’t get me wrong, it has to be this way in order to stop the spread of COVID-19, but why are fraternities not held to the same standards that sororities are? Just glance at a few of their social media accounts, parties are happening. Let’s hold these college boys accountable to the same standards as the women in sororities are. No more: “boys will be boys.” It should be a love lockdown for both sororities AND fraternities.

This post was edited on March 19th, 2021 by champagneproblems1989