And although I will be looking for a job in a market which still pays women 76 cents for every man's dollar, no one is expecting that I marry one of these men and his dollars before college is over. I was surprised to find that college courtship rituals have not changed all that significantly in the last three generations. My grandmother went to bars with my grandfather, ate picnic lunches by the lake, attended cocktail parties. She went to visit nearby men's colleges, as did my mother while she was at Smith. One weekend, a frisky fraternity brother bit my mother's rear-end at a party.
Studies indicate that an alarming percentage of current college students are binge drinkers.
The statistics were getting so ugly that I was feeling some generational shame, that is until I accompanied my grandparents on their stroll down memory lane. Youth of their generation engaged in recreational drinking as well. In their day it was called a Seabreeze. At one get-together before a formal dance the women drank too many Seabreezes and passed out in the room they had rented for the occasion. Substitute just about any article of clothing for tuxedo shirt and you've got a universal college experience.