I am a graduating senior and I don't know when Spring Weekend is

I am a graduating senior and I don’t know when Spring Weekend is.

That’s right, I have no idea.

To put it plainly, I’m not that interested in drinking myself into a stupor for five days straight (that’s right—the “weekend” now includes Wednesday night). I don’t really care to walk the Rape Trail alongside thousands of people who may or may not be 40-year-old men who don’t even go to UConn and are only looking for their next sloppily-drunk female victim. And I don’t like beer pong on a broken-down closet door, either.

So, to be clear, I am a UConn student who does not enjoy Spring Weekend. WE DO EXIST!

In fact, I like to try to avoid it at all costs. This is not to say I don’t enjoy my liquor—believe me, make me a frozen strawberry margarita with a sugar rim and I’m all over it. But give me 20,000 people who have consumed the equivalent of eighteen said margaritas and well, no thank you.

Freshman year, sophomore year—I was all about Spring Weekend. My equally naïve and eager-to-be-accepted freshmen friends and I were the aforementioned fools stumbling across campus in the hopes of finding a generous junior or senior who would welcome us into their magnificently-impressive Celeron apartment parties. I can safely say I’ve learned a thing or two since then.

If only I had believed my mother, I would have known this time would come (yes, Mom, I did just say that—you can pick your jaw up off the floor now). Upon getting accepted into UConn four years ago, one of the first things out of her mouth was, “Okay, Ruthie, but you know this means you’re coming home whenever Spring Weekend is, right?” I laughed in her face. I was going to the biggest party school in Connecticut. Miss the biggest party weekend of the year? I didn’t think so.

No, I stayed for Spring Weekend freshman year, and sophomore year, too. In fact, last year was the first year that I missed it (I was more than happy to be studying abroad in South Africa sipping wine at an outdoor concert at the foot of Table Mountain than wandering through X-Lot looking for my friends I had lost in my drunken state).

After missing it last year, what’s so bad about skipping it this year? Will I really be missing out on that much? The Spring Weekend concert this year is 50 Cent—I don’t even like 50 Cent (another shocker, I know).

The poor residents of Storrs-Mansfield. They have to suffer through it every year—the students taking over their streets and sidewalks (sometimes even their lawns), the noise, the confusion, the beer cans, the fires. Who knows if there would even be a vacant ambulance available to them if they had a real emergency—after all, X-Lot is full of them the Saturday night of Spring Weekend. That’s how out of hand it gets.

I think that weekend (whenever it is) I’ll take a mysterious trip across country. Anywhere but Storrs. How far do you think is far enough? My mom will be so proud. I will be purposely avoiding the weekend she always wanted me to avoid. Maybe I’ll even read a novel on the plane.

A novel, you say?! Yes, I like to read, too. I’m actually an English major. I liked reading so much I decided to do it for four years straight. We’re few and far between, but if you look closely enough, we’re there amidst the North Face jackets and Ugg boots and Coach purses.

So don’t lose hope, Connecticut. Come the end of the semester there will be a select few students at our state university who won’t be tipping cars in parking lots and publically urinating on cop cars. There will be those who choose not to consume so much alcohol that they need to be driven to Windham hospital for stomach pumping. There will be those walking in the commencement ceremony with their dignities intact, knowing they weren’t the students who stripped naked on the Rape Trail running past lines of cops shouting profanities and throwing beer cans.

Will there be these students? Of course. Will all of UConn participate? Of course not.

Don’t be deceived.