So I spent the majority of my time here at work playing around with my thesis. I didn’t bother going out for lunch, having pretzels and a cup of ravioli at the office. I was waiting around for the phone call to tell me that my student loan check had been reissued (They sent the last one to the old address and the post office didn’t forward it.) so I could go deposit it. While sitting around in front of the computer copying out Old French words from a dictionary I bought in Rennes three years ago, I got a global e-mail talking about some frat party. Apparently, a girl who was there (originally from the Haute but attending IU) was diagnosed with meningitis and is now dying in a hospital somewhere. The global and the announcement on the ISU webpage stressed that anyone in attendance there go immediately to the Health Center for a pill to try and prevent further break-outs.

Well all this is just dippy, eh? To say the least, the tenor of the campus has been that of somewhat muted panic and confusion since not everyone has checked their e-mail or the ISU webpage to have seen the warning. Most people are hearing this by word of mouth, causing more confusion and hysteria since gossip leaves so much fact out and inspires so much more fiction. The Health Center is innundated with students from all over campus whether they had been at the party or not, and the entire experience just makes me that much happier that I don’t frequent parties and that I don’t spend that much time with the mass public. Sure, I teach and therefore am around about fifty students two days a week, and sure I advise and therefore have the possibility of many students coming in to see me, but the rest of the time I live happily in my little office bubble with my Old French dictionary and obscure articles on French suffixation.

The frat party was Friday night and was a joint party with another frat who then turned right around and had another party Saturday night, thus exposing that many more people. There’s a price to being social, and that is the rapid spread of communicable diseases. There’s a price to being antisocial as well, but I’m not sure what it is. I think the price to being avoidant and antisocial is far less than that of possibly contracting meningitis or who knows what else because you want to buy your friends and then get totally soused with them rather than doing something constructive or creative. I’m not a big fan of parties, huge ones, at any rate, with a lot of strangers and noise and unknowns. Maybe it’s the agoraphobia talking, or maybe I’m just a prude, but I just don’t see how it’s worth the risk to go to a huge frat party when everyone knows the statistics for catching certain diseases goes up in those situations. Ickiness.

I dunno. It’s just what’s on my mind. I guess that the whole frat party thing isn’t as totally bad as all that, and I know I’m just biased agains the whole Greek thing anyway. So maybe it’s not that horrible. Well, except for that girl dying in a hospital somewhere who may inadvertenly cause the deaths of other students.