"Where is the Corc? What is you GBC?" I'm sure you've seen these skinny gold posters all over campus encouraging students to apply to become orientation leaders. After laughing to myself thinking that the administration at Boston College actually believes students use terms such as the "Brighton Campus" to refer to the land recently purchased from the archdiocese, I realized it raises an interesting question, alongside some rather corny ones: Why are students at BC abbreviating everything? After all, the purpose of the posters was to recruit OLs, a term we are all familiar with, no explanation necessary.
My initial reaction to reading "the Corc" was confusion. Are they referring to Ireland? Is it some obscure reference to our school's Irish heritage? After realizing it refers to the renamed John M. Corcoran Commons, confusion was replaced with nostalgia. What used to be called Lower Campus Dining Facility will always have a place in my heart as "Lower" or "LCD." No amount of donations from alumni can ever change that connotation. Allocating pet names to dining halls does not end on Lower Campus. Freshmen hop on a bus to grab a quick bite to eat at "Stewy" (Stuart Dining Hall), or those who live on Upper Campus may rendezvous at "Mackie" or "Mac Attack" (McElroy).
It isn't limited to dining halls either. Students may live in "Cush" (Cushing) or "Duche" (Duchesne) on the "Newt" (Newton Campus), "Chevy" (Cheverus), "Fitz" (Fitzpatrick), or "CLXF" (Clavier, Loyola, Xavier and Fenwick) on Upper, and "SIG" (St. Ignatius Gate), "Iggy" (Ignacio), "E-Unit" (Edmond's), "Vandy" (Vanderslice), "90" (90 St. Thomas More Road), "Rubi" or "the Stein" (Rubinstein) on Lower.
This laundry list of terms can easily be disputed and replaced with a whole slew of new ones, but perhaps the most notorious nickname for a residence on campus is the "Mods" for the Modular apartments. Creating nicknames keeps conversation short and light when answering the redundant question of where you are living this year, but some have taken renaming on-campus housing to the next level. A group of girls living on College Road this year have shortened it to "Co Ro" in order to refer to themselves as the "Co Ro Hoes."
BC students never leave home without the inclination of curtailing their words. They go to the "Plex" to workout, and they head over to the "Infirm" to get "antis" from the doctor. They eat "buff chic" wraps and drink "DC" (Diet Coke) at the "D-Halls." They buy "tix" to sporting events at the box office, study at the "lib" before a test, and celebrate on the weekends at "MA's" with the hope that they find that delicate balance between not being "sobes" and not getting so drunk they have to "vom."
This trend of truncating words has even extended itself beyond the BC realm to permeate everyday normal vocabulary. Every girl will proudly wear a "skank tank" to the bars on a "thirsty Thurs," but inevitably worries whether she will get called a slut if others consider it too risqué. If you think a party gets out of control, you're mistaken. It's "OOC." Something appears obvious or your friend is acting ridiculous? Not quite. It's "obvi" that your friend was being "ridic."
Students are paying hefty sums of money in tuition to become educated, eloquent adults. Instead of spewing out SAT caliber vocabulary, we have found a way to water down even the most simplistic of terms. Are we threatening the fabric of linguistics by creating our own colloquialisms as a subculture? Hardly. In fact it's harmless, fun, and yes, at times, lazy. As long as you don't subconsciously emit these idioms at your next job interview or include them in your next polisci paper, it's even safe to believe you'll be just "fab."
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