In physics, vertices are defined as those points where particles collide and interact. At Boston College, they provide the name for a seminar taught by Kerry Cronin, the director of the Lonergan Center at Bapst Library. The seminar focuses on life issues, particularly in terms of interpersonal relationships.
The class may be best known for its infamous dating assignment, a project Cronin began three years ago to entice students to give dating a try. She calls it an exercise in being countercultural, a chance to confront the "hook-up culture" she finds at BC.
Cronin began the assignment three years ago after talking to a group of students about the lack of dating at BC. She found that dating in college "had become a lost art, and no one knew how anymore." So she challenged her students to do a simple thing: ask someone out on a date.
Cronin found that students didn't find the assignment a simple task at all. "The problem," she says, "is that dating isn't a part of the social script anymore. It's become something strange, and scary."
The lack of a dating script, Cronin says, can be attributed to the broader hypersexualization of Western culture over time, in which "sex has been made casual and dating has been made formal." One of her students in the Vertices seminar, Annie Kurdziel, A&S '08, agrees. "The idea of dating seems so foreign to our generation," she says, "and you really have to put yourself out there."
Cronin acknowledges that the changes that have diminished the prevalence of dating have also been constructive. The increase in women's independence, for example, has led to a focus on career and friendships rather than dating. Nevertheless, she says that "somewhere along the way, I think women's liberation and the commodification of women has been confused."
She cites the model of Sex and the City as an example of this confusion. Models such as these, Cronin says, "show how feminism has been corrupted … and have completely decimated the possibility of dating."
In the microcosm of BC, Kurdziel attributes the lack of dating to alcohol and the way it drives the social framework. Cronin agrees, saying, "dating doesn't fit into the drinking culture and its group dynamics." Christa Borgman, A&S '08, another student in the Vertices seminar, says that the current college generation is more focused on friendships between men and women and on socializing in groups. "We kind of use this as a crutch, though," Borgman says, "so we don't have to be in the awkward social situation of a date."
Cronin feels that the dating assignment is a chance for students to confront this awkwardness and step outside of the alcohol-fueled hook-up culture. For three years, students of Vertices have asked others on dates and reported their experiences back to the class. But in doing so, they must follow a few rules set by Cronin.
First, the student must ask someone in which he or she legitimately has interest. Second, they must ask the person out in person. No e-mailing or texting, Cronin says. "Texting is like the hook-up of communications and really impersonal." And most importantly, no alcohol or physical involvement can be involved.
As might be expected, not everyone completes the assignment. The first semester Cronin gave the assignment to the class, only one person completed it. But this semester, only three of her 18 students opted out.
Borgman did the assignment, and says, "It wasn't bad. Dating is just getting to know someone and hanging out. And not doing it means missing out on a valuable life skill. Kurdzeil agrees. As a philosophy major, she says, "Aristotle talked about the different forms of friendship. And dating is a part of that. It offers a way of getting to know yourself in a unique way with another person."
The Vertices seminar, as well as Cronin's talks on campus about dating, boast students of all years and both sexes. Cronin has found that male and female students are equally interested in this issue.
"This is," she says, pausing, "I think because fundamentally we all want the same things: to be desired, to be accepted, and to be loved." And because as all students collide and interact, befriend one another, hook-up, or date, "we are really much the same."
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