The night before Valentine's Day seemed like any other on the Columbia campus.
The harbingers of St. Valentine's Day were present in John Jay Dining Hall: a table selling candy grams was set up near the door and advertisements for a Valentine's Day dessert night covered the wall. But neither seemed to draw much attention.
Hewitt Dining Hall at Barnard covered their tables with red and white tablecloths, but the air was buzzing with conversation about upcoming midterms rather than talk of love or romance.
Safer Sex Week has been the larger draw--groups of students around campus were deconstructing the safe sex packets that Alice! assembled. It seemed as though at least one person in every cluster was making the same jokes about the lubricant or the "fluids" info cards in the zip-locked baggies. Few students were ruminating about the nature of love or agonizing over the upcoming holiday.
The Columbia University Science Fiction Society got into the spirit, holding its annual Valentine's Day anti-love celebration. This year, the club screened six episodes of the Twilight Zone that have to do with love gone awry. Complete with strawberries, Cool Whip, and loud conversation, the CUSFS members seemed to be having more fun than most on the night before V-Day.
Certainly, no one at the celebration was pouting about failed romantic ambitions or disappointing relationships.
"I'm gonna go buy some of those heart shaped candies, rent a movie, and sit on my ass all night," Pete Smick, CC '05, said of his Valentine's Day plans.
"I'm not going to be doing anything for Valentine's Day. Maybe just hang around with some friends," Vishal Govil, CC '05 said.
At Mondel's Chocolates last night, the line out the door suggested that Morningside Heights residents do care about Valentine's Day.
No one in the line was a Columbian.
Even at the singing telegram table in Lerner, the sellers from the Columbia Musical Theater Society seemed to be quite unenthusiastic about the prospect of Valentine's Day.
"I think the common opinion is that it's the most depressing holiday of the year. Me personally, I think it's great because you get to eat lots of candy," Matthew Urbanek, CC '04, suggested.
As the clock struck midnight on Thursday, the Columbia College Student Council sponsored "Get Revenge," an event in JJ's Place to talk about "blind dates, worst dates, and best dates." Needless to say, the event was not well-attended.