CAMPUS RELATIONSHIPS
Show me a campus student who hasn’t been in a relationship and I will show you a saint!
Some say it is a passing phase in our formative years. Having a relationship in campus is as normal as taking a cup of tea. Anyone who doesn’t belong to this category is more often than not labeled as a social pariah. Everybody is dating, student verses student, students and lectures, students and working class people. All these comprise of the dating bracket in campus. Why do people enter into these relationships in campus?
Society bestows standards by which people conduct themselves and live in, campus is a society and as such there are rules. Perhaps the paramount reason why students get into campus relationships is to fit in. join first year, totally green and realize that your superiors are all in relationships, so it is the in thing, why not join the bandwagon? Before long you are neck deep in it, you are breaking hearts left right, you heart is being broken and you are in the system. Thus you now belong. Everybody is doing it, why not me? This is the question that comes to everyone’s lips when the question of why they are in relationships is posed.
Most campus relationships are based on sex. Students get into such relationships basically for sex. In never hurts anyone because they understand that it is just for a while. Students have managed to work out a system that is commonly referred to as “friends with benefits” the benefits here being sex. Most of us did our high school in public boarding school and never got the chance to explore our sexuality. Campus offers that opportunity where you can engage and explore these avenues. There is no parental supervision or societical judges. It is campus. Everyone is having a roll in the hay. This is amid the numerous abstinence campaigns by those labeled as :holier than though activists in campus” am not by any chance glorifying sexual relations, am just pointing out the obvious and calling a spade a spade! Not everyone is doing it though. One spoilt apple does not spoil the whole basket. At least one or two will escape the rot.
There are some relationships that are based purely on favors. Often, these kinds of relationships are practiced by ladies. It also involves sex. This is not to say that men are innocent for there are a few practitioners. Lectures and staff are the other party players here too. At times students just offer themselves yet at times it is the lectures who as for those “favors’ sex for better marks and other educational favors that can be offered in campus.
Some relationships are about finances. Man can never be equal in terms of finances. There are students who come from well to do families and have the capabilities of maintaining a certain lifestyle. Other students want to ape this but lack the means. They resort to other means, like dating sugar daddies and sugar mommies. Students who engage in these usually have boyfriends and girlfriends their own age and still keep sugar daddies. The sugar daddy if the finances and when they need emotional attachment, the boyfriend or girlfriend comes into play.
Then there is the category that practices real love, there is that couple who show up together everywhere, live together and are obviously in love. These kinds of relationships are based on honest feeling and attachment to each other. They are bound to blossom into fruitful marriages if kept on. Such couples are usually known around campus and accorded the respect they deserve. Nobody messes with them.
Most relations in campus don’t last though, sadly! The expression “untill holidays do us apart” comes into play. Students stay together until when they go for their long holidays and unless they come from the same area back at home, the relationships tend to break apart. The coming of a new academic year sees some pick up from where they left or look for new partners. It is very rare to be in campus and just have a relationship with just one person, the average number is usually three by the time you are completing campus. And those are the good ones.
Can campus students really exist without relationships, without the sex and just concentrate on learning? No! it would be a lie. In traditional African society, the age at which people join campus could have been the prime age for marriage. In modern society, that is when most youth are discovering their potential, what they can do and what they cannot do. It is also around this age that most of them are broaching the idea of marriage. Denying them the opportunity to date (interact) will rob them of an experience that will come in handy when they decide to settle down. So yeah, let them find out for themselves what is like, let them break a few hearts, let them have their hearts broken for when the right time comes, they will be wiser.