It doesn’t take long on AU campus to hear a phrase from exhausted and thirsty third years; ‘men at AU are ALL gay or ugly!’ But stay a little longer, laying on the quad or camping out in TDR, and you’ll start to understand why. Men at AU tend to be a little bookish, and the ones that go to the gym often and do their daily skin routine are never far from their pink Owala water bottles.
But this statement has always seemed a little hyperbolic to me. Surely there’s no way every guy on AU campus is ugly or gay? Surely there’s some hot straighties lurking around in the depths of Kogod? An athlete, or a distinguished gentleman who’s looking for a lucky gal? So we took to the streets to do some beat reporting to get to the bottom of it.
“I started going to U of M [University of Maryland] for guys, there just weren’t any on campus,” said Sophie Lassiter, a sophomore who told us she’d had plenty of experience with AU men. “The worst part is they don’t know they’re ugly; I’m giving them a chance, you know, and they think they’re hot shit.” It was clear from her tone that she was getting tired of the situation. She explained that when she arrived as a freshman, she was surprised with how many “2”’s there were. Thinking it was just a fluke, she’d tried to date around on campus, but quickly realized that there were no good options. She said that many of her friends felt the same way, “Lucy, Alexis, and Rachel all got a boyfriend on Hinge, but they needed to set their radius to, like, fifty miles and so none of them go to AU. Except Matt, he was on Hinge, but he found his boyfriend at AU, so…”
It’s clear how some of the girls feel. But is it really true? I mean, walking around, you can see that not every man on campus is hard to look at. Kaide Gordon was in line for Qdoba when we spoke to him. He walked out with the beefiest burrito we’d ever seen, and oddly, the resemblance was uncanny. When we asked him how he felt about the famous AU saying, he said, “Well, yeah, a lot of the guys here suck, but look at me bro. I’m in the gym for like five hours a day.” He wasn’t lying. Rippling muscles showing under his dry-fit Nike tank, huge pecs, and a Greek God-esque chiseled jawline, he cut quite the figure. “Yeah, I think I get a lot of attention from girls here because I look better than a lot of other guys, but whatever. I’m not really on the market for anything,” he told us, subtly flexing as he talked. We thought that was that, there were hot, straight guys on campus, until later when he asked for my snap. “You want to come over and watch Gossip Girl later? I’m on season four,” he said. If it wasn’t obvious earlier, it was clear now he wasn’t the solution to our problems.
After hours of prowling, we couldn’t find any more evidence that the age old phrase was a lie. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. We all have our ugly duckling phase, especially guys who are too busy looking at their fifty-dollar Parlay for the Dolphins game to take a shower. And for a school so dominated by women, especially gay women, the quality of man could have gone unrecognized for longer before we’ve realized the problem. But maybe, for the future, it would be in all of our best interests to invest in hot straight men, because the girls are getting a little snippy.
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