Life as a freshman male…well… often sucks. The freshman girls are too busy going for the oldest, frattiest guys possible and the older girls won’t bother with the freshman boys, at least not until freshman spring. Additionally, social spaces are harder to find, unless you are that rare freshman boy that is just “sweet” enough (yea, right) to have already been accepted socially into a fraternity (or be on a sports team or have an older brother that goes to school here). Beyond that, most freshman boys are overlooked, ignored, and cast aside: tossed into a corner like that beer can you just threw on the ground—kicked off of games of pong, left to sit neglected in a dank corner.

Life as a freshman girl is much different. Wandering down to the River Cluster on a Saturday morning, I listened to two freshman girls, distinguished by their dress, slow walking (I recently had knee surgery and they were even slower than me), and this conversation:

Girl #1: Chi Gam last night was totally sweet.

Girl #2: I liked Tri-Kap better, they aren’t nearly as sketchy.

Girl #1: No, they just pretend not to be. The Chi Gams are super nice and they don’t ignore you just because they don’t know who you are. Besides I’m hooking up with Fred. [All names have been changed to protect the subject’s identities]

Girl #2: No way! He’s so sweet, he’s always playing pong. But isn’t he a little sketchy? And hasn’t Russ [a freshman, confirmed in the DND] been trying to date you…he did pay for the last two dinners.

Girl #1: But Russ isn’t nearly as cool as Fred. Fred and I can hang out, and I can go over to Chi Gam. All Russ and I do is watch movies and talk. Bor-ring!

Life as a freshman girl is exciting, filled with parties and nearly quadruple the attention you got in high school. I don’t care if you’re Heidi Klum, it’s still more than you got in high school. I wish that I could say that most freshman girls have a different head on their shoulders, but we’ve all been there. Granted, most aren’t as open about their social climbing, age-discriminating manners, and perhaps it’s more in the imbedded sexism of the Greek system, but I don’t have the time or the energy to dissect those issues. A much more important issue needs to be addressed.

Sex! Relationships! Man and Woman! Or Man and Man, Woman and Woman. This columnist tries not to discriminate.

The Dartmouth male and female sex lives vary in very drastic ways over time. It has been a long standing joke that the freshman female starts at her peak and it is only downhill (in terms of sex life) from the day she steps foot on campus. The trajectory for a Dartmouth male is remarkably different, with a freshman year doomed with loneliness, less than impressive hook ups, rejection, and nights spent drowning one’s sorrows alone with a bottle of hard-to-procure alcohol. Very few people will deny that the male “sexuality” increases over the four years, with most Dartmouth men reaching their peak their senior year. The two trajectories of sexuality, if they were to be graphed are at exactly equal points sophomore summer. The graph is one giant X marks the spot on sophomore summer—the summer of equality, harmony, the best damn summer of your life!

One has to wonder, why does this change occur? Do age differences really matter? Is there more to the senior boy-freshman girl relationship than lackluster 3AM hookups drenched in a scent of stale beer, cigarettes, and the inevitable walk of shame? How many of those actually last? More importantly, why is the older girl-younger male relationship kept so shrewdly hidden? If the senior boy-freshman girl relationship is considered sketchy, why is the senior girl-freshman boy relationship considered, somehow, legit?

Does age matter?

At Dartmouth, age equals seniority, level of coolness. Often, for males and females alike, to be the “younger” one in the relationship implies a level of maturity beyond your age. Somehow, you are worthy of the older one. The older man or woman is sometimes frowned upon behind his or her back, unrightfully so. To be the older partner in a relationship implies a level of confidence that many lack.

In a relationship of drastically different numerical ages (i.e. senior to freshman), to be that senior suggests that you are 100 percent confident, happy, and secure with who you are and what you do on campus. You do not need a significant other to help, because, well, they are at a different point in their lives. They cannot offer classroom help, or even future life plan suggestions. Often times they have not even planned for life events that you have long experienced and moved beyond.

So perhaps the age difference implies that the sex has to be damn good. If you cannot contribute to each others lives in opinions, because you are at different points in your lives, you must be able to enhance each others lives in some other manner. For many independent women, the younger man is the way to go.

Recent feminist theory suggests that the woman is supposed to be entirely one to herself. She should be happy being single for her entire life, to be emotionally and physically complete independently, before she begins to rely upon a “man” (heaven forbid). And for the ideal feminist, the younger man seems perfect. He cannot fully legitimize his opinions, because he has not been through the life stage that she is experiencing. He can only love her, provide a muse both sexually and emotionally. The younger man is fulfilled in the validation that such an older, beautiful woman has chosen him. The choice implies that he is mature enough, after years of rejection by women (see the plight of the Dartmouth freshman male above), that he is wise enough to provide companionship.

Demi Moore, 42, and Ashton Kutcher, 27, were wed in 2005, causing much controversy and discussion around this issue—does age actually matter? How can two people at such different points in their lives find fulfillment?

An age gap in a relationship might make the most sense in this world that values independence. As people wait longer and longer to get married, the age gap almost ensures that they will be able to maintain separate “lives” while still being emotionally involved on an abstract level, and clearly intertwined on a physical level (two people as hot as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher could not possibly have bad sex). While developing such a large age gap in a relationship at Dartmouth is close to impossible (unless you’re a skeevy professor), there is something here to suggest that keeping an open mind is the best idea when looking for the ideal relationship.

Admittedly, I have never dated a younger man. I have never even hooked up with a younger guy. But in this world of independent people, perhaps the age gap in relationships is the best way to avoid the head over heels have to be with you 100% relationship that causes so many of us to go “gag!” Then again, is such a relationship that bad? Either way, to refer to any gap in age as inherently sketchy ignores the fact that maybe these two people are simply the ideal modernists—people with open minds and open hearts that are willing to love beyond commonalities and able to embrace differences.

Give the freshman guy a chance, you never know. He might be the next Ashton Kutcher.