This post originally appeared on Stephen Silver on 10/23/'02; it can accessed here.

For the second or third week in a row, something published in my old college newspaper, The Justice, has led some friends of mine and I to closely examine what exactly our college experience meant to us, and just how far removed it was from the Real World (the place, as well as the TV show. No Brynns or Trishelles at my old school).

College, we all pretty much agree, is supposed to be different from the rest of your life in a good way- that is, it's supposed to be the absolute peak of your lifetime in terms of having fun, getting drunk, and getting laid.

Just like with the academic side of things, the idea is to gain as much experience with those things during university life (when consequences are limited) so that you know what to do once you reach the real, post-collegiate world. As the wise old sage Chef once said on "South Park," "there's a time and a place for everything, and it's called 'college.'" Granted, some people aren't interested in having fun, getting drunk, or getting laid, and while they're certainly entitled to those views, I've long wished they'd stay out of the business of those who do.

Two such people, a pair of Brandeis juniors, wrote to the Justice this week complaining about a series of events that they feel has indicated an epidemic of "indecency" at Brandeis (yes, you read that right), from the display of a giant condom in a cafeteria, to the annual "Screw Your Roommate" and "The Less You Wear, the Less You Pay" dances, to a new entry called the "Pimps and Ho's Dance" to a recent "masturbation workshop." These are things that greatly embarrass and offend these two people because apparently, they indicate that people are having too good a time and they're just jealous. I don't want to know what the authors would've done had they gone to a real party school, the kind of place where the weekend starts on Wednesday and drunken orgies happen more or less spontaneously.

We wanted "Animal House," but we got "PCU." In my four years at Brandeis one thing I took note of all along was that it seemed the forces (whether students or administration) were aligned at all times against people having fun- whether it was the lack of an organized Greek system or the lack of a football team, the never-absent political correctness and "social justice" police, the uptight religious people of all denominations, and (more than anything else) the altogether laughable rule that students had to "register" if they wanted to have a party that served alcohol. As though the administration didn't already do enough to discourage fun, they were so fearful of being sued that the Brandeis Nanny State had to swoop in and prevent people from creating fun of their own.