The Social Network

This isn’t a movie review, although I do recommend the newly released movie starring Jesse Eisenberg as the “baby billionaire” Mark Zuckerberg.

If you haven’t seen it, the movie is about the founding of Facebook by a 19-year-old student at Harvard whose motivation was to be one of the cool kids and meet girls. It landed him billions of bucks, a lot of which were given to lawyers to defend his ownership of the idea and the company.

I’ll leave it to others to speculate on whether the portrayal of Zuckerberg is accurate. I’m more interested in the portrayal of college life.

I didn’t go to an Ivy League School. Rejected by Radcliffe (which merged with Harvard in 1999), wait-listed by Duke, I ended up at DePauw University, which billed itself as “The Harvard of the Midwest,” a claim made by every decent school geographically located between Nebraska and Ohio.

DePauw was academically rigorous and socially regressive, campus life being completely controlled by fraternities and sororities with deep traditions of class stratification and time-worn rituals.

I was not part of the Greek system (rejected by both sororities I had a connection to) so I cannot say what went on behind the heavy wooden doors with the gilded Greek letters on them, but I heard the rumors: lots of drinking, some bizarre hazing rituals, and plenty of information-swapping about which girls/boys to date and which to shun.

The Harvard of 2004 portrayed in “The Social Network” has all of these, plus rampant elitism, misogyny, and serious drug use.

The DePauw University of 1969 may have had all or none of these. I wouldn’t know; I was studying.

Let’s compare a few tidbits of campus life as portrayed in “The Social Network” and as actually experienced at the Harvard of the Midwest:

2004: Elite club buses in a group of female townies, gets them drunk and encourages them to take their clothes off. Mischief ensues.

1969: A group of us break curfew to go to the back door of the local donut shop at midnight, when the crullers are coming out of the oven.

2004: Zuckerberg breaks into the university computer system and steals student photos.

1969: Girls in a freshman dorm “borrow” some trays from the dining hall to go sledding at the local golf course.

2004: Various drugs readily available.

1969: Beer sneaked into dorm is cause for suspension.

My sophomore year I transferred to the University of Arizona, where life was freer and the atmosphere was mellow (sunshine and marijuana smoke on the quad will do that.) There may have been more opportunities for partying there. I wouldn’t know; I was studying.

(Note: Mary connects with her college friends on her Facebook page.)