Davidson College Top Questions

The Social Life at Davidson centers around Patterson Court. Patterson Court consists of 9 Fraternities and 4 Eating Houses. Eating Houses are open only to girls and are a place to eat meals, do service project and host parties. Most Court parties are dance parties, while Bands do come occasionally. All Court Parties, with the exception of semi-formals, are open to everyone at Davidson. The party nights for under-21 year olds are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. On Tuesday the college sponsers a 21-year old night in the Union and on Thursdays most 21 year olds go to the local bar, the Brickhouse. The Union Board also hosts non-alcoholic events every Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights that are open to all students. These range from movie screenings, to Build-A-Bear, to a Carnival. The Dating Scene: either you are in a long term relationship heading towards marriage or you are randomly hooking up.

The social scene is pretty sad, but being from Europe spoils you when you come to the US and find out that all college students think about is get drunk in dirty fraternity houses. It's quite ridiculous. Americans like it, though.

every weekend seems to be the same, parties at the court

Davidson is a work hard and play hard environment. If you are awake at 2 AM on a weekday it is because you are studying or writing a paper, unless of course its a Wednesday and you're wasted and still dancing. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights are devoted to debauchery and little else!

Club sports are pretty popular here. I am a member of club soccer. This fall we traveled to nearby colleges to play games on the weekends after practicing a few times per week. It was relaxed, so practices were not mandatory, but it was a good release after a school day to go play soccer with girls in of all grades. Playing sports is something I miss most about high school, so I found club soccer to be a really great activity for me. Eating houses for women are really popular here. Eating houses is our version of sororities...sort of. They are much more relaxed than sororities at most schools. You are able to join a house in the spring of freshmen year. You select the house you want to be in and if you want to join a different house, you are able to switch in the fall of the next school year. You can also drop membership from a house at all at any time. There are no hard feelings if someone decides to switch houses. It is all very relaxed. I like being a part of a larger group on campus (about 120 per house) that I can call my own. We eat meals together, have sisterhoods, and host parties. In the end, the best thing about an eating house is getting to know the girls and making friends of all different ages. I have only been a part of my eating house (Warner Hall) for 3 months or so, but I have very much enjoyed being in a house so far and expect I will grow to love it more as I become more involved.

The most popular organizations tend to be eating houses, and in terms of athletics- most people only outwardly show support for basketball. There could be more school spirit with other sports and athletic events. Davidson brings a lot of great guest speakers, but I find that people are more often than not too busy to attend every speaker they would want to see. That is where the amount of work we all have becomes the most unfortunate. Fraternities and eating houses seem important when you are really involved in them, but I have been on both ends of the spectrum and the times when I am not as involved in my eating house, I still find oppertunities to branch out socially outside the patterson court activities.

The union is a big hand out place at Davidson, to do school work, eat, or hang out. Most people are friends from their freshman halls, sports teams or organizations. Dating is limited- people are either in very serious relationships or just hooking up. The big places to go on the weekend are the court houses and the senior apartments, but the union has a lot of fun, sober activities. Off campus we go to restaurants, downtown Charlotte, or vacations.

A large majority of girls participate in eating houses, me being included. It offers all the pluses of sorority life without the rushing aspect, which eliminates housing falling too much into certain clichés. At 2am on Tuesday, you are most sitting where you have been for the past few hours slaving away on an assignment. This doesn't necessarily have to be the case, but since you procrastinated until the day before it was due, you put yourself in this situation. If this isn't the case, you're asleep. Wednesday's, however, are a different story :)

The school is always sponsoring some type of activity and we have lots of speakers come to campus.

People are involved in everything and anything. This is a very socially active campus. The dating scene is non-existant. It's basically be married or hook up. People also get extremely drunk here. It sometimes feels like a campus full of functional alcoholics.