Indiana University-Bloomington Top Questions

Athletics are extremely popular at IU, especially the men's basketball games. Basketball and Indiana are pretty much synonymous, and many of the students grew up on the tradition of IU Basketball. I was involved with 2 organizations on campus: Student Athletic Board and the IU Student Foundation. Student Athletic Board is a student run organization within the athletic department that helps with the marketing, promotions, and game-day operations for all of the varsity sports teams. I met a lot of my closest friends through SAB and was also able to get a behind the scenes look at our athletic department. The IU Student Foundation raises money for scholarships, and also puts on the largest amateur athletic event in the country, the Little 500. The Little 500 is the best weekend of the year. It is a bicycle race that is modeled after the Indiapolis 500. It is a huge party in the spring, and has been known to bring hundreds of thousands of people to Bloomington. At a school that has many traditions, this is the biggest and the best. IU is a big party school, so people are partying all the time. However, that doesn't mean everything fun involves drinking. There are always movie theatres, concert halls, and athletic events going on to keep you busy.

Men's basketball is easily the most popular sport at IU. Season ticket prices here are higher than almost anywhere in the country. The biggest intramural event is the Little 500 bike race. During the weekend of the race, IU imports almost every cop and excise policeman in southern Indiana, due to the size of it. Overall, athletic teams are very popular. Most fraternity intramural teams have a large turn-out to the events. The events at the theater are very popular as well. The dating scene at IU is, essentially, the best. I've heard a statistic floating around that about 60{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of IU girls are listed as in a relationship on facebook, but there are so many opportunities to date, it doesn't really matter. You can hook up with someone on your floor, at a game, in a bar, from a class, at the bus stop, at work, etc. I met my closest friends in college through the bike teams that I have ridden for, through work, and through my fraternity. Usually, we'll spend the weekend hanging out or going to parties, because half of us are still not 21. At IU, the party scene is huge. You can literally go out every single night of the week and find something. In some of the Northwestern neighborhoods, you can go from apartment to apartment, or room to room and find a party. Most people typically do house parties, but a lot of seniors go out to the bars fairly often. The parties really don't stop here until about 4am. Of course if you are not much of a partier, there are tons of options during the weekend. I lived in the honors college my freshman year, and about half of us didn't drink. During the spring, we got into DDR during the night. There are always events going on at the theater or movies showing close by. You can go on a date to a good restaurant and movie for $15 if you know how to do it. Off campus, there's the town of Bloomington to experience. When it's warm, you can swim in the quarries, go rock climbing, spelunking, or paintballing. The forests of Monroe and Brown county consistently draw huge numbers of tourists during the fall. If you like to go horseback riding, there are tons of places to do that.

Greek life is huge. I'm involved with the Hungarian Cultural Association and participate in Russian events. They're awesome, and the people that I've met in them are interesting and fun to be around. Students in dorms leave their doors open. Basketball is huge. Tickets are sold for about $50+ per game if you dont have season tickets. Football is not so big, but most people go to games. There are guest speakers from all over: Translating seminar, ex-KGB officer, authors, ex-CIA agents, NY times Crossword puzzle editor, etc. There is no dating scene whatsoever. I'm studying at 2am on a Tuesday. Some people are partying though. Some people party every day but Sunday. Most people party once a week on Friday or Saturday. Last weekend I went to a play, they went to a party, the next day I went to a calc study group, and then went a Tibetan restaurant for dinner,baked cookies and watched a movie with my room mates. On a Saturday night, you can go to a play, a show at the auditorium, a basketball game, a concert, go cosmic bowling in the union, see a movie, play board games in the lounge of your dorm.

There are about 85 bajillion groups on campus and I couldn't say what the most popular ones are, although the Greek community (if that counts as an organization) is pretty MASSIVE. People tend to be involved in service-related activities, like Habitat for Humanity. To be honest I think a lot of people are more in to partying than involvement. My main activity is Campus Girl Scouts which has a tiny but loyal following. Basically, we volunteer on weekends with Girl Scout programs in our community; some people work with troops. We have a lot of trouble recruiting new people and I'm not sure we have that big a presence on campus. It's actually kind of an extension of my life before and outside of college (like working at Girl Scout camp) and so I feel very at home with the group. In my dorm people always had their doors open. I lived in a building a couple blocks from the main quad and I'd come down all the time and just hang out in the hall. It was awesome! The dating scene sucks. I've dated, like, two people since I've been here. Then again I'm gay so maybe that's why--it's a smaller community and I don't have that much in common with most of the lesbians on campus (I'm kind of the earthy-crunchy-granola type and there's definitely a dearth of people like that in general--regardless of orientation--on our campus). Athletics are pretty huge. Even football, which can't sell out, has massive tailgating happening. There's some good theater and cultural stuff off campus almost all the time but to be honest I mostly just chill out with friends on weekends, or I have to work. There are free movies at the Union every weekend that are pretty awesome, not to mention some good theater. Drinking is still def. the most popular social activity.

The Greek system is very big on campus. A lot of kids rush, especially in the Northwest neighborhood. The Hutton Honors college provides a lot of extracurriculars for the more driven students. The IDS is a huge campus activity. It's one of the best college newspapers in the country, and everybody reads it daily. On a Saturday night, there's not a lot of things (at least in the dorms) to do that don't include partying. Kirkwood Ave, a strip just outside campus, has a ton of little shops and restaurants to visit. Sometimes that's an alternative to the drinking scene.