Ohio University-Main Campus Top Questions

Social life at OU revolves mainly around the many bars in downtown Athens and the off campus party scene. However, there are many other activities at OU which do not include drinking. Camping at Hocking Hills and Strouds Run is a popular activity. OU also has a large number of student organizations that regularly plan and take part in events around campus.

i never lock my dorm room door.

I met my closest friends here on a freshmen trip called "New Adventures," a program run by Outdoor Pursuits where about 28 freshmen go on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota. Twenty-eight isn't a lot of people, so many people don't really even know about it, so I definitely consider myself lucky to have gone, because the trip was AMAZING and, having met a bunch of new friends, my first couple of quarters here were very fun. I've since met other people, but I still keep in contact with my Boundary Waters gang, and at least three of them remain some of my best friends here. My experience with dorm life has been so awesome. I live on South Green, which is in my opinion the best place to live, in a substance-free dorm called True House. You might think that because we're substance free we're a bunch of squares or something, but you'd be dead wrong - we have tons of fun, and trust me, we find other ways of getting into trouble besides smoking pot or whatever it is people do. But the cool thing about dorms on South are the "mod" set-ups, with a smaller number of people in the mod sharing a common room...it makes it seem so much more familial. My House has become home to me, and the people in it are my family away from home. If you want to know what I'm doing at two in the morning on a Tuesday, I'm probably hanging out with them.

There is a very healthy social life on campus, but I don't participate in that very much. I leave my door open, as do the rest of my mod, but that's as social as I get.

In my dorm, we all leave our doors open and we hang out all the time.

The most popular groups are the Greek ones-there's a pretty big Greek population on campus. Football and basketball are the most popular sports, depending on the season. I'm involved in a service fraternity which provides community service, plans service trips (New Orleans, Boston, Orlando, etc.), attends conferences and just has a damn good time. It's about 50/50 with students leaving their doors open. It depends on the opportunities they've had to meet each other. Athletics are definitely popular; guest speakers depend on the target group but are popular within said groups; theater-not so much. The dating scene isn't all that big. A lot of people have significant others but you don't hear about "dating around" or "casually dating" a whole lot. I think that's true for society in general, though. I met my closest friends in Alpha Phi Omega and on staff (I'm an Resident Assistant). If I'm awake at 2am on a Tuesday, I'm probably watching TV, waiting to fall asleep. Traditions/events: Homecoming, street fests, Relay for Life, annual 5ks, Halloween. People party pretty often-there's at least one every weekend that people know about and the bars are packed Thursday-Saturday. Greek life is important, like I said. I'd say about 40{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the campus is Greek. Last weekend I worked on Friday night and went camping all day Saturday. Sunday was a catch up day (both on school work and sleep!). There are a lot of things to be done on a Saturday night that doesn't involve drinking-people watching!, movies, etc. Off-campus, I go to Stroud's Run, go home for a weekend, etc.

There are a lot of activities on campus for students to participate in, and I really think it is impossible for anyone to not find friends here. We truly have ALL types of people here and I think it is easy to make friends here.

it's definitely a party school, but what school isn't.

My favorite thing to do when I have free time is to go explore Athens. There are awesome little shops and restaurants everywhere, it's so easy to fall in love with Athens if you go out and see it for what it is.

Social life is the one of the most important things to people on campus. Arguably more so than school itself. People go to football games and basketball games. There are constantly parties going on and crazyness in the streets. People in the dorms are usually social although there are the choice few who don't talk to the people around them at all.