It’s the calm before the storm.

It’s Friday night, and you have your plans all lined up. Your friend’s cousin’s neighbor is having this great party, and you got a text about “something on Ostrom,” and that girl you’re trying to get with is going to Sigma Phi Epsilon, so you should probably make up a reason to be there.

And before all that, you’re stopping at your other friend’s pregame where you’ll try to cram 30 people into a dorm room without disturbing the resident adviser (in a rousing game of Don’t Wake Daddy: College Edition).

A full dance card, for sure. But now, it’s only 8 p.m. You have three hours to kill. For the next three hours, the campus will be blanketed in stony silence. Waiting.

A modest proposal: Let’s start earlier. I’m not saying right after dinner, but how about, say, 9 p.m. instead of 11 p.m.? I know there’s the sacred rule that nothing starts before 11 p.m. (or 10:30 p.m. if you’re really feeling saucy) but I don’t know where that came from. Did we all get together somewhere and vote? Where was I for this?

I’ve conducted an extensive and comprehensive poll — all right, I talked to some of my friends — and they all seem to agree: Waiting around for an appointed time to satisfy the terms of a bizarre social contract is, well, bizarre.

Showing up “fashionably late” implies that you were busy doing other things, important things, and that everyone should be thrilled you graced them with your sparkling presence.

But let’s be honest, we’re doing nothing even remotely close to important. We’re sitting and watching TV. We’re looking at the cream/beige/taupe/boring paint on the walls of a South Campus apartment. Eventually, we look at the clock and think, “Well, it’ll probably seem like I was doing something if I show up now,” and then venture out into the night

Let’s start at 9 p.m. That way, we get the whole night, or at least a little more than we had before. For people living on South Campus — I did, once upon a time — it’d be especially lucrative because Centro (in its eminent and enduring wisdom) stops running the buses at 2:50 a.m.

Starting earlier also means we can actually have a real day after to accomplish things. Going out and raging until 4 a.m. means you’re sleeping until at least 2 p.m., and we all know that in Syracuse, the sun is basically setting at that point.

We’re flushing the time down the toilet for the sake of appearing like we’ve got far too much to do to be busy with partying before 11 p.m. on a Friday. We all know it’s a lie. Just stop. Show up this weekend at 9:30 p.m. and get it on.

Consider my proposal. Chew on it for a while. I think you’ll realize I’m right. And yes, you may think this sounds like I’m slowly descending into an Andy Rooney-esque observational stupor, advocating foolish measures like this. And to that I say, well, you’re probably right.

But so am I. Show up at 9 p.m.

Kevin Slack is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at khslack@syr.edu.

Published on August 28, 2012 at 12:30 am