So I ended up going to the Cotillion, thanks to the benevolent mercy of my inestimably beautiful fellow blogger Jillian. I will not go into details about the nature of our journey to the site of the dance, but the word "epic" comes to mind.

So does "lost."

Moving on, the Cotillion was...what's the right word? Afterwards, Jillian came up with "anticlimactic," which is perhaps the best way of describing the event. We (and many others) were expecting not necessarily a more formal event, but certainly a classier one...at least, classier from our perspectives. I suppose the problem mostly involves the different views on contemporary culture held by two groups of people: those who enjoy good music and goofy make-it-up-as-you-go dancing, and those who somehow enjoy God-awful rap music and a type of dancing (pains me to even call it that) which has more to do with reproductive mechanics than it does with, shall we say, gittin' yer groove on.

I am frequently described as being "old-fashioned," and this is very true. I take it as a compliment. I've never been able to tune into the same wavelength as the rest of my generation, and I have no more success finding the frequency of kids five or six years my junior. I have an almost repulsive dislike of rap and hip-hop in general, although there are a number of notable exceptions (the Gorillaz, of course, and Pittsburgh natives Grand Buffet, among others). The majority of noise (I refuse to call it music) in that genre encourages exactly the opposite sort of behavior that young people should be absorbing in their formative years.

You can argue with me on this, but be warned: you'll be wrong, and I will make you cry. Consider it Biblically...God in the Old Testament is, you might say, "old-fashioned" as well, especially when you look at New Testament God; and this makes the older God sound endearing until you remember all the smiting, and Sodom and Gomorrah.

In short, I was disgusted by this "grinding" nonsense I witnessed at the Cotillion--nonsense which is, in large part, driven by the awful, eardrum-bleeding atrocity some call gangsta rap. I really have no desire to witness thinly-veiled sexual activity at events like the Cotillion which should, by rights, be much more proper. If you want to host a high school-ish basement party, call it that (so I know not to come); but please don't use the word "cotillion," which by its very definition implies something far more formal and, let's face it, adult. Cotillions are, in their origin (and today, when done right), a form of debutante ball, not a disgusting teenage grope-fest.

All that being said, we still had fun, although we had to sort of create it ourselves, more or less apart from the otherworldly mass of grinders. I am, however, very disappointed with the Student Government Association's execution of this dance, and am almost irked enough to get involved in order to fix it in the future. My experiences with Saint Vincent are consistent in that they point toward a demand for high student morality, and I have a hard time reconciling the stuff I saw last night with the quiet dignity of this college.