Every week or so, Opinion columnist Zora Rodgers responds to anonymous advice submissions. To get advice, fill out this form.
Dear Domer, I can’t stop making out with people in clubs! What do you think that means? How do I stop being so horny?
Dear Domer, you know how beautiful birds in zoos have clipped wings that prevent them from flying freely? That’s the equivalent of me telling you to stop living your truth. I think this means that you are a free (hormonal) spirit who is living the most out of their life. Who am I to judge/stop that? Who made you feel as though your behavior was a problem in the first place? Condemn the judgmental people in your life.
Dear Domer, settle a debate between two 20-year alums that originated in LaFortune circa 2005. (Your column is being read far and wide. Congrats!) Say Cavanaugh Caroline and Sorin Sam get dinner together. The circumstances leading to the dinner are not important (could be impromptu, could be planned). The location is not important either (could be a dining hall, could be off campus). The key is that neither of them considers it a “date,” even though one or both of them thinks the other may have some romantic interest (or at least some flirting is expected to or does occur at the dinner). If those two people then go to a different location to get ice cream after dinner, does that turn their evening into a “date”? It must be ice cream (not some other dessert or treat) and must be a new location. Eating in the dining hall and then getting dining hall froyo doesn’t count. Think, a walk from North Dining Hall to the Huddle Mart in LaFortune (or wherever ice cream can be found on campus these days). One of us says the ice cream makes it a date. The other is in denial. In any event, we want the current generation of students to understand the implications of this situation.
Dear Domer, thank you for writing in. This has been my most puzzling submission yet! Upon giving it extensive, nearly headache-inducing thought, I am going to answer this question in a way you probably won’t like. My immediate opinion is that the circumstances of the first meeting/location absolutely DO matter. A planned or impromptu dinner might not be important, but the fact that one or both parties may be interested, and that flirting is not only expected but perhaps does occur, are important variables in this scenario. Let’s look at it this way: if you saw two people sharing a meal, flirting and (most likely) interested in each other, would you call that a date? My argument is that Cavanaugh Caroline and Sorin Sam were on a date at dinner, before any ice cream touched the tip of their tongues. So the ice cream would be a continuation of the date, not a separate date, but a date nonetheless.
Dear Domer, I’m pretty sure I just watched a girl take a picture of me in the reading room. Granted, I said yesterday that her friend’s voice was annoying, and she likely heard me. How do I come back from this, and is she in the right?
Dear Domer, she is low-key messy for taking a picture of you, but you were also messy for being loud about her friend’s annoying voice. You were in the wrong (only because you got caught), but two wrongs don’t make a right, and she should not have sniped you like that. Maybe pose next time?
Dear Domer, my best friend broke up with her boyfriend of over two years. She may take him back with a couple of conditions. Do men change, and what advice should I give her? I doubt he will change, personally, but I’m not sure.
Dear Domer, if her (ex) man’s prefrontal cortex is still developing, then he will not change. Even if it is developed, it is SO hard for people, especially men, to stray from tyranny. Also, they broke up for a reason! Good men ARE out there; tell her to go find one. The only good men I really know are gay and my father, but the gays would give “nays” to your friend, and my father is happily married.