Anyone who goes to a small, private liberal arts college such as Ouachita knows that it is impossible to leave your bed without running into your best friend, a handful of acquaintances, your professor, your professor’s dog, the president of the school and the campus cat.
At a school where everyone knows everyone, it is sometimes confusing to “define the relationship” with every single member of the student body. Not every relationship can be cleanly categorized, as every relationship is different in nature. Nonetheless, there are certain relationship definitions that everyone can understand.
First, there is “the sidewalk buddy.” Contrary to its name, this person is not actually your buddy. In fact, for many people, this is not a person you want to see at all. Imagine walking to the student center on an early morning to get coffee. No one is in sight until your sidewalk buddy appears. They approach walking the opposite direction as you. You know them enough to be expected to say hi, but not well enough to make eye contact with as they approach. So you pretend to admire a tree or look at your phone until they are in close enough proximity to engage in a polite greeting as the two of you pass along and go about the rest of your days. “The sidewalk buddy” encounter is an awkward and unpleasant social interaction necessary only by the social standards established by Ouachita.
Another possibly unpleasant Ouachita relationship is “the chapel buddy.” The chapel buddy is the person who either sits to the right or left of you in chapel. A chapel buddy can be either a positive or negative relationship. In a Twitter poll I recently conducted, out of 84 users who submitted answers, 74 percent said that they did not talk to their respective chapel buddy. The other 26 percent said that they had made great friends with their chapel buddy. So with this OBU relationship, it is safe to say it is up to the person on how fruitful of chapel buddies he/she has. No matter how you prefer your chapel buddy to be, everyone says a little prayer on Tuesday mornings that their chapel buddy wore deodorant.
Then, of course, there are the “NSR buddies” or, if you are not a part of the senior class: “WOW buddies.” These people are the ones you met when you got here as a freshman and were forced to be friends with for a weekend before quietly sliding into acquaintance status.
Perhaps the most important group of people to an OBU student is “the squad.” The squad has a GroupMe that constantly blows up your phone. The squad has marked and claimed that one booth in the student center. The squad may or may not have matching t-shirts to be worn on Wednesdays. They are the reason you can make it through every semester. Thank the Lord for the squad.
As a bonus, there is the ever coveted “ring by spring.” The ring by spring is either your significant other you have trapped during your time here and will inevitably become engaged to by the spring of your senior year, or an arrangement made between yourself and a friend, in case of no ring by spring, when you get engaged to each other.
These relationships and the several in between make up the sometimes awkward but always fulfilling social world of Ouachita.
By staff writer: Mattie Alexander
