Frosh Cornered

Starring Sexual Orientation as Small Talk

A big Happy New Year to all of you! For those of you who don't know me, I'm Scot Nyback, and I am the Cornered Frosh v3.0. I had a lot of fun last term writing witty and zany articles [You sure fooled me! — KreasEd] and I hope you will continue to enjoy them this term. Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I'm sure you are looking for some form of entertainment, and what would mathNEWS be if it weren't entertainment?

I had an interesting chat with my brother over the course of the Christmas break. My brother attends the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in New York. It's a school where they teach you how to sing, dance, act, etc and he excels at all of these. However, this article is not designed to tell you about my brother, but rather the school at which he studies. If you don't know already, be prepared to cry, but the Math faculty here at the University of Waterloo has a staggering male to female ratio of 3:1. That means that for every manly stud out there with a date this weekend, there are two not-so-manly non-studs without. However, take heart, the ratio at AMDA is 11:1.

Whoops! I think I said that wrong, I should clarify. AMDA has a female to male ratio of 11:1. That's not fair! In addition, it gets even worse. Of the males who make up a small one twelfth of the population at this fine school, approximately ninety percent of them are of the homosexual variety. That's right, 90% of the guys at AMDA are gay. Admittedly there is a slightly larger percentage of lesbians than you would expect as well, but this still leaves the straight man such as my brother an ample selection to choose from. Perhaps I could convince him to send some up here; it's only an eight hour bus trip after all...

The clincher is homosexuality is so much more common at AMDA than heterosexuality that it has become an integral part of small talk. In fact, greetings have become something like "Hi I'm Cliff and I'm straight" or "Hi I'm Steve and I'm gay." If someone neglects to include their sexual preferences in their greeting, you can be sure that the other party will request the information before the end of their first conversation. "So are you gay or straight?", or in other words, "Can I hit on you?"

So take heart that you are attending the best school in the academic world for mathematical studies. Mourn that unless you're part of the lucky third, you'll never know the touch of a woman. Happy New Year and welcome (back) to the University of Waterloo!

Keslen
Cornered Frosh v3.0