Ask a group of upperclassmen where they made their first close friends at college and you might get a variety of responses (“My intramural team!” “Student Life!” “The WUPD Interrogation room!”), but most won’t hesitate to respond that their first and often best friends at Wash. U. came from their freshman floors.

It makes sense. When you’re in a new environment with new responsibilities and opportunities, you’ll naturally grow close to people who are feeling the same excitement and nervousness. It also doesn’t hurt that you spend your entire first week on campus with those people and see them approximately seventy two times a day every day after that. Soon enough you’ll bond with some of your floor, and from there the friendships grow.

But what about dating? At first it seems natural that you would find a partner amongst the people you’ve befriended. And why not? Part of a fulfilling relationship is the ability to share the same experiences, to be able to go to the same parties, events or group meetings and to be able to relate to one another. Who better to do that with than the lucky guy who lives three doors down and across the hall?

The only problem is that he lives three doors down and across the hall. There’s a reason why they call it “floorcest,” and that’s because these guys are like your family during your freshman year: they know where you are all the time, they’re there for you when you’re down and odds are they understand you better than most people on campus. That experience is unique at college and should be appreciated, but it does pose some issues regarding your eternal search for true love.

First there’s the proximity. Even though you’ve been told for years to “love your neighbor,” everyone needs some space from their significant other at times, even the most serious of couples. The point is even starker for two eighteen year-olds who are just starting out. It’s hard to stay casual when you see each other on your way to class in the morning, when you come back in the afternoon, during your floor dinner a few hours later and when you’re all chilling in the hallway at night.

Some couples enjoy that frequency and get to know each other better than they would in another setting. On the other hand, it gets to be tough when you want to play a video game with your buddy down the hall and there’s your girlfriend talking to his roommate. Do you go to her, or do you limit yourself to a casual hello and park in front of the Wii?

The privacy problem is even more complicated. It’s a given that once you hook up, or even beforehand, the rumors will start flying from one RA’s room to the other and everywhere in between. Sometimes it may seem like people know more about your relationship than you do and the questions, though they may be restrained, may not stop for a while.

And that can get annoying. Relationships are uber-personal and not something you’d be jumping to divulge to that guy that you haven’t seen since orientation weekend. But then again, some of these people are your closest friends, the ones you’d be telling about the relationship anyway, so it can’t hurt for them to have some background info when you come to them for advice.

Physical privacy is a different ballgame. Odds are that some of those many times you see your partner during the day are going to be spent in a bed, preferably one of yours. This makes sexile a near daily activity, and one that neither your roommate nor your partner’s is going to enjoy. If it’s frequent enough and done without tact, this has friendship-ruining potential. However, it’s going to happen any time you date a freshman, so at least if you’re friends with the sexiled roommate there’s more of a chance he’ll understand than the sexiled roommate of a boyfriend from a different dorm.

Last but not least is the breakup. I could devote a whole series of columns to this alone, but in short it’s obvious that you’re going to have to see this girl almost every day for the rest of the year, no matter how badly it ends. This is essentially a repeat of the “proximity” problem, except for that there’s no longer a silver lining to the constant play-dates. Things could get tense, she could date one of your friends or you may date one of hers. It’s something to consider before you start things up, but these are also problems that will exist in any breakup, unless you stop going to all the places your ex frequents.

There’s no clear yes or no to whether you should date people on your floor. For every floorcest couple I know that is going strong into senior year there’s another I see that isn’t talking anymore. Yet anyone who meets in a group setting faces these issues and should stop a while to consider the positives and the negatives before going in.

Unless they met in the WUPD office. Then I’d wait.

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