Graduate students can’t find love

If the undergraduate years are a time of making a million Facebook friends and having fair amounts of anonymous sex, the graduate years are barren and unfulfilling –––— outside the classroom, that is.

That’s the gist of an article published in Tuesday’s edition of The Stanford Daily, which paints a portrait of 40 lonely grads gathering in a room somewhere for two hours of speed dating and wine-swilling to ease their pain the night before Valentine’s Day.

According to the article, “Many complain about how hard it is to meet other single students — especially those outside of their departments or programs — and how lonely the single graduate life can be.”

Stanford students described “unwritten rules” about not getting involved with someone from their department (it’s called “intra-departmental incest”) and bemoaned unequal male-female ratios in some fields, as well as the fact that many of the good grad students are already taken.

“All my friends are married or in relationships,” whined one female fifth-year neuroscience student.

Guys aren’t happy either.

“Only a small percentage of girls here are single, an even smaller percentage of them are cool and an even smaller percentage of them are good-looking,” a male grad student told The Daily.

Hmm. Guess grad school isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But even a hardworking doctoral student can find an occasional night to go swing dancing or attend a cooking class, right?

Graduate student threatens to blow up building

Speaking of desperate grads, a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Rolla caused a panic earlier this week after he turned up wielding a knife outside a university building at 2:30 in the morning and informed authorities that he had planted a bomb in the building and was carrying anthrax.

The Associated Press reported that police shot the man with a stun gun and recovered a white substance on his person, then promptly quarantined 23 people who might have come into contact with the stuff. The mysterious substance turned out to be powdered sugar.

The University was shut down and classes were cancelled for a day after the incident. It was not reported whether the student had been having trouble finding a date.

Undergraduates just want good seats

Campus police put the kibosh on students camping out to get good tickets for tonight’s big WSU-UCLA basketball game.

Two WSU students set up camp outside Beasley Coliseum earlier this week.

Their goal was to score front-row seats for what one described as “one of the biggest games that we’re ever going to have in Pullman,” The Daily Evergreen reported.

Upsetting the Bruins, who have already clinched a share of the Pac-10 title, would be a huge boost for second-place contender Washington State.

Police say snowy weather makes camping dangerous, although the students had come equipped with a tent, sleeping bags, heater and had planned to import other camping essentials, including a TV and an Xbox.