Student housing at Bennington is another unique feature. Instead of a hundred students living on one building, being policed by R.A.s, about thirty students live in one of eighteen houses. Each house has a very distinct personality and has its own traditions. There are two House Chairs elected in each house who can help with any house resident's problems, and who preside over Coffee Hour. Coffee Hour is something each house does every Sunday evening, in which students discuss campus-wide and house-wide issues, and talk about upcoming campus events. Someone always makes food for coffee hour as well, which is further reason to go to Coffee Hour. It's a good time to get to know the other people in your house. Few people lock their doors on cmapus, and there haven't been many problems with theft recently. The only athletic events that draw any sort of crowd are Pioneers soccer games, in which the Bennington Pioneers play the local high school and other local colleges, like Marlboro. Guest speakers and concerts are popular, as are several weekly film screenings and theatre performances, which happen often. The dating scene is strange. Just don't come to Bennington as one of those girls who expects to leave college with a husband. Casual sex is pretty common, but relationships are not. A friend once told me that there are three kinds of Bennington boy: the Taken, the Gay, and the Creepy. It is astonishingly accurate. Parties are common and there are a few big House parties held each month. Smaller room parties happen regularly. Drinking is very common and most parties have a drinking room, and at smaller parties, drinking is usually the primary goal of the evening. Of course, it isn't hard to find things to do that don't involve drinking. Peer pressure isn't an issue. If someone doesn't want to drink, no one questions them or pressures them into anything. Parties are just as much fun if you drink or if you don't. Bennington has several traditional event that happen over the course ofthe year, such as Sunfest, our (invariably rainy) day-long music festival in May, 24-Hour Play, where several plays are written and perfromed within 24 hours, Pigstock, the Rain Plays, Baccanal, Midnight Breakfast, Study Breaks, and several themed parties (Swan-Halloween, Cannfield's Versus etc) If someone happened to be awake at two in the morning on a tuesday, which isn't exactly a stretch, they'd probably be doing homework, practicing music, working on a project in the visual arts building VAPA, or just watching a movie and chilling on a house common room. Insomnia seems to be common at Bennington.