"It's more acceptable to say you're too busy," Guerette says. "At BU, one girl said it was part of your image to have a significant other."

Hold That Door

Who says the age of chivalry is dead? Well, Christine M. Heske '01 and Daniel W. Barnes '01 might have proven it.

The two studied kindness by observing a simple act--walking into a building--and noting whether people held the door open for each other.

"We looked at holding the door for someone as an altruistic behavior," Heske says.

Perched in front of William James Hall, the two watched 592 people enter the building.

"We predicted that there would be a hierarchy based on evolutionary biases," Barnes says. "We predicted that men would hold the door for men the most. Then men for women, women for men, and finally, women for women."

But the results did not completely follow their hypothesis. The highest frequency of altruism occurred when a member of a sex held the door for a member of the same sex.

"Females only hold the door for males 33 percent of the time while they hold it for other females 66 percent of the time," Barnes says.

"The thing that stands out the most is that females hold the door for men much less than any other group," he says.

But perhaps the most interesting result is the overall level of student altruism.

Only 42 percent of people held the door for the person behind them at all, according to Heske and Barnes' findings.

"I'm personally pretty sad about that," Heske says. "A lot of times someone would hold the door for someone and the person would take another door [so as to avoid the situation]."

Show Me the Money

Have you ever had that feeling late at night when you go to the ATM? You know, that feeling that someone is watching you?