There’s quite a bit of ageism that’s inherent in the world of college dating. As girls step on to the dorm scene as blushing little angels on the very brink of corruption, freshman boys are forced to sample from a much smaller wading pool of sex. That is, they must prove themselves manly and worthy enough to their female freshmen counterparts, who have sophomores, juniors, and—gasp!—even senior males to choose from.

But alas, as the years progress, the tables naturally turn as senior girls find themselves feeling like shriveled old Magdas while their formerly acne-faced male peers choose from bright young things donned in American Apparel at Necto. Thus, cradle robbing is the natural choice for junior and senior females. Cradle robbery is really no big deal in college—if juniors and seniors can sit next to each other in a lecture hall, who is to say they can’t engage in a little post-midterm spoonage? Who bats an eye at that?

Yet what would the college population make of ...err…more substantial romantic age differences? The Cougar is a term frequently associated with the scene in Wedding Crashers in which Jane Seymour wheedled Owen Wilson into feeling her breast implants. A website called urbancougar.com defines the cougar female as “a sophisticated species of female who seeks the pleasure of younger males,” and is brimming with Cougar Classifieds and advertisements for Botox. Now while senior females (hopefully) are not applying anti-aging concoctions to their asses, those who would elect to hook up with boys living in Markley invite comparisons to Mrs. Robinson and Demi. Even if the freshman male specimen is ridiculously mature, abnormally adorable, and far older in appearance than many seniors.

So I am going to lay it out there, much to the delight of freshman and sophomore boys—senior ladies, if you meet someone out at night that sparks your interest, do not immediately ask them their age. Yes, there clearly are very creepy things about hooking up with an eighteen or nineteen year old: they live in an 11x12 cubicle, their big-big in the frat is your ex, they get their fake ID taken away at Stricklands, they will not sample a fishbowl at Rick's for another three years. But it is a marvelously refreshing idea to think that one can enter a hookup situation that likely will not progress into anything serious, seeing as a long-term relationship of three years while you are in graduate school isn’t so enticing. I have been witnessing a current freshman boy-senior girl ongoing hookup first hand, and it is fascinating to see: there are no fantasies of marriage in the near future, no dreadful post drunk-dial shame, and there’s the knowledge that you are likely enlightening a college male on how to properly…um, operate. It's strange and even a little twisted to drop someone off at their dorm on a Sunday morning, but it may just be the anectode to your senior nostalgia.