The New Lounge Scene

By Mike Colgan

Kenneth Bush, PC `01, is an America Online junkie.

"I used it every day this summer," Bush said. "Twice a day. I would be online for 2 hours in the afternoon and 4 hours at night." Even with the onset of the school year, Bush's twice-a-day-ritual continues.

For $90 a year, Yale students can reach the web, the Yale e-mail server, and the rest of the Internet from their rooms. So why do some students pay $9.95 a month just for access to AOL's proprietary content?

Bush likes the social dimension of AOL. "I like to chat with friends, and flirt with girls in the chat rooms. It's an easy, stress-free way of communicating openly with people," Bush said.

Other AOL addicts find the online service easier to use than the web. "One of the main reasons I still use America Online is to access the latest news headlines and other information without having to search for different websites. It's all right there, and it's much easier to find." answers Peter Smith, CC `00.

Camp AOYale

There's new generation of Yale students, and they grew up with AOL.

While most juniors and seniors at Yale were in college when the web took off, most freshman and sophomores at Yale were still in high school. Few of the current members of the Classes of `00 and `01 had access to ethernet lines; most accessed the Internet through dialing up an Internet service provider. For most people, that means AOL.

Many of this year's freshmen were active AOL users before coming to Yale. This summer, a group of AOL enthusiasts found a virtual Camp Yale before even arriving in New Haven.

Using the keyword "Yale" to scour the member directory for fellow students, Addisu Demissie, DC `01, Regina Fitzpatrick, BR `01, and at least 70 other freshmen had introduced themselves to one another by the start of the school year.

Fitzpatrick kept a mailing list with which she could e-mail every member of the AOL freshmen group and arrange group discussions online. Demissie maintained a page which served as directory of all the freshmen known to use AOL. The list of computer-savvy frosh ballooned from about 10 in July to more than 70 by the end of the summer.

Fitzpatrick, who was responsible for finding many of the members of the group, remarked, "It was a welcoming feeling to get here and already have a group of friends. AOL-Yalies were my first `group' and through them, I met tons of other people."

Koi Anunta, CC '00, encountered this AOL-Yale culture herself this summer. "This freshman e-mailed me and wanted to know what I could tell him about Yale. I told him about different classes and stuff, but I still haven't met this person in real life."

The future?

As computers become an increasingly important part of American popular culture, more and more avid computer users will enter the gates of Yale. And they will probably be using America Online. Demissie said, "America is tending toward computer literacy.... I think the next class will be even more connected to AOL than we are."

Mike Colgan is a Freshman in Pierson College.

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