Baby, you and me is FREE*

Nothing is free. I am reminded of the mantra every time I accidentally open my junk e-mail, offering me an assortment of cordless drills and bikini waxes because, they say, I'm a winner, which really means I breathe and check mail and might be the most cheatable of the crazed, commodity-consuming cretin currently roaming the cyber universe.

While this sort of marketing ploy doesn't bother me, I do consistently take note of how the word FREE* sparkling in the advertisement window always has an asterisk stamped obtrusively next to it. This so-called "detail" never fails to disturb me. Our offensive, spiky-haired little friend is not even of standard, microscopic superscript size. Freedom has never been free, granted, but now the very word FREE floats along unabashedly fettered with the mandatory terms and conditions that have put the rest of the commercialized world in chains.

How free are you really, Mr. FREE? You not only insult the intelligence of obsessive e-mail checkers everywhere, but you force us to brood over the societal implications of your conditional existence. No longer can we spend our mornings frenetically devouring internet tabloids over iced caffeinated concoctions. Instead, we slow. We ponder and pontificate as we examine the very essence of FREEdom spilling out like entrails onto the blank white space behind the once venerated term, its meaning reduced to a single, significantly insignificant blot of pixels.

But why persist in mourning the death of abstract internet bargains? Put your Red Bull down, and look around, for FREE*dom shouts from the gothic rooftops, not lurking in the shadows, but dancing in the sunshine, ready for the warmth of your naive embrace.

Freshmen, as official college students, you are now completely FREE: to eat and drink whatever and whenever you please, to sleep anywhere, bathroom stall and stranger's bed not excluded. Expect no fine print, save those little letters on your final grade report. In 10 years, you'll be glad to be FREE of recollection, your memories washed away by lovely Friday night tea parties and perhaps the occasional Sabbath service.

Sadly, any sense of completeness is, by nature of the term, a farce for those freshmen who feel FREE*. The sophomore experience is infinitely more exhilarating, for they already have tasted the forbidden fruit of parental independence and moved on to more luscious varieties. This University will no longer hold your hand. Suck it up; that is, the sweet juice of liberty. There are no SACS to interfere with your newfound autonomy; the bother of a hundred hands moving you into your dorm is gone; you can finally sweat it out yourself, and haul butt and box up three flights of stairs in the privacy of your own sauna.

Oh, the joy we must contain.

Juniors and seniors frolic in a FREE*dom kingdom beyond that of grads and other undergrads alike. These upperclassmen live outside and between two worlds, both of which present those limitations that make our friendly asterisk weighty with deceit. Frosh and soph are green and so uncouth, constrained by their own immaturity; grads are old and sensible, and if not married, all too ready for the picking. As for those over the drinking age, you're living it up and not even troubled with knowing it, what with fun distractions like internships and interviews and parents who've forgotten you by now. For those just short of hitting blackjack, flaunt those plastic cups with facebook-worthy indiscretion, and in your silly state, hope the cops just can't do math. Swap dates, forget dates, take advantage of everyone younger than you, because every weekend is So Totally Dynamite.