Last week bore witness to the end of a young relationship. Ryan Chow from 4-West recently cut off ties with his Andersonian girlfriend, Natalie Saneski, because they reportedly “weren’t ready for a long-distance relationship.” The couple, who met at the ‘80s dance, dated close to two weeks before their physical separation led to an emotional one.

“I can’t be spending all of my time walking across campus or eating lunch in Prentiss,” said Chow, adding that he had missed Taco Tuesday two times too many.

Although it is less than a half-mile away, Anderson felt like a distant and alien world to Chow.

“At first I thought Anderson was just another floor in Jewett, but then she took me back to her room after the [Sigma Chi] rave,” said Chow, his hands still shaky from the trauma. “They don’t have couch beds. Where was I supposed to sit?”

Chow has not returned to Anderson since the breakup, and he remains painfully ignorant of parts of campus farther than Penrose Library. Further questioning revealed that he hasn’t figured out that Prentiss is a residence hall, believing it to be a state-of-the-art brunch building with multiple floors of seating.

Saneski is taking the breakup pretty hard, as evidenced by several Facebook statuses of feigned resilience and Taylor Swift videos, but the collapse of the relationship has had an equally great impact on the first-year community. The first-years rallied around the couple as their first glimpse into a college relationship, and they have been left with a taste in their mouths best described as a bitter, discouraging taste with a hint of vegan chocolate cake.

“I remember watching him swipe her into brunch after they made out at the [Phi Delta Theta] luau,” said a sobbing Anderson F-section resident about Chow and Saneski, or “Chowski” as they were affectionately known. “That is the kind of love that Nicholas Sparks writes movies about.”

It has become clear that many of the first-years don’t know what love is.

“Can I buy it with flex dollars?” said Jewett 2-West resident David Fellsings.

“Doesn’t it only exist between TKEs?” said North Hall resident Johnny Masbaum.

While most first-years have plenty of distractions from the breakup, Saneski has to deal with daily reminders of lost love.

“He bought me a lanyard for our one-week anniversary,” said Saneski while sobbing. “Now I can’t swipe into a building without hearing the first song we danced to … It was dubstep.”

Despite over 20 likes for her Facebook relationship status’s change to “single,” Saneski’s adjustment to life without Chow will be hard.

“We used to not study in the library and watch ‘How I Met Your Mother’ … not together, but we both did it,” said Saneski.

Reports say that Chow has been Facebook chatting with great frequency with junior Kristen Gabbons but “doesn’t want anything serious.”

Although the breakup has cast a solemn spell over the first-year community, the floodgates have opened for first-year relationships. In the past week, more than three couples have broken the Facebook threshold and more are likely to follow. Something sweet is in the air on the Whitman College campus, and it is not the smell of brotherhood.