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. OSU STATISTICS . COLUMBUS . CAMPUS .
. LIVING . FOOD & DRINK . STUFF TO DO .

Campus - Overview
(CLICK HERE FOR A CAMPUS MAP)
It takes roughly fifteen minutes to walk from the North Campus dorms to the South Campus dorms, and even longer to go from either of those to the western dorms, the Towers. These landmarks aren't even the limits of the main campus (the furthest parking lot is a 45 minute walk from the center of campus), so it's safe to say that OSU is very large. The campus is attractive and (with the exception of Mirror Lake) very clean. Its streets are lined with trees and it provides several open, grassy areas for students to relax and have fun in. OSU's campus is a charming place with a lot of personality.

Student Life
Although some commute from home, most students either live on campus in a dorm, or near it in an apartment. All freshman are required to live in the dorms for at least one quarter, unless they transfer in from another college. Most students scheduel their classes for the middle of the day, but night classes are offered and are very popular with some.
Many events and organizations are offered to keep students busy, but they usually end up just drinking instead and at almost all hours of the day people can be seen hanging out and having fun in one of the many bars on campus (except when it's cold and rainy).

The BuckID
The BuckID is perhaps the most important part of an OSU student's college career.
BuckIDs function as your meal ticket and your cash source: The 'meal swipe' program runs off of your buckID. One mealswipe equals approximately 8 dollars and can get you a number of food items or groceries from on-campus locations. You can also put cash on your buckID and use it to buy just about anything--food, books, clothes, knick-knacks. Even the local grocery stores, movie theaters and Target accept them!
BuckID is a coupon: Many places offer discounts--10% off of groceries, $1.50 off of movie tickets, 5% discount on your dinner at Don Pablos--if you present or pay with your buckID.
BuckID is a key: You can't get into any residence halls without your BuckID. Any BuckID can get into ANY residence hall until 11PM. After 11PM, that BuckID can only access halls within it's complex (complexes on North Campus are comprised of three residence halls, complexes on South campus only apply to one dorm, and the Towers are their own complex).
BuckID is a Concert Ticket: Many of OSU's events that are marked as "free" or "cheaper" with student discount require that you show your BuckID at the door, or else you won't be able to get in at all.
BuckID is a library card: The buckID contains a specific barcode that identifies you as you and can be used to check books, movies and CDs out of one of the over 20 libraries on campus.
BuckID is a bus pass: With your buckID, you can ride any COTA for free. Normally, this costs $1.25 per trip.
the buckID is an incredibly vital part of campus life, especially if you live in a dorm. Losing your buckID can cause serious problems, but the buckID can be deactivated and replaced for a fee of 5 to 15 dollars, depending on the circumstances.

Academic Calendar
OSU runs on a quarterly scheduel: AU, WI, SP, SU (autumn winter spring summer). Autumn, Winter and Spring quarters last approximately three months--ten weeks plus an eleventh week of finals; Summer is an abbreviated five weeks, making classes much more strenuous in most cases. Most students aren't on campus for the summer quarter, or, if they are, they take one or no classes.
Official move in day for on campus students is the third Sunday of September. Classes start that Wednesday.
Most students living in apartments have leases that start in early to mid September, so the entire month is very busy for all students.
"Summer Break" is three months long--the length of a regular quarter--and it starts the first Friday of June. Winter break is one month, starting in the first week of December. Spring break is one week long, and is in late March.

Travel
Traveling on campus is a 50/50 combination of taxing and stressful and easy and convenient.
At any given time, at least a quarter of the campus is under construction in some way: roads are torn up and repaved; old buildings are torn down and new ones erected; stairs collapse and must be repaired; doors get broken; windows are shattered--it can make a 5 minute walk into a 15 minute ordeal at times, especially when student traffic is heavy between classes. Buses can also be a blessing or a curse, because some come too infrequently and some arrive at stops more than enough, and none of them stop at central campus any more, so the fastest way to get there is by walking.
On the bright side, buildings are laid out in a way that makes it possible for a student to remain indoors in their trek to class to avoid the rain (or the snow, or the sunshine if they burn easily) and all pathways (with the exception of temporary ones laid out in construction areas) are large and hardly ever crowded. Trees provide ample shade or cover from the rain when you're running across the oval to get to class and in early spring they bloom with beautiful flowers of all colors, shapes and sizes.
For a listing of all areas of interest, please see the Places section.

CABs Buses
CABs is a university-owned bus service that transports people to most of the important areas on campus. Recently, the CABs buses have stopped opening their doors to young children who rode around and caused trouble by screaming things or throwing items from the bus windows, so it can be rather difficult to catch a bus if young children are hanging around a bus stop. With the exception of the courtesy shuttle, all busses from from 6AM to midnight.
North Express - There are approximately five billion of these buses running at any given time. They aren't very useful as they only go through about 1/5th of the campus and take the exact same route as two other buses, but halved, but they're sure to come around once every five to ten minutes and annoy people. This bus runs out to some of the commuter parking lots.
North/South Campus Loops - These are the most common busses, they show up at stops once every 15 minutes and run a circle around the entire campus--not actually going into any of the interior spaces.  This is the best way to get from one end of campus to the other with relative speed, although riding it out to west campus and back is roughly a half an hour trip.
East Residential - The bus in the biggest demand, the East Residential is a necessary evil: it takes students to stops east of campus, so that they don't have to walk a mile out to their apartment in the rain or at night, alone, but it's almost never on time. People have been known to wait up to 45 minutes for one of the two buses to show up at a stop. When it does show up on time, it can be very convenient, although it's almost always overflowing with people.
Courtesy Shuttle - The courtesy shuttle runs a route similar to the Campus Loops, but stops off at more of the North Campus dorms. It runs from 12AM to 6AM and all day on weekends, but comes around less frequently than the East Residential.

Resident Assistants and You.
RAs are students of usually junior or higher standing who live in dorms by themselves at much cheaper prices. In exchange, they must be on call at least 8 hours a week to keep watch over a dorm. They are mediators, who must break up fights between roommates on their floor. They police the halls, making sure there are no vandals, thieves or worst of all, people playing football inside.
RAs are generally "cool" people, who hang out with the people on their floor and have a lot of fun, but occassionally, you can get a real meany who yells at you for having your music up too loud when it's 2 in the afternoon and you have headphones on.

ROTC, AFROTC, NROTC
Being in one of these military training organizations will take up a lot of your time--early morning training sessions, required curriculum on top of your college courses, squad meetings and lots of events to participate in--so you'll definitely be busy (although, according to one former member, you won't be "zOMG ZERG RUSH kekekekeke!" busy). These organizations will help your character to pay for college, which is very helpful considering the skyrocketing price of tuition, and when your character graduates they become an officer.

University Honors Program
Being an honors student can be very challenging (if you take it seriously), but its rewards far outweigh any negatives. Becoming a member of the OSU Honors program is difficult if you are an incoming freshman, but incredibly easy if you are an upperclassman. For incoming freshman, grades, standardized testing scores, and participation in high school activities will earn you membership into this organization. For upperclassmen, simply having a GPA above 3.5 and being able to take a lot of classes will get you in.
Honors students gain access to Honors courses (obviously), where they are able to interact directly with professors--not just teaching assistant graduate students. They are given access to rare sections of libraries and, perhaps most importantly, are allowed to scheduel months earlier than their peers. Honors students also are offered housing in honors dorm rooms, which are, essentially, like normal dorm rooms but with other honors students.
On the down side, Honors students must take at least two more sciences and maths than normal students. If a person's GPA is too low, during the summer break they will be removed from honors. In order to actually graduate with the stamp on their diploma saying "Graduated with Honors." the student must write an undergraduate thesis.

Ohio State University Scholars Program
Scholars are the more social, less academic Honors students. Where Honors is open to any major, scholars is divided into 12 groups that have majors sorted into them. These groups are all very small (with the exception of Humanities Scholars, with over 200 members), which introduces people to each other and creates kinship (with the exception of in Humanities, where no one talks and everyone hates each other). Scholars students don't get many perks--in fact, some groups are forced to take classes that mess up their scheduels, or attend meetings and events in the middle of the evening. In their first year, they are schedueled into classes with other scholars, roomed in dormitories with other scholars, and generally forced to do everything with people in their scholars program.
Scholars are given two days advance on schedueling. So, a sophomore scholar would scheduel two days sooner than a regular sophomore. Scholars are also allowed to take honors classes, although it's a bit harder to get in, and they are encouraged to write an undergraduate thesis so that they may graduate "with distinction" in their field.
The Scholars Programs are: Architecture, Art, Biological Science,  Enviornment & Natural Science, Communication Technology, Health Sciences, Humanities, International Affairs, Mount Leadership Society, Pharmacy, Politics Society & Law, and Tomorrow's Teachers

Student Organizations
There are over 800 student-created organizations at OSU. For a complete listing, please refer to the link given in the statistics section. Student run organizations usually have weekly/monthly meetings and activities that students can attend. Many students are involved in at least one club, but there are also many who aren't. Feel free to make up a club for your character to be in, but don't be too off the wall. Also, if you would like your character to be an officer/founder of a certain club, please keep in mind that it's very time consuming.
Some Club Examples: The Kool-Aid Fan Club (monthly meetings where people just get together and drink Kool-Aid), The Aikido Club (Japanese martial arts), The Condom Club (a health center run organization that gives out packs of 50 condoms for 5 bucks), Makio (the school yearbook)

Fraternities & Sororities
Going Greek is a big part of many college students' lives, but not everyone goes Greek. In fact, most students aren't affiliated with a fraternity or sorority, but joining one is a good way to make friends. Being a member of a fraternity or sorority is very expensive--upwards of 500 to 800 dollars a month if you live in the frat/sorority house.
Feel free to make up a fraternity or sorority for your character to be in. They can only be a member of ONE frat or sorority, though (this does not include MYTHOS and Alpha Mu Omega). Try to keep your character in the same frats or sororities as other characters, so we don't have just one character in each Greek organization.

Events
OSU has many, many events and activities that will cater to almost anyone's interests. Each year there's a "Big Free Concert" featuring whatever flavor-of-the-month pop star OSU can get to headline with a bunch of other musicians--usually rappers and less popular bands. In the warmer seasons, OSU offers "Flicks for Free" outside, where they inflate a giant screen and show movies that have not yet been released on DVD, but are out of theaters.
Many celebrities come and give talks or put on comedy acts--this year, Dave Chappell, Drew Carry, and a number of other people stopped by; last year it was John Kerry and Bruce Springsteen, followed by Bob Dole and John McCain and preceeded by Lewis Black. There's an annual Rennaissance Faire, a 'Hemp Festival' that advocates the legalization of marijuana and the wearing of dreadlocks by white people, a University Yard Sale (that's where they sell all the clothing that people leave in their drawers after they move out of the dorms) and a slew of other strange and exciting events to visit.
For more elaboration on this, please see the Things to Do section.

Internet and Computing
As of Autumn 04, OSU became a paperless campus--meaning pretty much everything, with the exception of most tests, is submitted via the internet. There are computer labs all over campus, several are open 24 hours, making accesss to computers a breeze. Students are alotted $10 in free printing (not copying!) at the beginning of each quarter. This is roughly 200 sheets of paper.
In the Autumn 06 quarter, OSU's dormitories and most of the campus will have wireless access. Despite the fact that this quarter hasn't started yet, the OSU in Mythos will have wireless access.