Normal day at Stanford: Men avert their eyes and run scared. Women push aside the sniveling dorks on their meetings for Future Business Leaders of the World.

February day at Stanford: Men dart between Sweet Hall and Stern avoiding the light. Holed up in their cubicles, clinging to their CS classes like life rafts, they hope they can avoid “the hunt.” The hunters are out there clad in low-cut shirts, lip gloss and retro sunglasses that were stolen from the emaciated hand of an Olsen twin on her way back from rehab. It’s carnal chapstick chaos.

This hunt is called “dating at Stanford.” The first rule of dating at Stanford is you do not talk about dating at Stanford. The second rule of dating at Stanford is you DO NOT talk about dating at Stanford. Other rules include: Two people to a date. If this is your first time dating at Stanford, you must bring up major and freshman dorm. If someone says “good night,” goes limp or mentions IHUM, the date is over. You cannot go to a dining hall or to Tresidder.

Other colleges may have the skulls, the bones or are full of hambones (look it up), but Stanford has its own secret society. They will not acknowledge their membership in this club; in fact, they will not acknowledge that there is a society that dates. And yet, like a bloated half-drunk Santa cheerily greeting children while on uppers, it does exist.

Stanford’s administration itself has no problem with dating. It was years ago, during the dark Nixon era, that the government realized that combining a linear accelerator with co-ed chemistry would be a one-way ticket to explosion-ville. It seemed the powers that be thought Stanford students were a loose tiger just waiting to go for the jugular of world finance and industry. Well they tried to put this cat down, Jack, but they can’t keep this cat down. So they tried with their little lies about laying, their denying students of good area singles locales, their creation of the CS department to KEEP THE CATS DOWN.

But the society endured, the chemistry began mixing like all the bad dreams of a gonzo journalist in a paint factory. Now, armed with the brightest minds — the world their blue oyster cult — the secret band of Stanford sex-seeking individuals, the last bastions of thought in this Newtonian bastard of Pluto-fascism and Renaissance mercantilism, has declared their big “fuck you” and begun to date. Sweezeynogs.

So, this secret society exists. Around this time of year, the proverbial curtain is thrown back and we get to see the ugly face of the wizard and realize that there is dating at Stanford and the wizard has large ears and a drawl.

The Allegra is beginning to take effect now. I can smell the hair gel that soothes while it burns away personality to reveal the chocolate nougaty center, the blow dryers that house the flames of misplaced affection, a Viagra of vanity. I see little bunny rabbits scurrying from the women’s bathrooms on the third floor, tripping me as I try to make it back to my room to drop another aspirin regimen.

I look out at the February daze and see the men like little pixilated pong players bouncing their Frisbees to and fro. I watch as they are dragged to that wasteland of yuppieness that is Palo Alto for something other than rug shopping.

Some are dragged from their keyboards, complaining about their problem sets. The lucky ones only have to go out to dinner. Some are not so fortunate, promising such things as a “relationship” or “a date to the Viennese Ball.” We’ve lost a lot of good men that way.

Women, high on feminist power generated from “The Vagina Monologues,” anticipation for Women’s History Month and the success of TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” patrol this campus like Pi Phis looking for their fix. While the meek men cower in the corners, holding their game controllers like Gollums, I watch as the season enables the women to drag the geeks from their Halo games and make the dudes go out to dinner; but with a heel to the gut — they won’t let them pay.

But in all of this — in the chaotic hunts and the tat-tat of the PC police at your door, the chapstick and the awkwardness of shunning Beirut and Facebook for tepid hand-holding and hugs miles apart — there comes an angelic light, a divine Virgin-Mary-in-your-oatmeal type of epiphany: Stanford students are dating. Frustrated? Yes. Awkward? Yes. Still wearing sweatpants? Probably. But trying? Yes.

Now go buy some soap, cats. I have a date with some troubling bunnies and a tank of gasoline.

Chris is going to write all of his columns on a combination of sleep deprivation, Sour Patch Kids and old At the Drive-in albums. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.