Admittedly, I originally thought The Atlantic was referencing the disrespected candy.

Sugar Babies are an American confection of chococlate-covered caramel balls. Mainly it's a candy for people with low expectations in life.

So consider me confused when The Atlantic posted an article regarding the new wave of sugar babies coming to American colleges, which turns out not be candy-related at all. Or not the candy you're thinking of. Mainly these sugar babies have very high expectations in life.

The sugar babies The Atlantic refers to are college students, usually female, who look for sugar daddies, usually old men (and also a candy!), who will--ahem--find mutual assistance from one another. Using mainly statistics from the website SeekingArrangement, The Atlantic tries to connect rising college tuition rates and student debt to the spike in old fashioned May-December hookups.

The flaw with this titillating story is that the sexual correlation to student need is tenuous at best. The Atlantic points out that public school students make up the slight majority of those enrolled at SeekingArrangement--yet a private institution, New York University, has the most "sugar babies" for one college. And while The Atlantic tries to defend New York City's cost-of-living as the reasoning, that doesn't quite justify why a city like Atlanta, a relatively cheap place to live, has the highest density of "sugar daddies."

So what does all of this mean?

Humans like sex and money and references to a family of pretty basic candy. Fairly simple.

In the end, let us not forget about sugar mamas. No, I mean Sugar Mama--the candy--related to Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddy. The manufacturer hasn't made Sugar Mama since the 1980s, but I think we all know that sugar mamas in all forms have been less popularized in pop culture.

Some NYU students are staying in $300-a-night hotel rooms as their "dorm room."

Many of your larger colleges and universities occasionally run out of dorm rooms, especially during the incoming fall semester. It tends to be a short-term problem, with students who paid thousands for residence on campus put up at local hotel rooms for roughly a month--until hundreds of students drop out, quit, grow homesick, or otherwise create space and a free bed in a dormitory.

Except this year, NYU is having longer-term issues. Over 145 students are still residing in hotels in the Manhattan area, including the Manhattan NYC--an Affinia Hotel (that's the official gasbag of a name), a $300-a-night room, where they'll likely stay for the duration of the school year.

According to the New York Times:


"The hotel room he shares with a roommate is outfitted with two double beds, a desk, a flat-screen TV, a coffee maker, a two-burner Miele gas cooktop, a microwave, and an iPhone docking station. Housekeeping comes twice a week to clean the room, change the sheets and refresh the bathroom, including changing the towels and refilling the shampoo and conditioner, which are dispensed via pump bottles."

That's right--odds are the students at NYU with the smoothest, most silky hair are the ones shacking up at the hotel. The guy with greasy hair? Don't blame him for poor washing habits. Blame NYU for not giving him a suite at the Ritz.

But there is a dark side to living at the Manhattan NYC, as 19-year old sophomore Zach Barela tells the Times:


"I don’t want to sound like a stereotypical N.Y.U. kid saying: ‘Oh, I hate Midtown,’ [...] but it does get so crowded that walking like a few blocks can take forever."


The horror! What else Zach?


“It doesn’t really feel like a community (living at the hotel). I don’t even know if there are any other students on my floor.”

If you listen really closely, that tiny little squeaking noise you hear in the distance is the world's tiniest violin playing.

In a moment of need, NYU student who was stuck between buildings thought of a James Franco movie.

NYU student Asher Vongtau spent 36hrs wedged between two buildings after falling off his dorm's roof before, finally, school security found him stuck in an incredibly tight space. In a surprise to no one, alcohol was involved before falling.

Vongtau's mother tells DNAinfo New York that her son remembered James Franco's movie 127 Hours--the true story of a climber stuck under a desert boulder who cut off his arm to free himself. "He thought, 'Am I gonna have to do that?'" said Habiba Vongtau .

Not unless he planned on slicing and dicing up limbs and torso, as Vongtau's entire body was stuck. That small fact, plus the tiny matter that most underage drunken college students don't equip themselves with utility knives like desert mountain climbers--but, hey, minor points.

Realizing the grim fate that awaited him while encouraged by the industrious cinematic spirit of James Franco, Vongtau yelled for help. Eventually rescued, he's now recuperating from a fractured skull, pelvis, and arm.

This is a great reminder for everyone. When life has you down, fondly remember an appropriate James Franco movie. Like whenever I'm having trouble with my superhero powers I think of Franco as The Green Goblin, and then I don't feel so bad.

NYU business student has the humility part down cold.

An anonymous student from NYU (the school where all the Columbia rejects go) sent out cover letters to a wide array of banking corporations for a summer analyst position. It's apparently a big deal to these future crooks in the banking industry to attain such a position for business majors.

Except this guy was, uhhh, humble. As in Sex Panther Cologne kind of humble.

Let's go to the cover letter demureness:

I am an ambitious undergraduate at NYU...I am punctual, personable, and shrewd individual, yet I have a quality which I pride myself on more than any of these.

I am unequivocally the most unflaggingly hard worker I know, and I love self-improvement.

HUMBLE! The dude is the Gandhi of the business world! How can he be without a summer analyst position?

Tell me more:

I left [a previous employer] because it was too easy. Once I realized I could achieve a perfect GPA while holding a part-time job at NYU, I decided to redouble my effort by placing out of two classes, taking two honors classes, and holding two part-time jobs. That semester I achieved a 3.93, and in the same time I managed to bench double my bodyweight and do 35 pull-ups.

Have you seen his pecs?? They're amazing! And don't even mention his glutes, man--they're chunks of marble carved by Michaelangelo himself! Have you tried doing 35 pull-ups? Only a sex beast can do 35 pull-ups.

I say these things only because solid evidence is more convincing than unverifiable statements, and I want to demonstrate that I am a hard worker.

Damn right. Saying your body is shredded is an undeniable fact. Have you seen his abs yet? Have you seen them? No really, you can't deny their magnificence. He's a hard worker.

I am proficient with Bloomberg terminals, excellent with excel, and can perform basic office functions with terrifying efficiency.

Have you seen the man make coffee? You've never been terrified until you've seen him operate a Keurig.

Please realize that I am not a braggart or conceited, I just want to outline my usefulness. Egos can be a huge liability, and I try not to have one.

It's not cockiness when you've got glutes and copy machine skills like he has.

James Franco is like me when I was five. In kindergarten. Eating paste in a corner.

James Franco is a Big Hollywood Actor. He was in the recent Spiderman movies playing the famous villain WhatHisName SomethingOrAnother. A timeless character, really, in that it took no time to forget him.

Anyway, Franco is a grad student at NYU's Tisch School of Arts, where he's receiving the occasional D grade in acting classes. Specifically, "Directing the Actor II," taught by Prof. Jose Angel Santana. Santana sounds like a stick in the mud with the grading until you realize Franco missed 12 of 14 classes. Possibly, "Directing the Actor II" deals with the diva who doesn't want to leave the trailer all day on set. If so, Franco = best student ever.

The NYU folks didn't appreciate Santana being a realist, so they fired him in order to make sure Franco understood real education and effort wasn't required at NYU. This sort of irked Santana because, you know, he was only doing his job and Franco isn't Brando after all. He's not even John Denver yet.

So two great American traits are coming together for our entertainment: laziness and litigation. Franco's laziness is leading to Santana's litigation. Now, if they could just make a reality show out of this, the circle would be complete.