Mouth-watering chocolates. Cupid. Long-stemmed red roses. Love. These things were what Valentine’s Day was all about this year, right?

For those without significant others like — let’s face it — most Yalies, Valentine’s Day wasn’t about candy, flowers or romance. In fact, it wasn’t about much of anything special, and most were glad to throw the Feb. 14 page of their desk calendars into the trash can at the end of the day.

John Harabedian ’04, sporting a bright red sweater, looked to the naive eye like a hopeless romantic displaying his Valentine’s Day spirit. However, Harabedian said he didn’t even realize it was Valentine’s Day, and the sweater’s hue was a coincidence.

The holiday almost came and went without freshman Kyle Piper-Smyer’s noticing, either. But then a valentine from Piper-Smyer’s parents arrived in her post office box. And later she noticed how empty Berkeley’s dining hall was during dinner, most likely because her classmates were exchanging love-stricken glances across fancy tables for two.

“It was like a Wednesday night,” Piper-Smyer said. “Who goes out on a Wednesday night?”

Not Piper-Smyer.

Unlike Berkeley, Erica Thomas ’03 said Jonathan Edwards’ dining hall was packed. JE made single Yalies feel special by handing out flowers and draping the dining hall with special decorations.

Thomas, who spent Feb. 14 with her Glee Club friends, said the special dinner made the holiday less depressing than usual.

Unfortunately, she still found herself jealously eying the roses and Godiva others carried around campus.

One such stock of Valentine’s Day merchandise was hidden in the Bingham suite of Vicki Lew ’04. Lew, however, was not the lucky recipient.

After returning home from a “grueling and not at all romantic” four hours of work in the lab, Lew, along with her suitemates, enviously watched a sophomore plant clues around their suite. The sophomore decided to include Lew’s suite, his suite last year, as a stop on a treasure hunt for his girlfriend.

“Watching someone else get a big box of flowers and a nice card was pretty miserable,” Lew said.

Lew’s Valentine’s Day was almost as miserable as that of Justin Wasserman ’01. Wasserman said he would have done something fun, but he needed the whole day to study for a test in his chemistry class. To make matters worse, Wasserman said the test was still hard.

Bola Olupona ’04 didn’t spend Valentine’s Day studying for her classes. In fact, she didn’t even go to her classes. She decided the longer she slept, the faster the day would be over, she said.

Olupona spent the short amount of time that she was awake trying on her “skinny clothes” in hopes of making her single self feel better. She then danced around in her room for a little while screaming, “Oh my God! They fit!”

“The whole point of Valentine’s Day is to get all dressed up in your ‘skinny clothes’ and go out with someone,” Olupona said. “And well, at least I can say I did half of it.”