Lindsay Lohan’s character in “Mean Girls” said, “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls say anything about it.”

It seems that once people get to college that line of thought gets ratcheted up a notch or seven. Away from the watchful eye of authority figures back home, women use Halloween weekend as the one time they can leave their home in less than what they would wear to bed.

I see no problem with this. That’s the beauty of freedom of expression in this country: You can wear what you want, when you want, where you want as long as it doesn’t upset anyone, and the “Mean Girls” corollary excludes that possibility from Halloween.

Judging by my news feed on Facebook.com from the past week and a half, not only do some women not have a problem dressing up in public wearing their “costumes,” they’re willing to broadcast themselves to all of their Internet buddies in said outfits.

It’s interesting, though, to read the letters and online comments that have been flowing into The State News the past week and a half or so. A few letters have been printed regarding the “rating system” the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity allegedly had at their Playboy U party. Shockingly, some of the girls going into said party are outraged that they were rated based on their looks.

Is it fair that these partygoers were being judged by random people they’ve probably never met? Nope.

However, I do believe that if college-aged females want to be treated with the utmost respect and politeness, they probably shouldn’t be visiting a fraternity house. Nothing against the brothers of AEPi — I’m sure they’re very nice people — but any place with 70 or 80 guys living inside is not going to be a bastion of women’s rights.

The rating system that was put on display by AEPi is really nothing more than the internal thought process of every person who has ever lived. I would love to meet anyone who has never thought someone looked hot, ugly, cute, trendy, trashy, etc. It just doesn’t happen.

This isn’t to say that I don’t think any girl who received a number on her hand at AEPi’s party shouldn’t be upset. My point is that, though it may be reprehensible behavior, it’s not exactly surprising.

I don’t think Halloween is a special time of the year when people should form their sole opinions of one another or themselves. Simply by leaving your house every morning opens the door for someone somewhere to make a judgment about you. It’s a fact of life. Every day someone is using some sort of rating system to form an opinion about you — they just aren’t writing it on your hand.

Maybe this will become clear later on when college is over and the hunt for a job begins. Will it be seen as sexist if a potential employer looks on Facebook at your pictures, sees you drunk and half-naked and decides maybe they can’t trust someone who projects such an immature image?

It’s probably easy to think that, as a man, I’ve never had to face any sort of discrimination based on my gender. But, while guys might not be getting numbers written on their hand as they enter parties based on looks, they could be getting turned away because they don’t have enough girls with them to constitute an acceptable ratio. I have yet to hear of a party that turns away girls because they don’t have enough guys in their group.

The party aspect of college culture throws all general rules of society out the window. What kind of person walks up to someone they’ve never met and starts grinding on them? No one, outside of any type of party with dancing where this type of greeting is about as acceptable as shaking hands.

Sometimes there are simple solutions to life’s problems, like not putting yourself in a position to be judged by how slutty you look that night or how drunk you look on Facebook. Sometimes you should just know what to expect based on the situation — a Playboy-themed Halloween party in a frat house, for instance.

Kyle Feldscher is a State News staff writer. Reach him at feldsch1@msu.edu.