Donna Freitas was teaching a class on dating at a small liberal arts college in Vermont when one student piped up during a discussion on ‘hooking up’ and said, “I have to admit that I hook up all the time, and I hate it, it makes me unhappy.”
The class became silent and then a very “real” conversation took place in the classroom. It turned out that almost all students feel the same way.
“You, as a student, are the most powerful force in your community,” Frietas told her audience. “You maintain, shift, and leave a legacy behind for students coming in.”
Freitas wondered if this general feeling and understanding about the culture of “hooking-up” was the same or different among college campuses throughout America.
She found in surveys, interviews and daily journal entries from students that the conversation about sex in a classroom or in front of a group is completely different and almost scripted compared to what people really think.
Freitas is a professor at Boston University and is the author of “Sex and the Soul.” Freitas spoke about her research and book Wednesday evening in the Hughes-Trigg Forum.
Of the students Freitas has reached, 41 percent feel “dirty,” “regrettable” or “awkward” after a hookup, while 36 percent said they were more or less “fine” with hookups.
When Freitas asked students to define hooking up, the definition boiled down to a physical intimate activity where you’re not supposed to become attached to the other person – in a sense you shut yourself down emotionally so that you don’t really care about it the next day.
Hook-ups are considered successful if it wasn’t a big deal and there were no feelings of attachment afterwards. Frietas wondered why students would keep doing this if it upsets them.
Frietas found that, at college, hooking-up is perceived as an obligation, something everyone does, making it almost a social activity.
One student said plain and simply, “it just happens in college.”
Students often feel they have to “prove” themselves when they get to college, hook-up with other people and then brag about it in order to be known on campus. It is assumed boys love to hook-up with lots of girls and have crazy sex during their time at college, yet most guys would rather have a nice relationship than have awkward mornings all the time.
Kids may say they feel like it’s not a very big deal and it happens so often and casually, but when it comes down to it, nine out of 10 students that Freitas interviewed said they’d much rather be in a meaningful relationship than be having random hookups.
Frietas has found in her research for her book, and in teaching college students, that nobody is alone in feeling that hooking-up is just not that great.
She advised students to break tradition and start trying to meet people they might want to get to know and maybe even have a relationship with. Chances are they will feel relieved that you don’t just want to “hook up” immediately, and they will be happy to get to know you.
