It’s 9 p.m. on a typical Friday night. The communitybathrooms in any given sorority house buzz with the sound of blowdryers as women hurry to make themselves presentable. Cell phonesring and girls converse with their friends about meeting up beforethe event.

Down the street, groups of guys gather in fraternity houses, andat near-campus apartments and bars, pre-partying before the nightgets underway.

As 11 p.m. rolls around, clusters of women join guys at thevarious pre-party locations where they hang out for a while beforeheading to the buses, which will transport them to the club.

When the club closes at 2 a.m., the late-night partiers returnto campus where many people couple off. Around noon the next day,women, still in their skirts and heels from the night before, takethe “walk of shame” back to their dorms, apartments andsorority houses.

This late-night hook-up culture has become the norm at manycolleges nationwide.

Although the stereotype holds that many girls attend SMU toobtain their “Mrs.” degree, the overwhelming populationof singles suggests otherwise.

Yesterday’s idea of the chivalrous dating game whereboy-meets-girl, boy-pursues-girl, boy-marries-girl, has shifted toa constant co-ed togetherness ranging from one night hook-ups tofriends-with-benefits.

In a survey of 100 SMU students, only 5 percent said that theyhave ever been on an actual date.

“Dates are awkward when you’re going out,”sophomore Stephanie Sewell said. “It’s so much easierjust hanging out with people and getting to know them in a largergroup.”

It is pretty much a consensus that dating has become a datedterm at SMU.

Opinions vary as to why no one goes on dates anymore. One surveyrespondent suggests that because freshmen live in coed dorms on asmall campus, guys and girls are always together, whetherit’s hanging out in hall lounges, in the cafeteria, or indorm rooms. There is no need to date.

The transition from a time when guys were not even allowed inthe women’s dorms, to a time of constant togetherness, hastaken the mystery out of the opposite sex.

Another survey respondent said that because people are marryinglater in life, there is no need to find a life-partner incollege.

“I’m only in college for four years; I want to havefun and not worry about having a girlfriend,” junior JeffSmith said.

Junior Matt Bregman does not have time to commit to agirlfriend. Juggling an internship, 17 hours of class, and severalcampus activities is tough enough, let alone adding a girlfriend tothe picture.

“Getting seriously involved with someone and not beingable to give her the time she deserves wouldn’t befair,” he said.

Many feel that hooking-up has replaced dating. Eighty-fourpercent of the students surveyed say they have hooked-up withsomeone they were not dating, and the majority of these say theyhave hooked-up on more than one occasion.

A hook-up, as defined by the Independent Women’s Forum isa physical encounter, ranging from kissing to sex, withoutemotional commitment. Survey results suggest that many SMU studentshook-up regularly and this is preferred to committedrelationships.

Although the traditional dating scene is uncommon on the SMUcampus, and the majority agrees that most people are single, thereare some who do report having serious boyfriends or girlfriends.The phrase “attached-at-the-hip” describes the coupleswho are never seen without each other, and never seen atparties.

“You are almost made fun of if you have a boyfriend.…If you are together with someone, you are pretty muchmarried,” sophomore Nicole Dodge said.

The typical Friday night scene, in which girls and guys go outin groups but home with each other, is not exclusive to SMU.

The hook-up trend has become so great that the IndependentWomen’s Forum commissioned a national survey in 2000 aboutthe dating and sex habits of 1,000 college females entitled,”Hooking Up, Hanging Out and Hoping for Mr. Right.”

Forty percent of the women surveyed said they participated inhook-ups and 10 percent of these said they had hooked-up more thansix times.

“The sexual revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s islargely responsible for crafting the present social structure oncollege campuses. … It gave women the false sense that theycould be sexually active without emotional commitment,” saidKate Kennedy, the campus projects manager for the IWF survey.

She said that people who choose not to participate in hooking-upare looked down upon and that “getting to know the oppositesex through casual and chaste dating has become practicallynon-existent.”

Aside from the experts, college students nationwide agree thathooking-up has taken over at the expense of dating.

Jenny Leonard, writer for the Rochester Review, said,”the notion of going on a date is, well, dated.” Shesaid that at the University of Rochester, the idea of dating is”uncool” and relationships are extremely casual. Thereis a “fuzzy boundary between friendship and dating,”she said.

In Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College Bulletin columnistElizabeth Redden wrote a story called “The Swattie DatingGame.” She said the reason students at Swarthmore do not dateis because there is “no time, no money and perhaps mostinterestingly, no need.” The students quoted in her articlefeel the same way as SMU students about dating. Swarthmore is asmall school where guys and girls live in coed dorms, and eat inthe same cafeterias; the close relationships people have”makes the intermediary step of datingunnecessary.”

Adults are also fascinated by the new era of casual sexualrelations.

Author Tom Wolfe wrote a book in 2000 entitled HookingUp. He traveled across the country talking to teenagerscomparing the differences in courtship from 20 years ago, to today.He coined the term SMF, or serial monogamy fiend, referring tothose who jump from relationship to relationship. He agrees thatthe idea of dating has been replaced by hooking-up, and as far ascasual kissing: “Today’s girls and boys have neverheard of anything that dainty,” he said.

The new era of casual hook-ups has drawn attention from experts,authors and college columnists across the country, and all sharethe same opinion — dating has been replaced by thefaster-paced, more physical institution of hooking-up. Althoughpeople have varying opinions about why the traditionalget-to-know-you phase has died, the overall tone is acceptance ofrandom and repeated physical encounters.