In 2001 the longtime student practice of “hooking up” gained national attention when the Institute for American Values released a report titled “Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Mating and Dating Today.” Subsequent news-media coverage claimed that dating had declined in popularity among college students, in favor of casual sex. Despite most commentators’ lamentations about the death of courtship and their concern over students’ “new,” morally questionable sexual activity, the term “hooking up” has become commonplace and the practice an accepted part of the college experience.
For campus administrators, counselors, and professors, whose only exposure to hooking up has been media accounts or pop-culture references, it is important to know what hooking up really involves. Understanding the hookup culture on college campuses is the first step toward addressing two of the biggest residence-life issues: student alcohol abuse and sexual assaults.
Hooking up is not new. It has been an entrenched part of campus culture for decades. In fact, the shift from dating to hooking up is the result of many social changes, which began in the mid-1960s. During this period, many colleges became coeducational, enrollments rose, and a greater proportion of students began living on campuses. Additionally, students began rebelling against the rules monitoring their behavior, especially those that restricted contact between the sexes; this forced many administrators to relax or abolish the policies. The campus became a place where droves of 18- to 22-year-old men and women lived in close proximity to one another, sometimes in coed dormitories, where in loco parentis was collapsing.
Changes also began to take root among students themselves. Following the sexual revolution, students delayed marriage and other adult responsibilities; they had a more liberal view of sex before marriage and often considered their college years a time to party. Increasingly, college years became a time when men and women could engage in casual relationships. So hooking up began and has flourished because students now have unfettered access to each other, and because casual relationships have become socially acceptable.
Hooking up is not synonymous with casual sex or one-night stands. Rather, hooking up, like dating, is a system for socializing with the opposite sex and finding sexual and romantic partners. But while dating called for a couple to get to know each other en route to sexual intimacy, with hooking up the sex comes first. A typical hookup scenario begins at a party or bar where two classmates — who either just met or are longtime friends — pair off at the end of the evening for a sexual encounter, which could involve a range of activity from kissing to intercourse.
Although there are no strings attached between partners, hooking up is not just about sex. It’s also a way for students to find relationships. After an initial hookup, partners may develop a relationship in which they hang out and hook up again. Some even become exclusive couples. Finding boyfriends or girlfriends via hooking up is possible, although it is not the most likely outcome. Most hookups do not evolve into anything more. Yet the hooking-up system stays intact because students believe there are no clear alternatives. Because hooking up dominates the social scene on campuses, most students consider it the only available route to sexual encounters and romantic relationships.
The demise of dating on campuses goes beyond just a change in how students mate and relate. In the dating era, drinking was not typically a central activity for couples out for the evening; in fact, it was considered wrong for a dating partner to drink excessively. This is not to say that college students who dated never drank; rather, in the hookup era, alcohol has taken on a more central role. As the Friday-night or Saturday-night date became a thing of the past, the focus of student socializing became partying with groups of friends. Mingling begins with groups at parties or bars, and hooking up generally occurs toward the end of the night, when students are under the influence of alcohol.
Some observers have suggested that alcohol consumption is what leads to hooking up. The widely accepted explanation assumes that drinking reduces inhibitions, which leads to risky sexual behavior. A student drinks too much, hooks up as a result, and in some cases regrets the encounter.
However, the link between alcohol and hooking up should perhaps be understood differently. It may be that the hookup system drives student alcohol consumption rather than the other way around. One reason that hooking up requires alcohol is that students need it to alleviate anxiety. Drinking provides liquid courage with which to express interest, initiate a hookup, and allay fear of rejection. Alcohol also helps to dismiss — temporarily, at least — concerns over the sexual aspects of hooking up: deciding how far the encounter should go or being sexually intimate outside of an exclusive relationship. Another reason that hooking up calls for alcohol use is that students can use it to justify their behavior. Alcohol gives them permission to be out of control and is a handy excuse for poor decisions. If students regret their choices later, or have misgivings about going too far, they can tell themselves and others, “I was drunk” or “I had beer goggles on.”
The shift from dating to hooking up has also changed the nature of the sexual-assault problem. Most sexual assaults no longer take the form of a typical date-rape scenario. Instead incidents occur during or after campus parties where many students are drinking heavily and hooking up. Given that alcohol-fueled (consensual) hookup encounters are common, it can be difficult for students, as well as administrators, to distinguish between a hookup and a sexual encounter that crosses the line and becomes rape. As a result, victim-blaming and underreporting remain rampant, despite decades of work by women’s advocacy groups.
Part of the confusion surrounding sexual assault on the college campus stems from the ambiguity of the “unable to consent” provision of state rape laws. A sexual encounter is considered rape if a person is deemed too intoxicated or too high on drugs to consent to sex. Among those immersed in the hookup culture on contemporary college campuses, judging how drunk is too drunk to consent is not a simple task. Most reasonable people agree that if someone is “passed-out drunk,” then he or she cannot consent to sex. But many cases are not so clear-cut.
Misperceptions, too, can make sexual assaults difficult for some students to identify in the age of hooking up. Although the practice encompasses a wide range of behavior, activities at one end of the spectrum — say, anonymous sex between strangers — receive a disproportionate amount of attention. As a result, students often think that their classmates have more hookup partners and go farther sexually than they actually do. The mentality that “everybody is doing it” and “anything goes” makes it believable that nearly every scenario, no matter how outrageous, could be consensual sex. That leads to a climate in which lines are blurred and students have trouble differentiating a drunken hookup from a sexual assault. That distorted perception affects almost every aspect of sexual assault on campuses. It increases the likelihood that students will engage in abusive behavior, reduces the likelihood of a victim’s coming forward, and affects whether a victim will be believed by classmates and administrators.
College administrators cannot change the fact that hooking up dominates campus culture. They should not denounce it, given that it has been going on for decades and encompasses a wide range of behavior. But by striving to understand it better, they can help to educate students. Most programs seem to deal with alcohol abuse and sexual assaults without putting them in context. Just as no one could understand date rape without first understanding dating, campus sexual assaults must be examined in light of hooking up. Likewise, efforts to reduce alcohol-related incidents and binge drinking that do not include educating students about the connection between alcohol use and hooking up will continue to be ineffective.
Colleges need new strategies that recognize the impact of the hookup culture on both sexual assaults and alcohol consumption. Residence-life programs must open a more honest dialogue with students about hooking up, deal with their misperceptions, and acknowledge the complex social world that students face. Only when administrators develop a clearer understanding of the hookup culture can they begin to design programs that will reduce campus drinking and sexual assaults.
Kathleen A. Bogle is an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University and the author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (New York University Press, 2008).
http://chronicle.com Section: Commentary Volume 54, Issue 28, Page A32