The Sex Lives Of College Students

It would seem to be a pretty confusing time to be a college student, at least as far as sex is concerned. The sexual revolution has been won, and many campuses resemble great drunken bacchanals in which men and women can choose to participate in no-strings-attached, or at least few-strings-attached, experimentations in lust -- sex without stigma or shame. And yet, at the same time, news about the high incidence of rape has reached a fever pitch -- leaving students, not to mention their parents, worried about their safety. College sex as both playland and minefield.

Hand-wringing over what has become known as hookup culture is nothing new, of course -- the panicky-sounding term has been around for decades now. But a hookup is not always the blithe and meaningless sex with strangers that the term conjures. Even among college students, it’s defined differently from person to person and situation to situation. It could mean anything from kissing to intercourse, with a crush, with a friend, or, yes, sometimes with a relative stranger. The script, according to this ritual, is: First you fuck, then (perhaps) you date. Or, more likely, you just continue to hook up, creating a long-term relationship -- minus feelings, theoretically -- out of a series of one-night stands.