Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (14 page)

KB
: You’ve been using the term “hooking up” a lot but you had said earlier that you thought sex was more common than [just]

hooking up [without actually having sexual intercourse].

Kevin
: Did I? Are you sure?

KB
: Yeah.

Kevin
: Usually people are having sex. I will still stick with that.

The ambiguous nature of the term is undoubtedly part of its appeal. Individuals are able to share with others that they did something sexual without necessarily specifying what happened. The problem is that this ambiguity leads to confusion over what other students are doing sexually. Some students seemed to favor the idea that hooking up must mean sexual intercourse in the majority of cases. However, very few students indicated that when they hooked up they always had sexual intercourse. It was always
other
students who, they believed, actually had intercourse every time they hooked up. Gloria, a freshman at State University, illustrates the idea that it is other students who “go farther” sexually during a hookup encounter.

Gloria
: You kiss them [a guy at a party] and then they’ll be like:

“Come back with me to my place, sleep at my place.” And you’ll either say yes or no.

KB
: Do you ever have guys come back to your room?

Gloria
: No. Maybe once. I’m really good with that, I don’t know, just my morals. I had one guy come over but it wasn’t even for me, he had a girlfriend, he just stayed over. But I have friends and they have guys sleep over all the time. Sometimes they’ll wake up and say: “What did I do?” and sometimes it’s nothing . . .
most girls, granted they’ll have sex with
them
and the next day they’ll regret it.

KB
: By sex [do] you mean literal sexual intercourse?

Gloria
: Yeah.

KB
: So you’ve talked about what you’ve done . . . kissing mostly, and you’ve talked about these other people who have had sex, what about . . . there is a lot of in between.

Gloria
: Yeah, I guess there is a lot of fooling around, oral sex, but mostly these people will be with people in their rooms and they are drunk. They won’t just fool around and then stop; they’ll have sex . . . not that many people . . . just fool around.

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T H E C A M P U S A S A S E X UA ll A R E N A
KB
: Usually they go all the way?

Gloria
: Yeah. [Emphasis by interviewee]

It is possible that the students I interviewed were correct. That is, perhaps the volunteers for my study were less sexually active than the general student body. However, I think this is unlikely. Even students who were very sexually active with many different partners believed that other students were leading more promiscuous lives.

A third misperception is with regard to the number of hookup partners. The college women I interviewed, in particular, tended to believe that other students had a greater number of hookup partners than they did. This led many of the women I interviewed to think that they were less sexually active than other students on campus. For example, I asked students how many different people a typical student would hook up with in a semester if he or she was not in an exclusive relationship. Many women believed that their total number of hookup partners was less than their classmates.18

KB
: If someone was single how many different people would they hook up with in a semester?

Lynn
: Umm, [pauses], seven.

KB
: Is that about what you think you would do?

Lynn
: Umm, [pauses], when I was in high school I hooked up with a lot of people and then I kind of grew out of that stage because you kind of get tired of it, you know nothing is going to happen with it so it’s kind of like what’s the point. So . . .

I still do [hook up], but just not frequently.

KB
: So . . . were you single last fall?

Lynn
: Yeah.

KB
: Do you remember how many people [you hooked up with]?

Lynn
: Umm, two. [Sophomore, Faith University]

KB
: In a typical semester, if someone did not have a boyfriend, how many different people might you or one of your friends hook up with?

Violet
: It all depends on how active they are going out to different parties. I have had friends hook up with five people in one night at a party.

KB
: When you say hook up are you talking about just kissing?

T H E C A M P U S A S A S E X UA ll A R E N A 89

Violet
: Yes.

KB
: So they just kiss people at the parties?

Violet
: Hmm-mm.

KB
: So in a semester it could be a very high number if that were the case.

Violet
: Yeah.

KB
: [When you hook up] is it just kissing or would you say that it’s a lot of times more than kissing?

Violet
: Not for me. A friend of mine, I have a friend that will go out to parties and she will sleep with whoever she meets. And she actually had to leave school because she had slept with half of the campus. [Junior, State University]

Quantitative studies on college student populations have confirmed that students tend to overestimate their peers’ level of sexual activity and number of partners. This finding is consistent with data on college students’ misperceptions of their peers’ alcohol consumption. Specifically, students believe other students drink more often and in greater quantities than they actually do. Alcohol researchers have found that students’ misperception of their classmates’ alcohol use negatively affects their own behavior. For example, many students try to “catch up” with their (false) perception of what “everyone” is doing drinking-wise.19 Thus, in the alcohol-driven hookup culture on campus, misperceptions may play a significant role in affecting behavior.

HOW PERCEPTIONS AFFECT BEHAVIOR

Students’ perceptions of their classmates, whether accurate or not, are important because it affects their own behavior. The men and women I interviewed believed that hooking up and having sexual intercourse under a variety of circumstances was commonplace on their campus.

Furthermore, they consistently seemed to believe that other students were hooking up more frequently or, at least, other students went farther sexually during “random” hookup encounters. College students, then, judged their own behavior relative to these perceptions. If students believe other students are more sexually active than they are, it creates a kind of relativism whereby students define themselves as

“good” because they are not as “bad” as everyone else (i.e., “if others 90

T H E C A M P U S A S A S E X UA ll A R E N A are doing __________, then what I am doing is okay”). This point of view was consistent regardless of the sexual behavior of the student I was interviewing. In other words, whether the student had very little sexual experience or had sexual encounters with many different people, she or he believed that “other guys” or “other girls” had lower standards in adapting to the hookup script.

In some cases, students’ perceptions of the norms for their peers seemed to make them feel pressure to conform.20 For example, a couple of students referred to “getting rid of” their virginity or getting their first sexual encounter “over with” so that they did not have the status of being a virgin anymore. For these students, virginity was a source of embarrassment. Since they thought being a virgin was unusual, they did not want to be “known as one.”21 It seems that some students adapt their sexual behavior to fit in on campus (i.e., “if others are doing __________, then I should too”). Students’ perceptions can also give them permission to behave a certain way. For example, if a student wants to hook up often with a variety of different people, she or he may feel entitled to do this because “everybody’s doing it.” Thus, some students may view themselves as merely taking part in what typical college students do (i.e., “if others are doing __________, then I can too”).

The problem is that their perception of what is typical is often not accurate.

When examining the impact of perceptions on students’ behavior, one should not underestimate the power of an individual’s clique. For example, students who were involved in the extremes of the campus hookup culture tended to be surrounded by others who were also very sexually active. These students, who were often involved in fraternity/

sorority life, generally hooked up more often than other students. Their perceptions of classmates were influenced by their circle of friends.

These men and women perceived other students to be extremely sexually active, which, on any given night, might include engaging in indis-criminate sexual encounters. Stephen, a 27-year-old alumnus of State University, described an incident that occurred when he was a college fraternity member.

KB
: So you would not necessarily talk to people about your hookups?

Stephen
: No, I do. We do. Guys bullshit and talk. Guys are more fla-grant when they talk about hooking up [than girls are].

T H E C A M P U S A S A S E X UA ll A R E N A 91

KB
: Graphic?

Stephen
: Yeah. They are more graphic. They get into great detail.

[Laughs] It is funny I am just thinking back to funny stories.

KB
: Tell me one.

Stephen
: Oh God. I’ll tell you this story. . . . It was finals week my junior year and I was done finals on a Wednesday. So I had Wednesday, Thursday, Friday with nothing to do. Everyone else is still taking finals. So I went out for some drinks. We went to this [bar nearby]. I knew the bartender so he started giving me shots. I was with one of my friends. There were these two girls there and the bartender started feeding her shots and next thing you know I started talking to her. The bar wasn’t crowded at all. Next thing you know we are back at my frat house, she’s like, she can’t even walk, she is really messed up. So, we start hooking up, nothing major. She’s coherent, she knows what is going on, but she is really drunk.

So we are hooking up and we are sleeping together and she gets sick on me. She’s on top of me and throws up on me. So I had a water bed, I think that is why she got sick. I push her aside and run out to my living room, I am covered in throw-up and I’m like: “Somebody has got to help me.” There were two guys out there watching TV. I’m like: “One of you guys has to help me.” First of all, the girl she doesn’t look good and I’m covered in puke and my room is covered with throw-up. So my one friend he runs back there.

KB
: And you are naked, out in the frat house?

Stephen
: Yeah I am naked. I am out in my living room. And he runs back there and he takes one smell and he starts throwing up.

So he is getting sick. So my other friend he comes back, we put her in the shower and she is like all out of it. We wash her off, we try to take care of her; we [continue to] wash her off.

. . . I had a bunk bed and I was on the lower level of the bunk bed and my friend that was helping me out tried to help me clean her up a little bit, I put her up on his bed. Because my bed [had vomit on it so] I had to take the sheets off and everything. So I put her up on his bed, I go out in the living room and am just talking to those guys for a little bit. Then I go back in and she’s totally fine, she is totally coherent. So we start “going at it” again [laughs] and then she starts calling 92

T H E C A M P U S A S A S E X UA ll A R E N A me by the wrong name. So keep in mind that we are on the top bunk bed so we are close to the ceiling tiles. So she is screaming somebody else’s name. I can’t believe I am telling you this. And, umm, and she is screaming the name Anthony, so I am like, “Who is Anthony?” and she’s like, “I mean Stephen.” So that was that. I took her, that was finals week, she missed her final, I took her home and went down to the kitchen in the fraternity house to get something to eat and I didn’t know that my one friend had heard us through the ceiling tiles and he just looks over at me and is like:

“What’s up, Anthony?” And I just looked at him and am like,

“You heard that whole thing?” And he’s like: “Yeah.”
So that
was like a typical night
at [State U.].

KB
: Typical night?

Stephen
: It was . . . it happened. I mean that was the first time I ever had a girl throw up on me. But that is the kind of scene that went on there. [I hope you] don’t look at me any differently

[now that I told you this story]. [Emphasis added]

My research suggests that Stephen’s story is very unusual, yet his frame of reference on campus led him to conclude that his experience represents a typical night at State University. Thus, Stephen’s (distorted) perception of what was typical gave him permission to engage in what was actually atypical (and perhaps unlawful) behavior.22

A STATE OF CONFUSION

Men and women draw from their peers when making decisions on how to conduct their own sexual lives. In the hookup culture, students were often confused about what other students were doing sexually, particularly with regard to how often other students hooked up or how likely they were to have sexual intercourse during a hookup (i.e., outside the context of an exclusive relationship). They also had a tendency to believe that other students must be frequently engaging in sexual intercourse with a variety of partners, even if this was not consistent with their own experience or the experiences of their circle of close friends.

T H E C A M P U S A S A S E X UA ll A R E N A 93

KB
: Would you say that most students you know are having sex?

Jen
: Yes.

KB
: But when people hook up you [said previously that you]

generally think they are not having sex?

Jen
: Generally no [they are not having sex when they hook up].

[Wait, I take that back] they probably are having sex. I really don’t know. Because it’s not something you ask people [if they are not a close friend]. My close group of friends, two of them are in a relationship and they are [having sex]. And then my other roommate she’s not really like that. But that’s just people that I know. But [I am not sure] what other people are doing.