The "hook-up" Culture

I was reading an article recently about relationship trends on college campuses that was preaching the same thing that I’ve been hearing for years: college students are not forming relationships; instead, they are only hooking up. First let’s discuss my hatred of the word hook-up, it is just so vague! Hooking up can mean anything from getting a drink “oh, we hooked up and went for a coffee” or to having dirty sex in an equally dirty bar bathroom. Why is it so difficult for us to just say what we did with someone; that we made-out with them or that we gave them a blow job or that we had intercourse? It’s just so vague and that is precisely why we use it. For people who are ashamed to not be going far enough, we can use the umbrella term hooking up to seem that we are going further than we actually are (I think more guys than girls are guilty of this) and for the rest, they use it because they might be ashamed of telling someone what they did someone. I for one will never let someone just tell me that they “hooked up with someone” I need to know exactly what you did or don’t tell me anything, it’s all or nothing.

So, what exactly is this hook-up culture that is presumably so rampant on college campuses? And is it really more rampant than before? Mind you, most of the articles I have read on the subject have been about American universities, but I’m pretty sure they can easily apply to most campuses where the male to female ration is heavily skewed towards the ones without the Y chromosome.

When you’re a senior in high school, you are bombarded with information about universities such as which school has the better programs, campus size and location. We also hear about the social aspects of these schools, the ones with the crazy parties, the hottest girls or boys, the most unattractive campuses. Hell, when I was discussing going to the University of Western Ontario with my mom, she asked, why would you want to go to a party school?

University of Western Ontario, is an academically rigorous school with great programs, however, it is overwhelmingly known as a party school. Laurier is a school that shares the city of waterloo with me and is definitely known as the much “easier” girls as compared to UW. Why is that? Well UWO and Laurier are schools where the overwhelming majority of the students are female, 58% and 61% respectively. That is a huge gap. My experience is that when there are more girls on campus or way more datable girls on a campus, that guys have absolutely no reason to want to settle down. The most stereotypically desired guys, the jocks, have their pick of the litter, they can pick and choose and if they wanted too, they could sleep their way through the faculties. And the girls just follow suit. Maybe because they also don’t feel the need to settle down, which is actually more common than people are willing to believe. However, a lot of them just don’t know what else to do, because if they don’t sleep with the guy, he could easily find another chick to sleep with.

I always wondered why so many of the girls from my high school chose Laurier. Laurier is just an ok school, I mean in first wear our don wrote a song about waterloo, and told us if we couldn’t handle it we could just go to the high school down the road. Laurier does have a good business program, but that is about it, do these girls just want to be a part of the cycle of “hot” girls that go through the doors? Or is there something else?

A site became popular a year ago called, likealittle.com. It was missed connections for college campuses and it was hilariously entertaining. But not the waterloo page, no we always checked out the Laurier page because the lines were always that much more bold and it was both guys and girls writing these super sexual lines. It was fantastic! Everyone at Laurier joined in on the fun, they were free to say whatever they wanted and hook-up with whomever they wanted. But maybe it was just a game, and neither party wanted to be left out so most people played along, not wanting to step out of the rotation of casual sex.

My University is very different. The majority of people I know are in serious, long term relationships. Actually, all my best friends from the school seem to be serial monogamists, going from one relationship to the next. 57% of the population is male at waterloo. In this case, there are way more available men then there are women, which explains why there seem to be way more relationships then not. Basically, the women rule the school in terms of choices, the can be picky, they can have the high standards and it’s up to the guy to live up to those standards, mainly being great boyfriend material.

But I also can’t help but think it has also to do with cultural aspects of the school. The majority of students at waterloo are of Asian descent, and more than any other cultural grouping, they seem to be creating and maintaining the most constant streams of relationships. Maybe because they frown on having casual sex with multiple partners, unlike those of their white and black counterparts, or maybe it’s because they just see relationships differently.  Either way, it is definitely not something I have ever seen addressed in any of the articles about campus hook-up culture.

Also, maybe the more academically rigorous the schools are, the more likely people are to form pairs. I’m just throwing this out there, but maybe it is true. Waterloo, is a very tough school to not fail out of, even the supposed, “soft programs” are very rigorous, but with the majority of students being in engineering, science and math at this university, maybe that is also a factor.

Basically, I’m really not sure what the answer is to this question, and I’ll probably be blogging about this again when I analyze the situation more. However I will say that hooking up with multiple people is not a bad thing, if you want to make out with some hot guy then do it, if you want to sleep with the entire football team then go ahead. My problem is that university campuses are being framed as these huge orgy parties which is not close to the truth. I know way more virgins then people who have slept with more than 10 people either by choice or not. But this fact isn’t talked about because it isn’t sensational enough.