the sociology department whose two sons were about to embark on college life. I found myself trying to explain the phenomenon of hooking up to someone who came of age during the dating era. When I was finished going on and on about how different relationships are in college nowadays, he replied to all my ramblings by saying: “Why don’t you do a study of that?” From that conversation, this book began.
I started by looking at the phenomenon of hooking up through a sociological lens. I wondered when hooking up started; after all, it didn’t used to be that way, right? I wondered if my observations of how hooking up worked held true for others. I wondered why the “rules” (or lack thereof) that governed the hookup system on campus seemed no longer to apply once I graduated. In other words, I wanted to take my personal observations of the college hookup scene and place them in a larger context.12 As a first step, I reviewed the existing scholarship and was stunned to find no studies on hooking up prior to 2000.13 Virtually all of the past research on college students and relationships referred only to dating.14 Much of the research during this period focuses on heterosexual dating couples once they are already in a relationship. Relatively few studies examine how college students establish themselves as a couple in the first place. Those that do assume that students are dating in the traditional sense and then proceed to ask questions based on that assumption.
A few sexual behavior researchers over the past few decades did acknowledge changes on the American college campus. These studies often look at college students’ attitudes and behaviors regarding premarital sex, “casual” sex, or “risky” sex.15 Results indicate that college students have become more liberal over time in terms of both their attitudes on sex and their sexual behavior. Although this literature docu-ments change, it does not address one of the most important differences in sexual behavior on college campuses. That is, the way that college students get together to engage in sexual activity—the how and the why, as opposed to only the what.
As my research continued, a handful of studies on hooking up emerged. The first was led by a team of psychologists at the College of New Jersey, revealing that 78 percent of undergraduate students at a large college in the northeastern United States had engaged in a hookup.16 They defined a hookup as “a sexual encounter, usually lasting only one night, between two people who are strangers or brief acquaintances. Some physical interaction is typical but may or may not I N T RO D U C T I O N
5
include sexual intercourse.”17 Ultimately, the researchers concluded that “some students were hooking up on a weekly basis.”18
The results of a second study, conducted by the Institute for American Values, indicate that hooking up is a nationwide phenomenon that has largely replaced traditional dating on college campuses. This study examined the sexual attitudes and behaviors of college women across the country and found that hooking up was a common activity that dominates male-female interaction on campus. The key findings included that 91 percent of college women believed hookups occurred
“very often” or “fairly often” on their campus, and 40 percent had personally engaged in a hookup encounter since coming to college. The researchers concluded that “hooking up, a distinctive sex-without-commitment interaction between college men and women, is widespread on campuses and profoundly influences campus culture.”19
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING
This book builds on the previous studies, but is distinct in many ways.20
I wanted to look at how relationships form or how people get together both during college and after. By interviewing college students, I gained the knowledge of experiences and observations they shared in their own words, which I believe is ultimately the best way to understand their relationships. I did not assume that the students were hooking up or dating; instead, I asked them to talk about how men and women initiate sexual encounters and romantic relationships.21 Given that the meaning of “hooking up” is often debated, I thought it important to let those involved in the hookup culture explain what it means to them.
When I talked to college students and recent graduates about sex and relationships, I wanted to capture the experiences and observations of both men and women. Including men in the study fills a void left by the national data on hooking up.22 I interviewed a total of 76 people from 2001 to 2006, 34 men and 42 women.23 I spoke to 51 undergraduate college students of all grade levels (ages 18–23) and 25 alumni (ages 23–30); this enabled me to consider whether there are differences in how men and women interact in college compared to after. I asked the alumni many questions about their college years; therefore, data on the college experience were generated for all interviewees. Nearly all of the people 6
I N T RO D U C T I O N
I interviewed were white (95 percent). The lack of diversity is partially due to the lack of diversity on the campuses I studied and partially by design. I decided not to oversample minorities because research suggests that how college men and women interact varies by race.24 There is also a lack of diversity in terms of sexual preference, with 96 percent of those I interviewed identifying themselves as heterosexual.25 Although the number of people I interviewed from diverse backgrounds was small, I learned a number of things about how these students initiate sexual and romantic relationships (see chapter 4). Hopefully, these pre-liminary findings will stimulate future research in this area.
I conducted interviews with students and alumni from two different types of universities to ensure that the findings were not limited to one type of campus or geographic area. The universities are in different states; one is a large state university on the East Coast, the other is a smaller faith-based (Roman Catholic) university in the Northeast. There are many similarities between the
