KB: Have you gone on a date since you’ve been at State?
Lisa: I mean with my boyfriend now, but not before.
KB: Not before?
Lisa: No, not at all. I mean, nobody ever asked me [on a date]. I had boys that I liked or whatever, but it was never like that, we would just hang out or go to a party or whatever. None of my girlfriends have ever been on dates either since we’ve been here [at school].
KB: What do you envision when you hear the term “date”? What do you picture that to look like?
Lisa: I don’t know, going to a movie and dinner or something, something where it’s just the two of you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that [movie and dinner], that’s just the typical thing, but like something that just the two of you are doing by yourselves.
KB: Would you say that students at State University date?
Jen: No.
KB: What do you envision when I say date?
Jen: I think about somebody picking you up, bringing you flowers [laughing], taking you out to dinner and maybe a movie.
KB: And students here don’t do that?
Jen: No.
KB: Has anyone asked you on a date since you’ve come to State?
Jen: No.
KB: And none of your friends here have [gone on dates]?
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T H E H O O K U P
Jen: I mean they’ve been asked out on dates I guess but it’s after they’ve been hooking up with the person . . . I haven’t gone out on a date here [at State University]. [Emphasis added]
In Jen and Lisa’s response to the question on whether students date, they refer to a key issue. College students recognize what the dating script is, but they do not follow it in the traditional sense because a date is no longer the mechanism by which college students find potential partners. It is rare for students to engage in behavior that resembles a traditional date (e.g., a pair going to dinner or a movie together) unless they are already in an exclusive relationship. As Jen implies, the pathway to becoming a couple, when a date might occur, begins with hooking up.
The terms “date” and “dating” are still used on college campuses today, but they are used far less frequently than during the dating era, and they often do not have the same meaning they once did. Today, the term “date” is used to refer to (a) going out alone with someone with whom you are already in a serious relationship, or (b) the person you take to a formal dance. However, neither of these scenarios is very common because going on dates is no longer the centerpiece of campus social life as it once was.26 The term “dating” is used by some students in-terchangeably with “seeing each other,” “talking,” or “hanging out” to refer to hooking up on an ongoing basis with someone you have some form of contact with between hookup encounters. According to the men and women I spoke with, students in this type of relationship would rarely, if ever, go out to dinner or the movies or any other public place to spend time alone together. Thus, college students’ use of the term
“dating” does not reflect the traditional meaning of the term.
DATING VERSUS HOOKING UP
Hooking up and dating are fundamentally different. Each carries its own set of norms for behavior, and although there is some overlap, there are several critical distinctions. During the dating era, men initiated the invitations to go out on dates.27 The script for a date followed many widely recognized conventions. The man was supposed to contact the woman to ask for a date in advance, giving her at least several days’ notice; he was responsible for planning an activity for the date, such as T H E H O O K U P
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going to dinner or a movie, as well as picking the woman up and driving (or walking) her home. Because the man was responsible for the initiation and planning of the date, he had to pay for any expenses.28
By contrast, hookup encounters generally occur at the culmination of a night of “hanging out” among a large group of friends and classmates at a campus party or local bar. Either the man or woman can initiate the interaction, but in either case the cues would be nonverbal. College students said that you can “just tell” when someone wants to hook up by his or her eye contact, body language, attentiveness, and so on.
Neither the man nor the woman is responsible for the expenses incurred during the evening. In most cases, the only expense would be alcohol, and college students usually pay their own way or may buy “a round” of drinks for their friends.
Alcohol also seems to play a more central role in facilitating the hookup script than it did in the dating era.29 In fact, alcohol is not only available at campus social events that culminate in hookup encounters, but it is often consumed by one or both parties involved in the hookup.30 Many students, like Larry, a senior at Faith University believe that drinking alcohol lowers their inhibitions, thereby making a hookup possible: “Sometimes it’s just something that happens, like you have something to drink and you just feel this sudden attraction for someone and they feel this attraction for you and it just happens and it ends after that.” Without alcohol as a social lubricant, it is unlikely that college students would be able to signal interest in a hookup and deal with the potential for rejection inherent to this script. This “need for alcohol” may account for the increasing role that “partying” has played in the social lives of college students over the past several decades.31 Thus, alcohol use and alcohol-centered events (e.g., campus parties) play a critical role in making hookup encounters possible.
Another difference between hooking up
