Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus

that affected one’s degree of involvement in the hookup scene, including clique and alcohol use. A student’s circle of friends, or clique, was a good predictor of how entrenched he or she was in hooking up. The students I talked with who belonged to popular groups on campus, such as fraternities/sororities and athletic teams, were more likely to be heavily involved in hooking up. Fraternity men in particular believed that finding hookup partners was very easy.16 They suggested a typical number of different hookup partners would be twenty to twenty-five during a semester when they were unattached (i.e., not in an exclusive relationship). Kyle, a senior at State University, mentions how his fraternity brothers can have sex whenever they want to, while this may not be the case for nonfraternity men on campus. “The majority of students probably don’t have sex as much as they would like to. My friends have sex, they can and they do when they want to, most nights.” The ease with which fraternity men find hookup partners is not surprising given their notorious involvement with hosting alcohol-driven parties on campus.17 Greek members are typically at the center of social life on campus; therefore, they are frequently in situations conducive to hooking up.18

For students in non-Greek friendship circles, involvement in hooking up was varied. Many students flock to fraternity parties, or other events featuring alcohol, even though they do not actually belong to a fraternity or sorority. These students seemed to have no difficulty finding a hookup partner for the evening. This point is illustrated by Trent, a senior at Faith University. Despite not belonging to a fraternity or thinking of himself as “anything special” looks-wise, Trent reports having great success finding women interested in hooking up.

Trent: If you want to hook up with someone at this school you can any night of the week . . . it just depends if you want to.

KB: Is that regardless of what you look like and what you have going on?

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Trent: Like it all depends really on the person. Like I can honestly say I can pretty much hook up with a girl pretty much every night of the week if I wanted to.

Importantly, not all men and women find following the script for hooking up as easy as Trent describes it. Unlike fraternity men, non-Greek students believed a single person would hook up with anywhere from three to ten different people per semester.

KB: Do you know how many people you’ve hooked up with since you came to [Faith U. two years ago]?

Emily: Umm, maybe like, not necessarily [all] people that go here, maybe like fifteen, maybe like a little more than that.

KB: OK. About fifteen since the beginning of freshman year?

Emily: Yeah, probably.

KB: What do you think would be typical in that regard? In a semester, what would be typical for the people that you know? How many people would someone hook up with in a semester at [Faith]?

Emily: Umm, I would say, like three to five. [Sophomore, Faith University]

Some students found hooking up to be more difficult to accomplish on a regular basis. Ed, a senior at State University, was one of the men who said that his circle of friends found it difficult at times to find hookup partners.

KB: Would you say that hooking up is something that is happening every weekend amongst the group of people you know?

Ed: No, no. We make fun of each other for that, for having it

[hooking up] not happen. And that doesn’t help the situation.

KB: Because you want it to happen, but you don’t always end up with someone?

Ed: Right.

In general, students who struggled with finding hookup partners seemed less involved with social events, particularly events that involved alcohol.

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It is important to understand why alcohol plays such a major role in the hookup script. Typically, hookups are initiated during alcohol-centered socializing. According to the college students I spoke to, alcohol makes initiating sexual encounters easier by setting a tone of “kick-ing back,” “letting loose,” or “partying.” KB: Say you weren’t in a relationship, how would you get together with girls?

Larry: Probably like you’re hanging out with a group of male friends, let’s say you go to a bar and you’re going to meet people obviously from [Faith U]. Around here, the bars are packed with [Faith] people. . . . You know you basically meet them at bars, you’re drinking, you’re dancing, at different parties you get to see them around campus, so you get to feel people out and things like that . . . maybe I’ve seen them on campus that day and I say: “What are you doing tonight?

Maybe I’ll see you [at the bar]” and then the scene changes a lot. Well, the scene changes a lot in that respect if you see someone on campus and you know you’ll be talking, let’s say male/female, I’ll be talking to a girl and you’ll be talking about school and stuff like that and then you drop a line and say: “I’ll see you at [the local bar] tonight” and you go [there]

and they come up and give you a big hug and kiss and the conversation just gets into everything, like crazy things, it really changes from when you’re on campus to an outside social experience, it really does change, I feel it really does. [Senior, Faith University]

At bars and parties, college students may be in an environment where they can meet potential hookup partners, but the alcohol helps facilitate the interaction between potentially interested parties. Without alcohol as a social lubricant, the series of nonverbal cues (e.g., eye contact, body language, etc.) used to determine if a potential partner is interested in a hookup could be rather nerve racking. College students also firmly believed that alcohol lowers their inhibitions and makes them want to hook up. Violet, a junior