“Feeling randy? Are you married? Is this your wife?”
All questions one should ask when considering “sex or no sex?” according to a flowchart presented at a discussion titled “Hook-up Culture at Penn” at the Newman Center Sunday night.
The chart, which included other questions such as “Are you naked?” and “Are you in church?” made clear to attendants that “hook ups” are difficult to define, and they cannot easily be judged by the standards of the past.
“Everyone has had a hard time defining this,” said College junior, Newman member and Programs in Religion, Interfaith and Spirituality Matters co-chairwoman Maria Bellantoni.
“It has become the norm for romantic interaction,” she explained, saying that when considering whether or not to hook up, the question should really be “What makes you happy?” rather than just, “Is it right or wrong?”
Although the Newman talk was only a one-night event, the concept of a hook-up culture at Penn seems pervasive to some students. “I think at some point it affects everyone,” Bellantoni said.
In general, the phrase “hooking up” is used to describe a number of things. It can be just a one-night affair at a party, but it can also mean a steady relationship.
College junior Alexander Athienitis, an exchange student from the United Kingdom, said from his first impressions of American dating, hooking up is “purposefully ambiguous”— and that people want to keep it that way.
The mix of expectations from a hook up can be as diverse as the term’s definitions.
“People should be open-minded,” said College freshman Hugh Hamilton, who met his boyfriend through a hook up during New Student Orientation. “I would say don’t necessarily rule things out just because they aren’t the way you imagined things would start.”
On the less fruitful side of the issue, however, hooking up can mean a lack of definition in relationships.
A Wharton sophomore, who wished to remain anonymous to maintain her privacy, said that hooking up “just makes it harder to commit. There are so many stages in between without having to be exclusive.”
“I feel like people don’t really have time for relationships at Penn,” she added. “Everyone is so busy, they just turn to hooking up. I feel like it’s really hard to find someone you really like enough to put the time into it.”
The sophomore has only been on one date since breaking up with her long-term boyfriend last year.
“It’s kind of sad,” she said.
College freshman Maxwell Hansen has also been disappointed with the college hook-up culture in some ways. “I love Penn and all the people here,” but “there are a lot of completely drunk hook-ups, which are not really my thing,” he said.
He continued, “A lot of interaction in general is fueled by alcohol.”
Not only students have an interest in the changing dating culture, however. Several courses deal with the hot topic of hooking up as well.
Sociology professor Kristen Harknett teaches classes on family structure and marriage decisions, with some lectures dedicated to the hook-up culture of colleges.
Harknett said that sociologists have been interested in the this culture for a number of reasons, from the spread of sexually transmitted diseases to the “idea that hooking up may be bad for women.”
The hook-up culture could also have consequences for long-term relationships, according to Harknett. Though the professor said she doesn’t have statistics, she believes it would affect the likelihood of finding a future spouse in college.
“The average age of marriage keeps creeping up each year,” Harknett explained, so it’s more likely that people will meet their husbands or wives at work or in graduate school, when they are ready to settle down.
Assistant professor of Anthropology Eduardo Fernandez-Duque teaches a course titled, “Sex and Human Nature” with his wife, Claudia Valeggia. They study the biological basis of sex in humans and animals in the course.
“There is a biology that underlies everything that we do,” he said, adding that, “at a basic level, we understand the biology first, then we can understand the culture that influences it.”
Though Fernandez-Duque does not study college environments, he said the availability of alcohol, contraceptives and close living quarters could “influence how you behave.”
“Where is alcohol acting, if not in your biology?” he said.
The professor added from a purely personal standpoint that with entirely physical relationships, “you miss out on the beauty, the pleasure, the happiness of emotional connections. That is what distinguishes us from most other organisms — that we develop relationships with a select number of people.”
