Hook-up U - sexual practices amongst college students - Brief Article

National Review, Sept 13, 1999 by Amy M. Holmes

Modesty is still a stranger on campus.

Miss Holmes is a policy analyst for the Independent Women's Forum and a Fox News contributor.

The statistics are reassuring. Just last year, the Centers for Disease Control reported that, for the first time in decades, more than half of America's high-school students described themselves as virgins. According to the Urban Institute, the rate of sexual activity among 17- to 19-year-old boys in urban areas declined from 75 percent in 1979 to 68 percent in 1995. Over the same period, the proportion of young men who approved of nonmarital sex fell from 80 percent to 71 percent.

Popular culture, though, tells a different story-as anyone who has channel-surfed past MTV's Spring Break, listened to the Backstreet Boys, or saw American Pie can testify. The Washington Post's front page recently carried the headline "Parents Are Alarmed by an Unsettling New Fad in Middle Schools: Oral Sex."

While the statistics may be improving, sexual practices among teenagers are becoming increasingly dehumanizing. Consider the phrase "hooking up," a casual reference to casual encounters that is part of the American collegiate vocabulary. Now primary-school students are describing their sexual experimentation in the same impersonal terms. A high-school junior explained to the Atlanta Journal in May that "risky behavior is just something to do when you're bored. Like, um, sex, smoking, stealing, doing drugs. It's just something to do."

While not everybody does it, many suffer, particularly girls. The Post's story, on an oral-sex ring in a Williamsburg, Va., middle school, quoted one of the eighth-grade boys involved as saying, "The girls made up this hook-up thing . . . and it turned out to mean a lot more to them than to us. The guys hooked up with the girls because the girls were hot. The girls wanted to have a relationship."

The picture does not get any prettier at our elite college campuses. Georgetown University, for example, has been the site of several "Money Parties." Students pay to attend these invitation-only events, at which they trade sexual favors for Monopoly money-and the guest who finishes with the most takes home a percentage of the door. The only tender here is commercial, as free love paradoxically earns cash. Maybe the Post should run a new headline: "Parents Are Alarmed by Unsettling New Fad at Elite Universities: Prostitution."

Dawn Scheirer, a recent Georgetown graduate and founding editor of a conservative-oriented guide for female students, was invited to such a party her senior year. "My invitation came from a male friend who was interested," she recalls. "He presented it as if it were some sort of compliment. It was like I was part of the elite, like I had this select opportunity. I told him I was busy that night." Sheltered her first two years from hook-up anarchy by a serious boyfriend, Scheirer says that "once I was available, I sort of got in the loop. There were plenty of guys ready to pimp me out."

Yale, too, boasts a progressive attitude toward sexuality, as one might expect from its coed bathrooms. Yale undergrads are notably evenhanded in their appraisal. As it was explained to me by a trio of hook-up- averse women, a multi-partnered man is referred to as a "slush," a hybrid of "slut" and "lush." His female equivalent is a "party favor."

Hooking-up, as it happens, does not necessarily involve intercourse. And at Yale, it rarely does, complains one 1996 graduate writing for Playboy: "Yale is a culture in which sex toys, dirty talk, homosexuality and oral sex raise no eyebrows, but intercourse is a big, big, deal." A pre-med woman who was graduated this spring explained to me, "It doesn't matter if you haven't had sex, it can still be sleazy."

At Smith College, enterprising coeds are logging on to hook up. Potential partners are culled from chat rooms, e-mails are exchanged, and arrangements are made for nervous weekend meetings. A 1999 graduate, Laura Barrett, describes one such encounter: "One of my friends was sort of dating a guy over the computer. They decided that they were going to lose their virginity to each other. You kind of hoped they would have dated each other face to face first. They did it the first time they met each other. It was a little weird."

Erin McGlinchey, a senior launching a Smith edition of the Georgetown guide, says that Internet-coordinated hook-ups are becoming more common among both straight women and lesbians. She is pessimistic about the possibility that hooking up might yield to dating, that pastime of yesteryear. "I don't see any signals that dating is coming back," she says. "People don't seem satisfied, but I don't think they see that many alternatives. We've gotten used to this. Why should guys change? The guys can come and get free breakfast." Why buy dinner, when you can breakfast for free?

Again, some polling data indicate that kids today are becoming more conservative in their sexual behavior and attitudes. Last fall, the UCLA Survey of College Freshmen found approval of promiscuity at its lowest point in 25 years. The Rules, the book that counseled girls to hold out for commitment, was a monster hit. But if sexual nihilism has gone half way around the world, modesty is just putting its boots on.