“Hooking up has many forms,” Professor Susan Stiritz said while reflecting on the results of one of her class’ surveys on casual romance.
“Studying them can help us negotiate the tricky terrain of today’s sexual culture as well as give us insight into the social construction of sexuality and of gender,” she said.
According to junior Mythili Sanikommu, a member of the group in the class “Hooking Up: Healthy Exploration or Harmful Exploitation?” which studied juniors’ hooking up practices, upperclassmen’s sexual activity differs significantly from that of freshmen and sophomores in that it often involves more commitment.
“There’s a lot less random hooking up, and people are more careful about hooking up with their friends,” Sanikommu said. “They’re more often looking for relationships.”
Sanikommu’s group, which surveyed 137 students, found that 41 percent of juniors had not hooked up at this point in the semester, in contrast to a separate survey that found that only 22 percent of freshmen had not hooked up.
Juniors in the survey also said that they had different definitions of hooking up this year than they did as freshmen.
Of the juniors, only 11 percent said that “making out” was as far as they would go during a hookup, compared with 21 percent who set the limit at “genital touching,” 19 percent at “oral sex” and 38 percent at “intercourse.”
Looking back, however, some 20 percent of juniors said they would have only gone as far as “making out” during their freshman year, compared with 23 percent who responded with “genital touching,” 21 percent with “oral sex” and—in marked contrast—20 percent with “intercourse.”
The junior research group concluded that a multitude of factors influenced these trends in juniors’ hooking up, including solidified friend groups, moving off campus, creating an identity away from home, being 21 years old and studying abroad.
With regard to all but the studying abroad factor, juniors share many characteristics with seniors that influence their patterns of hooking up.
“Juniors and seniors are pretty similar,” Sanikommu said. “By the time you’re a senior you don’t really want to hook up randomly. You’re looking for something stable.”
According to junior Ashley Johnson, a member of the group in the class that studied seniors, seniors’ relationships also tend to move at a faster pace than underclassmen’s.
“It’s very different to be in a relationship as a senior than as a freshman, when you’re not quite comfortable in your own skin or in college,” Johnson said. “Relationships move faster with seniors—both emotionally and physically.”
A number of factors, including the imminent approach of graduation and the oncoming “real world,” were listed as factors contributing to seniors’ desire to pursue deeper relationships.
Concerning seniors’ hooking up, Johnson said that one of the defining characteristics of seniors’ sexual culture is that it lacks any defining characteristics.
“I think that the main point that we found in our research was that there is no trend, there is no pattern,” Johnson said. “Unlike the other grades—where you see different milestones that affect hooking up—there isn’t anything like that senior year.”
Instead, Johnson’s group found that seniors are more likely to have varying conceptions of hooking up.
According to the group’s survey of about 40 seniors, for example, definitions of hooking up ranged from “tongue in other person’s mouth for more than 10 seconds” to “making out and beyond—anything horizontal” to “anything sexual between two people, from kissing to sex.”
Ultimately, though, the class as a whole identified one characteristic common to hooking up among seniors, which seniors also share with the rest of the student body.
“The perspective that has emerged in the class is that hooking up is not intrinsically bad or good—it’s how the practice is used that makes hooking up a positive or negative experience,” Stiritz said.
“When hooking up is used as a form of sexual conquest, it is a potentially hurtful and destructive behavior,” she added. “When hooking up is used considerately as a form of mutual enjoyment and exploration, it has the potential to be developmentally helpful.”
This article is the second in a two-part series on Professor Susan Stiritz’s Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies class, “Hooking Up: Healthy Exploration or Harmful Exploitation?” Last week’s story discussed hooking up patterns among freshmen and sophomores.
