“Nope, he’s in a relationship.” And before her friends could disagree with her, she announced, “It’s on Facebook.”

End of argument.

If you took my Facebook page at face value, you’d think I was a lesbian who was in a long-term, emotionally complicated relationship.

While most of my friends and I mock Facebook norms, I’ve heard people who I highly esteem discuss their Facebook relationship status with anxiety. In a world that increasingly revolves around the Internet, people are starting to care much more about what they are posting online.

I’ve even heard people lecturing one another that their relationship doesn’t “count” if it isn’t on Facebook, and I’ve heard at least five horror stories of people who have opened their home page only to be bombarded with a relationship request from a recent date.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us laugh over these trivial discussions—they seem ridiculous. Or are they? If you’re dating someone, but their relationship status says that they’re single, is it okay to want them to change it? Or is it a bad idea to ask?

In college, when dating can almost always be summed up by “It’s Complicated,” what is Facebook dating etiquette exactly?

The main complaint I’ve heard is that it’s an invasion of privacy. Just because you’re dating someone doesn’t mean you need to broadcast it to the world. So what exactly happened to privacy?

It died somewhere between people being able to upload photos and the creation of “FarmVille.” As a result, some maintain that you’re somehow “sticking it to the Man” by refusing to post your relationship on Facebook and admit to the world what’s going on in your love life.

I’m all about privacy when it comes to the Internet. But at the same time, if you have a Facebook page, people are going to look at it—and if you don’t want that, don’t have one. So if some girl from your orgo class sees that your status is “Single,” she won’t care that you’ve had the same girlfriend for five years when she sees you at a party a week later and puts the moves on you. As much as we all hate to admit it, what’s on Facebook sort of matters.

The best way to deal with this situation? The less said the better. You don’t need to post that you’re in a relationship, but that doesn’t mean that you’re still single. For some, maybe the safest bet is to just not have any information up there, so no one can misinterpret it.

The Internet isn’t real life, as much as some people think it is, so don’t treat it that way. So let’s not rush to the “In a Relationship” status. Don’t forget, if it doesn’t work out, you’re going to have to take it down some day—and we all know what kind of drama that can cause.

We all wish that there were a universal understanding of what a “hookup” actually means, rather than perpetual mystery surrounding the subject.

For students in the class “Hooking Up: Healthy Exploration or Harmful Exploitation?” the term “hookup” is given a more tangible meaning. Taught by Professor Susan Stiritz, the course examines the contemporary cultural phenomenon of hooking up by looking at the historical and political implications of hooking up as well as personal consequences.

As students, we always hope that the material we are learning in the classroom can be applied to real-life settings and has significance beyond our transcripts.

“I believe that courses like [Stiritz’s] offered in the Sexuality Studies Department are essential since they afford individuals the experience of exploring their own sexuality and help them to become more comfortable with themselves,” junior Daryl Steiger, a student in Stiritz’s class, said.

The focus of the course is each student’s own experiences and how each can better understand his or her own values about hooking up. At its foundation, the class is structured around pre-determined readings; however, the students’ ideas and experiences are the greatest authority in the class. This is what has made their participation in the class so unique and meaningful.

Stiritz inspires her students to interact and engage with the material on a distinctively personal level, thus providing a more in-depth learning experience. She encourages this discussion by promoting collaboration among students and fostering a trusting environment. The unique bond that the students of the class have formed with one another, and with Stiritz, is palpable.

Students expressed genuine appreciation for the course and, most importantly, respect for one another.

“We get together to discuss personal experiences in a trusting environment, learn from one another and apply what we have learned to our day-to-day encounters,” senior Sheyna Ezrapour said.

It is evident that Stiritz has not only created a bond among her students, but also has empowered each individual voice to direct the class discussion. The openness of the class allows for in-depth discussion and real-life application of the material.

Each of us has our own rules and thoughts about what constitutes a hook up. Ranging from kissing to sex, a hookup is a vague description of what actually takes place and doesn’t account for any emotional responses to what can physically transpire between two people.

We have all partaken in that frequent conversation with friends, trying to make sense of recent hook ups and decipher what the other person feels—or if feelings are even involved. All too often, we wish for a universal glossary to make sense of it all.

Stiritz’s course breaks down this confusion and helps students define their romantic and sexual experiences in a way that is meaningful and logical to them. The course turns this frequent conversation with friends into a subject worthy of stimulating academic debate.

“We hooked up.” Yes, it’s ambiguous, but those three small words do cover some common ground—they have become a trademark phrase of college culture and of daily life. The students in Stiritz’s class are happy to finally open up this conversation because, let’s face it, we’re all having it.

Our friends are the unsung heroes of our lives. They have this sort of magical knowledge that lets them instantly tell if we’re upset, how upset we are and exactly what to do to make us feel better. And, unlike someone we’re dating, we don’t need to buy them anniversary gifts, pick out nice lingerie or agonize over meeting their parents. They’re just there.

But when we start dating someone, our friends sometimes stop being the most important people in our lives. It’s hard on both parties, but particularly on the friends who are left behind.

So when I found myself listening to angry breakup music while I was doing my homework, I began to wonder why it felt so therapeutic. For some reason I had relationship rage, and I wasn’t sure where to direct it. That was until one of my friends from home called me and screamed “I’m done with Meg! If I see one more picture of her and Dan or get her voicemail one more time when I call her, our friendship is over.”

It turns out that’s where my rage was coming from too. Meg, my best friend from the days of glasses and braces, had stopped returning all of her friends’ calls, texts, emails, etc. And as someone who had always been there for her, it was infuriating and painful to never hear back from her when I needed her.

So what can you do when you’ve lost a friend into the black hole of a significant other?

First, resist the urge to tell them how much you think they suck and you hate their new partner—these feelings happen, but it’s not the best way to approach this conversation. Instead, take a deep breath and remember that, for whatever reason, dating this new person makes your friend happy—and, even if you’re a bit jealous, you should at least be able to appreciate that.

Then, be nice, but honest. You are allowed to say, “I’m angry,” “I miss you” and “I wish we spent more time together.” And maybe this will be well-received, maybe it won’t. Open the door to talk freely about your issues, so your friendship doesn’t slowly drift so much that it becomes unsalvageable.

And if you’re the one in the relationship, be the first to call up your neglected friend, and go out for dinner and a movie. It’s the little things that will keep everyone happy and save you if your love life goes south.

Our sexual culture has not only failed to educate men about the female body, but more significantly, it has failed to educate women about their own bodies. The lack of education for both partners generates unequal sexual relationships in which the essential goal and main focus of sex is the male orgasm. When asked “what concludes sexual activity?” a senior female confided, “When a guy finishes, it’s a happy ending, and if a guy doesn’t orgasm from sex or from oral sex, it’s an unhappy ending, but somehow never the guy’s fault—unless he was too drunk.”

There are a multitude of factors that inhibit the female sexual experience. Obviously, some men hook up with women solely because they want to have an orgasm while other men fail to understand the concept of reciprocation—no, I do not consider “quid-pro-quo” reciprocation. Yet there are men out there who would love for their partners to experience an orgasm with all its grandeur. In fact, a sophomore male confessed to me that he only enjoyed intercourse when his partner reached orgasm and otherwise felt guilty. If there are indeed men who get pleasure from giving pleasure, then what actually limits the female sexual experience?

Unfortunately, many females are content with not having an orgasm when they engage in sex. The orgasm gap is so common that it is the norm. With 70 percent of women not regularly climaxing from sex and 70 percent of men always climaxing from sex, women understandably don’t believe the orgasm is available to them.

My advice to women: You want to achieve the big O, and once you do, you won’t be able to get enough. The most important thing you can do is know yourself and your body. Grab a handheld mirror and say hello to your sexual side, because you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. If you are a female who has never experienced orgasm (for those of you who “think” you have had an orgasm, you have not), buy a vibrator and some lube immediately.

My advice for men: Giving pleasure can be unbelievably pleasurable, and her sexual pleasure will only enhance yours. Be perceptive to your partner’s wants and needs, ask tons of questions and make her feel comfortable with her body so she can share it with you without reservations.

My advice for everyone: Sex should be a mutual experience that involves exploring each other’s bodies, discovering how they complement and satisfy each other and using these unique and creative ways to augment and share pleasure. There is nothing more satisfying than sharing this intense, mind-blowing, breathtaking, leg-quivering sensation with somebody you care about.

It was 11 p.m., and my roommate, April, was hungry. But instead of going to the pantry, she reached for her phone and called her boyfriend, Harry.

“Please? I’m hungry.” She shot me an emphatic smile and then said, “I love you too. See you in ten minutes.” With a satisfied sigh, April returned to writing her paper, knowing that her midnight snack delivery would be there within a matter of moments. Our other roommate Louise laughed.

“God, that boy is whipped,” she said with a sigh. “He’s brought you three dinners in the past week. I wish I could get my boyfriend to do that.”

When I told Harry I was thinking of writing this column, he gave me the finger (lovingly, I’m sure). While I was a little taken aback, it brought the obvious to my attention: No one likes to think of himself as “whipped.” At the same time though, no one ever wants to be considered uncaring or insensitive to their lover’s needs. So then the question is: Where do we draw the line between being whipped and simply being a good partner?

Boys tend to get the most flack for this kind of behavior. Whenever a guy spends what his friends feel is too much time with his girlfriend, the go-to insult is that he is whipped. And while girls may not use the same word, there are certainly disparaging remarks that get passed around during gossip sessions about that girl who just does too much for her boyfriend. Essentially, no one likes to be told that they care too much.

Being whipped to the point where it interferes with your daily life is undeniably a bad thing. If it gets to a point where you start bailing on friends to help your boyfriend’s grandmother pick out flowers for her garden, you definitely need to re-evaluate a few things. But when it comes to a couple who occasionally brings each other dinner, or spends several hours thinking of the ideal gift for their significant other, maybe tagging them as whipped is a little harsh. We don’t always allow ourselves to care as deeply for other people as we should, or would, if prying eyes weren’t watching.

“I’m equally whipped,” April confided in me later. “I’m just a little more shy about it.”

It’s not a bad thing to make time for the people you love. Carving out some time to be your own person and do your own thing is good for you. But if it’s really a question of picking up a sandwich for the person you love…not doing that is just downright lazy. So show a little love to your boyfriend or girlfriend, and don’t be afraid of some slight teasing from your friends—they probably just wish their partner cared as much as you do.

(Erin Mitchell | Student Life)

Social networking has no doubt changed the way college students interact. Information is shared more frequently, relationships are easier to sustain and knowledge is spread at unprecedented speeds. From sharing photos to dating, social networking sites have transformed cultural norms that were once taken for granted. Casual conversations with friends take place through instant message chats, and gifts and birthday cards are sent virtually to be displayed to a world of hundreds of “friends.”

Such modes of connection also take the guesswork out of communication. My sister was recently admitted to her top-choice university and was faced with the new task of finding a roommate. And so, she turned to Facebook.

After what couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes surveying different possibilities throughout her new school’s “Recently Admitted” Facebook group, my sister had selected her choice for a freshman year roommate. Scanning through the girl’s photos, she became a tour guide, dictating the details of her not-yet-friend’s life.

“She’s close to her family,” she told me with absolute certainty. “And she has a great group of friends.” The photos had changed from a family vacation to a group of smiling, embracing girls. “Look, her boyfriend is cute,” was her response to the boy linking arms with her might-be roommate. In the next photo he was dancing, “…and he seems like a fun guy, right?”

While my sister found her instantaneous judgment somewhat laughable and very possibly inaccurate, she couldn’t help herself. And who was I to blame her? I too stalked my would-be roommate and would-be best friends, all of whom turned out to be far from the people I had seen on their Facebook pages. The information, the photos and the wall posts are all there, acting as open invitations into sculpted, Facebook lives. How can we resist them?

And, if we can’t resist them now, will we ever? Facebook, or some updated version, will undoubtedly change the way we function as adults and real people outside of college. I imagine our relationship with social networking sites, as a generation who grew up connected to the Internet, will be very different from that of the older adults who currently use Facebook. Just as our college years were transformed by the use of such sites, our 30s, 40s and 50s (I’m too afraid to go any farther) may also reflect the more recent trends. Just as many of us set privacy setting to block our parents, family members and potential work prospects from viewing our photos, we may be doing the same to block out our own children. It is no longer easy to simply hide parts of our youth inside stacked boxes in a dusty attic where no one will look for them. The Internet is accessible and its contents traceable. With the capacity to “back stalk” to our college years, our past, which one day will seem like a lifetime away, will in fact be available literally with the click of a mouse.

Alissa is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail at arrotbla@artsci.wustl.edu.

“Do you really mean to say,” he asked the class, “that none of you have ever once been in a relationship where you’ve woken up one morning and thought to yourself, ‘What the hell am I doing?’”

At first, some people raised their hands to disagree, but after they thought for a minute, all lowered their arms. As they ran through their own pasts, I thought of my relationships and my friends’ relationships. There were couples who got more of a kick out of making loud sex noises to wake up their residential advisor than actually having sex. There were couples who had been dating for years and refused to say “I love you,” whereas others had been dating for only a few weeks and were already professing their deepest feelings. And then there are all those couples who just don’t make sense, and their friends are always wondering why they’re together. In each of these pairings, I remembered my friends’ panicked revelations, generally after a discussion with their parents or close friends—“What the hell am I doing?”

From pop culture to seeing random couples on the street, we see and hear about normalcy all the time—what our relationships should be, the proper times and ways to express our feelings, what is acceptable for couples to do and not do with one another. These visions of normalcy make us look at our own relationships and realize just how freaky and strange the people we love are—and that we must be crazy to be dating them.

These doubts can cause some major panic: Some people find themselves thinking, “How can I date someone who spends half an hour a day banging on walls and complaining? That’s so immature. Can I really be with someone like that in the future?” And either “It’s been two months and he hasn’t said ‘I love you,’ so he obviously doesn’t care about me,” or “She said, ‘I love you,’ after two months; I’m getting the hell out of here.” But when this panic sets in, the most important thing to do is ask yourself: Who cares?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t care if something isn’t within the usual “guidelines” of relationships. If something is genuinely disturbing to you, then the issue is something you need to address. But if it’s your parents who think your girlfriend is immature, or your friends who say your boyfriend should be saying the L-word at this point, that’s their concern, not yours.

How can you gauge who’s right? By your happiness! If you’re not happy, then the weirdness is a problem. But if you can enjoy letting your freak flag fly with that person, does it really matter if outsiders judge you?

While you consider your answer to that, I’m going to spend a romantic evening with my boyfriend, speaking in Russian accents and watching Muppet YouTube videos—because, despite some of your raised eyebrows, that’s my idea of a perfect evening.

“The Meeting Place” A/S/Ls (age/sex/location), however, turned quickly to self-professed teen males asking for “pix” and, soon, the age-old question, “Wanna cyber?” I had an older sister, a countless number of Cosmopolitan magazines stacked in my attic and, most importantly, my curiosity. If DarkHorse493 started undressing me with his italicized red Courier New font, who was I not to snap back with a bold line I learned from my older sister?

Ignoring all of the dangers of chatting with strangers on the Internet (because this is not a commentary about the value of “To Catch a Predator”), this cyber sex I—as well as many others—engaged in through AOL’s chat mechanism is now finding itself outdated. The days of cybersex through just instant messenger have passed. Why is this, you ask? Video chat is now the latest technology altering the sense of anonymity usually offered in chat rooms. And now, a website called Chat Roulette has recently made it possible to engage in random webcam chats with the click of a button.

Instead of just being able to video chat with personal contacts, Chat Roulette allows a user, “stranger,” to connect with other “strangers” across the world via video and microphone, with an additional box for typing messages. With the push of the F9 key, each stranger can move swiftly or slowly between other strangers. Don’t want to chat with the random guy in a dimly lit room or the shirtless Brazilian who can’t speak English? Simply press F9, and you’ll be on to the next person.

Although Chat Roulette can be used for interesting and sometimes unusual chats not involving sexual behavior, the generic random guy in the dark is a common occurrence. After surveying multiple strangers on how often they came across a male engaged in masturbatory play in their first hour of Chat Roulette, the strangers I asked replied, “How am I supposed to count that?” “Like a hundred!” or, “At least one every two minutes.” Even more, strangers conveyed that besides accidentally coming across men stroking their genitals, they encountered women flashing their breasts, brief scenes of anal play and sometimes even live sex. Chat Roulette attracts countless exhibitionists—those realizing the possibilities of bridging the gap between anonymous cyber sex, phone sex and the visual powers of the webcam.

It is this “new” medium—that is, a randomized way of connecting to people’s faces, bodies, voices and thoughts—which will take cybersex to the next level. You can even download Roulette add-ons that place computer-generated “hats” (a cat head, a knight hemlet, etc.) over your face to keep some form of anonymity while keeping other parts exposed. Cat heads and masturbation may not be your cup of tea, but it is impossible to deny that the realm of Internet sex has greatly evolved.

Girls, come on! Shouldn’t we be past the point of driving ourselves crazy over last night’s forgettable hookup? He loves me, he loves me not: Common sense tells us it must be one or the other, but when faced with the question after a steamy night (or meaningless walk home and short-lived kiss), excuses for his inaction are rampant. And then come the excuses for our excuses. If you’ve spent the last hour complaining that he hasn’t responded, then I must say, you’re probably not over him. And I’ll believe you actually think he’s a terrible guy when his profile page is no longer bookmarked on your laptop.

What happened to wearing the pants in our post-feminist-era relationships? For too long we’ve been called hysterical and possessive. Instead of moving on, the threat of rejection only makes some hold on tighter, clinging to both the uninterested guys and any last thread of hope. To all the singles, flirts and relationship junkies out there: the strong girls we admire—the ones with boys wrapped around their fingers—don’t have a secret. They just know when to say when.

So how do you take back control in a world where traditional “dating” is practically obsolete? My friends and I have made our fair share of mistakes, leaving me with a long list to choose from.

The top 10 (this list is by no means complete and is open to suggestions):

1. Take a hint. If he ignores you, flirts with another girl in front of you or has a busy week five weeks in a row…it’s over.

2. The more isn’t always the merrier. Hooking up with more than one guy does not make you a slut, but it doesn’t make you infallible either. There is no such thing as a sure thing, even when you have a backup plan.

3. If your friends don’t like him (for those of you who trust your friends), it’s time to get out.

4. If his friends don’t like you…this will only turn out badly.

5. It’s not a coincidence if he only texts you after midnight. Ever heard of a booty call?

6. If a guy likes a girl he doesn’t leave her on the dance floor to…
a. Stretch his legs.
b. Check on his friend.
c. Get a drink of water.

7. Your desperation does not count when considering his positive attributes (even if the only thing you can think of is that he’s nice).

8. If you ever think your expectations are too high, remind yourself that when a guy imagines his ideal girl he Googles a picture of Megan Fox.

9. If a guy tells you how much he loves your roommate, he’s not complimenting your excellent choice in friends.

10. His phone is never broken. Enough said.

Alissa is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail at arrotbla@artsci.wustl.edu.