Campus Culture

I have been following the “Hook-up” culture with some interest, because it is far different than the campus culture when I went to school (no, I’m not going to tell you when that was).  However, I tend to prefer scholarly study over random thoughts on a subject, so I was attracted to this article because it is by a sociologist (Kathleen Bogle) who has studied the culture.  There are two quotes that jumped out at me:

The “date” still exists among college students, but it is couples who are already in an exclusive relationship who do it. In other words, the pathway to a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship where a couple might go on a date begins with hooking up. In the dating era, students would go on a date, which might lead to something sexual happening; in the hookup era, students hook up, which might lead to dating. This is a reversal of the traditional order of things. The problem is that many college men are pleased with the status quo; they can hook up and if they want to pursue an ongoing relationship they can, but they are under no obligation to do so. Women, on the other hand, get increasingly frustrated after freshman year with how often it seems that hooking up leads to “nothing.”

This caught my attention, because it is a reversal of my college days.  It seems to me that this culture is damaging young women by training them to be disappointed, and damaging men by training them to be selfish.

The other quote:

Several of the students I interviewed mentioned the “walk of shame,” which refers to a college student, usually female, walking home the next morning after a hookup encounter in the same outfit he/she was wearing the evening prior. Given that students dress differently for “going out” at night than during the daytime, it is obvious to onlookers when a student is doing the walk of shame. One of many interesting things about this phrase is that students use the word “shame” at all. If students accept hooking up and believe that “everybody’s doing it,” then why do they use the term shame when referencing a hookup encounter? I think that phrase actually underscores an important issue: Many students are struggling with the hookup system. For those students who are having trouble making sense of it all, I hope my book will help shed some light on both what is happening and why it is happening.

That it’s called a “walk of shame” is interesting to me, as well.  It tells me that the hook-up culture is incompatible with the values of many of the students, but they feel stuck with it.

I’m interested in all this because of the church’s inability to reach 20-somethings.  Disappointment and selfishness are the norm for the students, but they still recognize something is wrong.  Rather than simply telling them that the culture is wrong, perhaps we need to tell them that God has a design for their sexuality that will lead to true intimacy.  We need to start with their creation as image-bearers, before we get to their fallenness.

I probably need to put Bogle’s book on my Amazon Wish List!