Hit It and Miss

It’s a Saturday night and you’re drinking your weight in booze, as you normally do. Through thick beer goggles you find your target, an equally plastered member of the opposite sex you’re seeing for the first time. After short, suggestive, and slurred small talk, the two of you move in to even less substantive actions and proceed to casual sex. The next morning the two of you are still as clueless as to the other’s identity as you were when you first met, and you never speak or see each other again. Soon after, the practice begins again with different partners for each. For those who do not frequently engage in the preceding activity, what is being described is known as the hookup, which is steadily becoming more and more prevalent in today’s college culture, and is delivering a death blow (pardon the pun) to traditional relationships between young men and women.

Keep in mind, this article is primarily being written for those who have no idea what a hookup is or have yet to realize its destructive power. Imagine a world completely devoid of passion, emotion, and feeling, and one in which the once sacred ritual of sexual intercourse has absolutely no inherent meaning. Such significant elements as intellectual stimulation, emotional connection, and enduring companionship are no longer desired. Instead, as one College of New Jersey student was quoted as saying in October 4’s Newsweek, a good hookup is one in which “no one finds out about it or talks about it later.”

Of course, not all hookups are as good, with morning-after regrets somewhat common. The afore-mentioned beer goggles play a part when one partner realizes their lay wasn’t as attractive as they were the night before. Indeed, the resulting humiliation of doing a less than standard partner will ensure that “no one finds out about it or talks about it later.” Sometimes feelings do, in fact, get in the way. The feelings and attachment that may result only lead to the misunderstanding that this was a hookup, and not the beginning of a meaningful and lasting relationship. Of course, since your then partner doesn’t want to see you again (they’re only following procedure, after all), your strife will fall upon deaf or apathetic ears. Besides, by now they’ve already moved on to their next hookup with someone completely different. While beer goggles and caught feelings can be temporarily troubling, they are of course a walk in the park to the ever-looming specter of pregnancy and disease.

The hookup seems to mesh well in to both aspects of the college lifestyle. On the one hand, the stress and time constraints of schoolwork, jobs, grades, and resume-padding leave little in the way for relationships. A hookup here or there can provide for meeting sexual needs without taking up too much time. One the other, being tied-down and committed might get in the way of the care-free, fun, and drunken nature of college life. How much fun are parties, after all, if there’s no chance of getting laid with someone you don’t know? While hookups may be all the rage in college, those who habitually engage in them will receive a massive dose of reality in the long run. One of the greatest indictments against the hookup is that it stunts emotional growth and maturity and does not prepare practitioners for real life relationships. Sooner or later college students will have to learn that relationships are not merely all about sex. Like other aspects of the collegiate lifestyle, the hookup catches up with you. There may be no lingering physical effects, but the emotional damage can last a lifetime.