"Hook-up culture" helps students to discover themselves

When it’s 12 a.m. and your partner comes into your dorm room wearing basketball shorts and Nike slides, carrying their phone charger, you know it’s not a bedtime story they are looking for. They are there to hook up, commonly referred to as “a booty call.”

We’re all adults, and we have needs. Hookups are common in college, this we all know, but are hookups worth the hype?

A few of my friends and I call this “The Game.” This is knowing everyone that a person is hooking up with and making sure you keep that same number, or you add to that number. The rules are simple.

Rule #1: What they don’t know doesn’t hurt them. They don’t need to know anything that doesn’t concern them. If it is not life or death, then it’s none of their business.

Rule #2: They never get to spend the night. Grab those slides, your charger and get to stepping.

Rule #3, which is my personal favorite rule: Don’t leave any marks on your playmates. No bite marks, no scratch marks and no hickeys. Leave nothing that could prove what you may have done behind closed doors.

Psychologist Erik Erikson said, “College is a period of psychological moratorium where individuals hold few responsibilities and are able to try on a multitude of identities.”

This basically means that once a person hits college, they try to figure themselves out.  One method of self-discovery is through sex. What a person likes and dislikes in the bedroom can be translated into what they like and dislike outside of it. A person has sex with several people because they have the freedom to do so safely and with consent, of course.

In the book, American Hook Up, author Lisa Wade reveals that many students are not into hook up culture. Some found that it was not for them and preferred romance. Though these sentiments are expected to be shared by women, it was the men who surprisingly felt this way.

Some of my girl friends do not share these sentiments. One friend stated, “I don’t think I’m ready to settle down yet.”