The "How, Then, Shall We Live?" Lecture Series at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN aims to raise potent questions by inviting lecturers and organizing events which stoke lively conversation, not only in the University but in the Sewanee community at large. What are the key issues that bedevil us here in Sewanee? Who could help us think through such issues? Whose writing and life work speaks to them? Email us your thoughts at htswlseries@gmail.com
ELIZABETH MARQUARDT LECTURE. NOVEMBER 3rd, 2003
Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Mating and Dating Today
posted by How, Then, Shall We Live? @ 10:29 AM
The "How, Then, Shall We Live?" Lecture Series at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN aims to raise potent questions by inviting lecturers and organizing events which stoke lively conversation, not only in the University but in the Sewanee community at large. What are the key issues that bedevil us here in Sewanee? Who could help us think through such issues? Whose writing and life work speaks to them? Email us your thoughts at htswlseries@gmail.com
My question...was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: "What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?" Differently expressed, the question is: "Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?" It can also be expressed thus: "Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?" -Tolstoy, A Confession
13 Comments:
Is Hooking Up the Campus Jerry Springer Show?
Richard O'Connor
Faculty Panel, October 28, 2003
Is hooking up the campus Jerry Springer show? That show feeds on sexual revelations, class prejudice and moral disdain, all by staging -- carefully scripting -- out-of-control impulses. Although it purports to show how people 'really are' -- we're animals, aren't we? -- the on-screen antics tell us about drama, not people. Is the show then irrelevant? No, we can't say that either. A generation ago, such displays wouldn't have been broadcast.
So too the hooking up scene. We're seeing what once wouldn't have been displayed. The fact that it's less secretive tempts some even as it repels others. It's hard to know the actual incidence. I suspect the extreme -- casual impersonal sex-- isn't increasing wildly, but the number of tourists -- folks on a visit -- is far greater. Some visitors will get lost or even go native, but most will hurry home.
So --like Jerry Springer-- hooking up is a drama that fascinates many, consumes a few, and clarifies values for all. The critical question-- how coercive is this? -- is hard to answer.
Can we say more than this? Yes -- but not easily. We need to know its cause. Here Glenn and Marquardt play it both ways. Although they tell you their research only allows them to report a campus climate, not explain it, they nonetheless suggest that the older generation, and campus authorities in particular, lack the courage to do what's right.
Is hooking up due to a lack of moral fiber? That's a bit like blaming a hurricane on the people caught in it. I liken hooking up to a hurricane for two reasons. First, it's destructive -- I don't know if it's more destructive than earlier practices but it is destructive. Second, it began far from where the storm now centers.
Where did it begin? Very briefly, I see three extremely powerful sources -- and a chance to offend everyone.
• First, Consumerism -- Glenn and Marquardt see an absence of norms. I wish they were right. It's worse. Consumerism -- gratify-yourself individualism -- has triumphed other older norms. Can 50 million commercials be wrong? Why should shopping stop at the mall? If Americans max out their credit cards -- if we're paying billions to banks because we can restrain the impulse to buy -- why should sex be far behind? There -- that offends business.
• Second, decline of the middle class -- Who keeps up appearances, stresses self-control, defers gratification and disdains indulgence? -- historically, it's the middle class, not elites, not the poor. Since the 1980s policies favoring the rich have thinned out the middle class, lessened lower class hopes of rising, and fostered a culture of celebrity excess. Conservatives who funnel wealth to the wealthy can hardly complain if middle class morality is on the ropes. Have you heard of the roaring 20s -- the era of bathtub gin and easy sex? Well some historians of sexuality say the indulgent sexualities of the rich and working class men simply overwhelmed middle class morality.
• Third, instead of overturning the male character of collegiate life, women have been socialized into Animal House. Aren't binge drinking and easy sex what college is all about? What fosters this is the denial of gender differences. That opens opportunities for women even as it closes off dissent when the free market extends to sex. Hooray for equality. There -- now I can stop -- I've offended liberals too.
To sum up, once the Titanic hit the iceberg -- consumerism, middle class decline, the unintended consequences of equality -- it still would have sunk even if the captain had had the moral fiber to do bed checks on the way down.
The Grammar and "Ritual" of "Hooking Up"
Marquardt makes the point that "hooking up" can mean a variety of things, but even if vague it does seem to have both a core meaning and a set of conentions for those who would participate in the practice. Based on conversations with students, I gather venture the following description. I am presenting the description just because I think it would make a difference in our upcoming discussions if we know what we are talking about. I would appreciate feedback and correction if I have gotten this wrong.
Marquardt is right to say that hooking up can involve various sexual activies, from kissing to intercourse. One necessary condition for hooking up is that the hooking up activity be engaged in without any intention of getting into a serious relationship.
If that is all that hooking up is, it is nothing new. But beyond this meaning, there is a set of rules for participating properly in the hooking up ritual. It is important that those who hook up do not then acknowledge each other as intimates after the hook up. They may not give each other any special acknowledgements when they see each other the next day. They most especially must not appear to be friendly with one another in front of other people. They must instead act as if the sexual encounter they just had did not happen.
It is also the case, as a colleague mentioned to me, that one might not know in advance whether one's sexual encounter is really just hooking up rather than the start of some more serious relationship. One can, in retrospect, categorize an encounter as an instance of hooking up. The retrospective characterization places the encounter, which might have been not so clearly a a hookup when it was going on, into the category of "hooking up" so as to clarify that, in retrospect, it really wasn't the start of a serious relationship, or in retrospect, the parties have no shared intention of pursuing a more committed relationship.
If there is more to hooking up than I have described or if my account is just wrong, please submit a correction.
"Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Dating and Mating Today" Professor Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt, a scholar at the Institute for American Values
1. Introduction - As the title of this work suggests, the authors were interested in learning more about the attitudes and values of college women today regarding dating, courtship, and marriage. The focus is on college women since they will be the leaders of tomorrow and because they will be influencing their peers as well as future generations. The reason this investigation is necessary is because traditional patterns of dating and building relationships seems to be something of the past. What has taken its place? Are women more in control when it comes to courtship? Do women still desire marriage? If so, do their dating or relationships in college help prepare them for marriage?
2. Methodology - The research team used two survey tools to obtain the data for this study. To be eligible for the survey, the respondent had to be unmarried, heterosexual, and an undergraduate student at a four year college or university in the United States.
a. Campus Visits - researchers went to 11 schools in the United States and conducted in-depth interviews with 62 college women. (none of these schools had a religious affiliation) (Spring 2000)
b. Phone Interviews - researchers contacted an additional 1,000 college women via phone and this survey was about 20 minutes in length. (Winter 2001)
3. Findings - Depending on your perspective, the findings of this study may or may not surprise you.
a. Marriage is a major life goal and most of the women surveyed hope to meet their future husbands at college.
b. Relationships between college men and women is often characterized by too little (and sometimes too much) commitment.
c. "Hooking-Up", a sex-without-commitment interaction between college men and women is widespread on campus and acutely influences the dating culture on campus.
d. The term 'dating' has multiple meanings.
e. College women say it is rare for college men to ask them on dates or to even acknowledge when they have become a couple.
f. There are few, if any, guidelines or norms on campus to help young women think about these issues.
4. Implications - There is a serious conflict or chasm between what these young women seem to want for their future and what they are engaged in today on college campus. The hook-up culture often leaves the women feeling vulnerable, ashamed, and wishing for something different. Further, the nature of these hook-ups is such that little communication develops so there is little opportunity to learn from the experience. Consequently, young women are not developing skills or learning about their wants/needs for a future, permanent relationship.
Is this really new or do we just talk about sex more publicly now? Women were having sex in college in the 50s. The difference is now women don't charge men an ice cream sundae to cop a feel and dropping out and getting married isn't the only option if you get pregnant. It seems that in the "good old days" women who had sex for pleasure had to fake an interest in commitment and now women who have sex to snag husbands or boyfriends have to fake casualness. I'm not sure which is worse.
Hooking –up is an extension of our human need for love and intimacy. In our consumer culture, we are taught to believe the fastest way to happiness is by satisfying our every desire for material and physical comfort; the best homes, cars, food, etc. If we are not entitled to the best sex, at least we are entitled to ample sex. What is our ultimate concern, and where will it lead us?
As nature planned, females and the multiple possibilities fascinated me, as a young man. Beyond the physical, it is the friendships and relationships I remember and value. In the process, after stumbling through the forest, I developed a clearer understanding of human nature, myself, and the importance of positive relations with others.
For males in particular, there may be momentary joys in “hooking-up”, in the long run, like excessive pornography, it may diminish your future ability to share and enjoy the most important thing you possess, your Self; a loss which may be more significant than a young person can imagine. We wish all of our students the best.
Hooking Up Panel, October 24, 2003
Elizabeth Outka
I confess that when Jim Peterman first asked me to be on this panel, my initial thought was “no way,” as I suspected that I would disagree with most of Marquardt’s report.
I obviously did decide to do the panel, but I wasn’t wrong—I did find many areas of disagreement, and I’ll discuss more specifics in moment. But what did surprise me is that while I consider myself an open-minded person, it was at first difficult for me to get past any of my initial biases enough even to engage Marquardt in conversation, and this in turn made me realize how difficult it is to have a discussion about sexuality without simply running to ideological corners. So I want to respond to Marquardt with both a critical eye and an eye towards engagement, since I do agree that meaningful discussion of the hooking up culture is overdue.
Let me start with my critical eye, and quickly outline some of my objections to the study.
*I object to the methodology: The report is based on interviews with 62 women, and a survey of 1000 women. The narratives that make up the bulk of the report come from the 62 person group, a survey size that is not statistically significant.
*I object to some of the language that governs the study: Marriage is framed as a possible “major life goal” in a survey question, and the authors decry how the lack of committed relationships in college “leave women with few opportunities to explore the marriage-worthiness of a variety of men”
Mind you, I wanted to find a committed partner in college, but it wasn’t quite a goal, and I didn’t see men for their marriage-worthiness—this language implies a kind of corporate or 7 step process to finding a mate, and I object not simply to the terminology, but the way it treats people as a kind of a product in a system, an attitude that is in fact intrinsic to my own concerns about the hooking up culture.
*I object to the sloppy thread of nostalgia that infuses the report. While the researchers are clear they are not advocating a return to the past, references to a misty past time when “social processes that guided young people toward marriage had a name: courtship” still infuse the writing.
*Finally (and this is not an exhaustive list) I object to the various biases of survey. The researchers, for example, only interviewed heterosexual college women, but this subgroup becomes “today’s college women” in the summary and recommendations.
[Turning to the engagement:]
It’s easy to take shots at Marquardt, but this shouldn’t stop the conversation. As I hear constantly from my students, there are real problems with Sewanee social life and the hooking up culture, and these problems range from frustration with the drunken exchanges that seem to substitute for dating, to the dangers and long-term damage that can result from hooking up. I’ve rarely spoken with anyone who enjoys the dating scene here—though I certainly don’t think this scene is unique to Sewanee, as this report in fact suggests.
I think it’s perhaps best to see Marquardt’s desire for “socially prescribed rules and norms” as part of a long tradition of attempts to codify sexual behavior. From conduct books in the 18th century, to the infamous Rules book today, it’s enormously tempting to try to control and predict what is essentially a very messy and unpredictable business.
Often times, such codes and rules merely perpetuated various chauvinist stereotypes, however, and that’s why many of them have gone, and good riddance. But codes and rules, after all, can be helpful, because you can use a term rather than an explanation, and everyone will still know what you mean. Imagine how useful it would be, for example, to have a term that would essentially mean “I think I may end up liking you, but I’m not quite sure I’d want a commitment before I knew more, so could we go to a movie without it being a huge thing with strings attached”. That’s too awkward of course, but what if we invented a term like “Fred” (noun form) or “to Fred” (verb form), and you could simply say, “Would you like to go on a Fred?” and everyone would know the rules.* So part of my advice today is to call on Sewanee students to issue a new lexicon for undergraduates, not one that would simply describe the existing state of affairs and give us terms like “hooking up,” but one that would also help define the state of affairs that you would like to achieve. Such a lexicon might find its first home in the Purple, but who know where it might go after that. Start a revolution. I mean it.
To conclude, I’ll take seriously Marquardt’s final recommendation that older adults offer the young guidance in dating. So I offer you Six Simple Rules if You Want to Date My Advisees, Male or Female, Gay or Straight:
1. Know that Sex means different things for different people. In general, but not necessarily in particular, it seems to have more emotional consequences for women than for men. In any case, you should be as honest as you possibly can about what sex might mean for you, and avoid behaviors that might disrupt this meaning. It’s also your ethical duty as a decent human being to be attentive to what sex might mean for your partner. If you suspect there’s a wide difference, go to a movie.
2. Know that sex, desire, romance, attraction, and even love are messy, as the very vagueness of the term “hooking up” suggests. They don’t run along neat lines, and you’re not likely ever to define definitively all those pesky questions like whether you like her more than she likes you. You will in college often find yourself torn between desire and indecision, as unclear on your own changeable feelings as you are about your partner’s. It’s a situation guaranteed to deliver some mistakes, so play the odds. Remember that while alcohol and drugs may in the short term ease the anxiety surrounding this uncertainty, both are highly likely to interfere with the critical ability to make good personal decisions amid this messiness. By contrast, there’s no substitute for actual conversations where you use language to discuss intimate topics—especially if we can use the new lexicon.
3. Never forget that certain sexual activities are wrong at all times and in all places: Sexual contact with children; any sexual contact that is forced or unwanted; and sexual contact with anyone who is incapacitated or otherwise unable to choose his or her conduct freely.
4. Know that an “anything goes” policy may not signal the freedom or equality you think it does. Freedom comes from knowing as clearly as you can what you want, and being able to act intelligently on this knowledge. Decency comes from remembering the same things on behalf of your partner.
5. Know that treating other people simply as sexual objects, even when this is a mutual arrangement, has consequences. It takes particularity out of human interaction, and it can make you numb to the spiritual value both of yourself and the other person. A habit of this can in the long run make you callous and unhappy, and it can drain meaningful communication from your life.
6. Remember that a deep, committed relationship between two people is a beautiful thing. As near as I can tell, such relationships begin not from having marriage as a life goal, but as an act of grace that comes when you have enough independence and self-knowledge to risk a sustained intimacy with another human being.
*I am delighted to credit Dr. Kelly Malone for suggesting the word “fred” to describe this statement!
When I was a sophomore in college, I took a class at Illinois State entitled Functional Anatomy 101. It was a hard class to get in to… especially if you weren’t a junior or senior….because it was probably one of THE most popular classes on campus. It was taught by a much beloved professor named Dr. Fosland.
I will never forget the first day of that class. The science auditorium was packed. Not a spare seat could be found. The bell rang, the door opened and in walked Dr. Fosland, a rather, plump, bald headed man in a short white lab coat. A sudden hush fell over the room.
Before even saying good morning… Dr. Fosland walked straight to the black board and picked up a piece of chalk. His opening remarks went something like this:
“Welcome to Functional Anatomy 101, where we’re gonna get down and dirty and talk about it. After all this is a class about anatomy….human anatomy. Over the course of this semester we’re gonna spend a lot of our time focused on something (How shall I say it?) some of you do a lot… . and some of you would like to, but don’t know how to do at all… or at least, not very well.”
By now, a sense of uneasiness was filling the room.
“You look confused, he said. Let me give you a clue”. (And here he started to chuckle to himself). “What we’re going to be talking about this semester: is a four -letter word. I know you know the word: it means to have intercourse. … it ends in K. Here, he turned to the board and drew four lines putting a hugh K in the last blank. C’mon now, who can tell me what the word is.”
No one moved. No one raised an arm. People’s faces began to turn red and a lot of folks started looking at the floor, for fear that Dr. Fosland would call on them to say the word.
“Oh… so you’re afraid to name it… this incredible act of sharing, this incredible act of intimacy between two people”.
And with that he went back to the board and wrote in big tall letters: TALK!
That’s what we’re gonna do this semester We’re going to learn to talk…. talk… talk!!!
I think this story best describes for me, as a priest and pastor, what the more potent issues are behind the seemingly popular practice of hooking up. You and I live and participate in a society that has increasingly become more and more afraid of talking and being ourselves and sharing our emotions and feelings. It seems far less risky to share the shell of our bodies than to share the stuff of our souls. When we talk, when we share the stuff of our souls, we make ourselves incredibly vulnerable. If we share our fears, someone might make fun of us. If we share our deepest dreams, someone might laugh at us.
I think Elizabeth Marquardt hit the nail on the head when she said that this generation has not had very good role models. Though I believe the roles models are out there, we have not been a very visible or vocal group for them. Maybe that is part of the problem.
I was amazed after having read her report, that the definitions she quoted were the exact same definitions given by women here… on this campus and within the last few weeks. As I ran my own study, I was saddened to learn that many of the women on this campus feel much the same way.
It seems to me to be a vicious cycle: young woman are uncomfortable with who they are (perhaps they don’t know how to love themselves or even why they should… after all they don’t look like Brittany Spears)… so they can’t share what’s on their minds or in their hearts… so they work on the next best thing… their bodies… and then they choose these as the vehicles of personal expression. They offer their body, hoping for approval, acceptance, affirmation.
(At this point Annwn Myers shared spontaneously out of her own experience and then concluded that the art of reflection and conversation (ie talking) and learning about the wanderings of another’s heart and mind are what romancing is all about. And, that sadly, this is what’s missing when one chooses simply, to hook up.)
One of the issues that comes up in Marquardt’s report that I frequently find myself wondering about as it relates to college students is why dating defined as “a guy asking a girl to go out to dinner or a movie because they are interested in the girl and want to get to know her better” rarely occurs on our campus. I personally think it’s really too bad that this type of thing doesn’t happen very much any more. The thing that brought this issue to my mind was when Marquardt mentioned in her talk yesterday that many women would not be interested in a guy asking them out on a traditional date and that they actually prefer the guys that are likely to pursue many girls on what many might consider a more shallow type “relationship”, which only entails physical contact. I found this statement to be pretty startling because I have a hard time believing that girls really have no interest in a guy who would ask them out on a traditional date. Anyway, I asked around a little bit and am continuing to ask and so far every girl that I’ve talked to has told me that they would love to be asked out on a traditional date and would appreciate the gesture. So the question is, if girls like the idea of a traditional date so much then why aren’t more guys asking them out on these types of dates?
Next, I asked a couple of guys why guys on college campuses generally don’t ask girls out on casual dates. One of the answers I got was that the guy doesn’t ask because he is afraid that a girl will interpret the request as a sign that the guy is interested in being in a “serious” (joined at the hip) relationship. These requests seem to be interpreted in one of two ways, either the guy assumes that the girl will immediately want this kind of relationship, and it scares the guys off or the girls tend to assume the guy wants too serious of a relationship and so she says no, because she doesn’t want to be “joined at the hip” either. I think it’s a tragedy that traditional dating is seen as a trigger for a scary, potentially suffocating relationship. Why can’t it just be a way for a guy and girl to get to know one another better and sort of feel their way out as they go along? If they have a good time, fine, then they should go out again. If not, no big deal, it’s one date and no one’s feelings should be hurt too badly. Another thing that I heard from a guy was that a guy’s fear of rejection keeps them from asking a girl out as a way to get to know them better. A guy would rather get to know her well before asking her out on a date, so that they would be less likely to be turned down if they do decide to ask her out on a traditional date. They like to feel a little more confident about their chances before asking. My thoughts on this are that either it is the girl’s fault that guys are afraid…maybe too many nice guys have been turned down or maybe the guys just need to be more willing to take a chance. I don’t know which is the case; it might just be specific to each situation.
After hearing all of this, it sounds like a lot of men and women would both very much like to date in a traditional sense but because of a lot of misunderstanding and maybe too much over evaluating on both party’s parts….no traditional dating is going on. I wonder if there is anyway that we could all start over, with neither the guy or girl expecting too much or infering too much from the request. I personally think “hooking up” as it is defined in this study is a problem on college campuses and should be reduced and I think that maybe a resurgence of traditional dating might help the problem. It would give men and women a chance to get to know one another better before deciding to get too physically or emotionally involved. In order for this to happen,however, both men and women would have to be willing to view traditional dating a lot differently than it is viewed now. I would love to hear anybody’s response to this! Thanks.
Elizabeth Marquardt asks us--as a community--to communicate more openly about relationships and sexuality. Yet I find the tone and methodology of her study patronizing, polarizing, and ultimately detrimental to productive communication.
The first sentence sets the stage for what is to come: "All of us are fascinated by how young people meet and mate, and as a society we are particularly interested in how college students--the next generation of social leaders--make these decisions." Who is this "we"? And does this preoccupation with the sex lives of young people not verge on the prurient? Certainly, there is a voyeuristic quality to the report insofar as the voices of those being "studied" are controlled by the interviewers, the biases of the questionnaire, and the editorializing of the report’s authors. Even the book’s cover art participates in the hackneyed "tease" of the voyeuristic.
Personally, I believe that as long as we talk about college students (or any arbitrarily designated group, for that matter) as a monolithic, uniform subset of society we are doing them and ourselves an injustice.
Here’s a question: What would we think if some students brought a speaker to campus to talk about findings and recommendations contained in a study on "faculty dating and mating habits"? Wouldn’t the Institute for American Values agree that as the teachers of "the next generation of social leaders," our sexual habits are at least as important as those of our students?
I, for one, am not quite comfortable with being the subject of a study like this. The thought that there is somebody out there attempting to analyze something so personal is quite disconcerting, especially when it seems like message is that we college women are somehow screwing up the rules of intimacy so carefully developed by our foremothers. Perhaps this behavior of “hooking up” developed, because the previous system of “dating” just wasn’t cutting it—people often talk about the high divorce rate in this country. Not that “hooking up” is a great alternative—it doesn’t exactly jive with behavioral expectations, especially for females, who seem to be expected to exist in the convent and the brothel at the same time. Anybody else think that’s kind of silly? As for the boys, they’re often characterized as just existing in the brothel—not exactly fair for them either. Not to mention that “hooking up” doesn’t exactly jive with the concept of mutual respect. Where is that middle ground where we’re all just people?
While “hooking up” is ultimately an empty and potentially destructive behavior, the “dating” of days gone by does not seem much better. Dating in the context of, say the 1950s and 1960s on college campuses was more a reaction to gender segregation (boys were not allowed to enter girls’ dorms and vice versa) where “hanging out” as friends or potential mates didn’t happen all that much. Without that normal interaction there doesn’t seem to be much potential for meaningful relationships between men and women outside of marriage—or the quest for marriage—dating. The “dating” that we think of in such a nostalgic fashion now seems an even more feeble attempt at connecting than hooking up does. At least hooking up is to the point. It seems to me that hooking up and dating are means to the same end: gratification of some kind, whether it is sexual, emotional, or anything else. Which is fine; we’re human. We have needs. The difference is that now women (at least most of us) don’t come to college to get, as the old joke goes, our “MRS” as well as our B.A. (not to mention the fact that there’s enough sex ed. out there that we know how not to get knocked up). And if boys don’t buy us dinner so much anymore, so what? Some of us just want friendship from the opposite sex, and if there happens to be romance in the process, woohoo! At least we stand a better chance than our mothers of having closer relationships with boys as people—and friends, rather than potential husbands.
Staring at the Sea: A Brief Response to Marquart and the Academy
(Darren Hutchinson)
Perhaps we are more primitive than primitive, as we stand, staring at the sea, not only watching the waves which transport, shake, move, destroy, bring, carry, and disrupt and then inferring that some god is the source of them all but also attempting to alter and purify those waves of their danger, not through our prayers but rather through our mere classifications and moralizations. What gets to be called “hooking up” is not a single thing, not a defined practice, not a custom, and not a game, no more than sexual intercourse “itself” is any of these things. The waves of sexuality that wake through our lives bring us into happiness, ruin, marriage, divorce, parenthood, depression, friendships, sometimes even love. When they happen among the young in a relatively unspecified setting, this is now called “hooking up” and it has suddenly become a phenomenon to be worried about, a site where the parents and academics and moralists and fear mongers and preachers and public health officials can come together and offer solutions to the dangers posed by it. But supposing that there is no more a possibility of our young people avoiding sexuality in unspecified settings than there is of Odysseus avoiding the sea, what function could it possibly serve to have blind seers yelling warnings after them as they set sail? What purpose could it serve to decry the sorry state of things, or to sink into wistful nostalgia, or to pine for “social norms,” or to warn of the dangers of STDs and alcohol and prosecution by the law enforcement officials? How many more guilt trips and moralizing lectures and patronizing advice forums do you need, young people, before you will say: “Get the hell off our backs!”? How many of you are ready to respond to the question “How then shall we live?” with the counter questions “Shouldn’t it be, in regard to something as personal as hooking up, ‘how then shall I live?” and “What does it matter to you to begin with?” We of the University should neither be parents nor priests nor law enforcers, and when essential human events are made into topics of debate in forums like this, perhaps your first question should be: “Shouldn’t you academicians be studying things rather than practicing to be surrogate priests?” The life of the mind travels into dark waters and the mind may return with descriptions, stories, poems, and maps. But these things are beautiful and useful only if they are not tinged with fears and threats and paternalism and dogmatism, as is Marquart’s study and most of the popular academic/media commentary surrounding it. Perhaps we need more good novels and poems and movies and music and especially experiences in our lives, and less poorly motivated sociology, regardless of the “validity” of its findings.
Ms. Outka's comments on the systematics of the Glenn study (such as there were) are on the mark. The questions were slanted, the sample unrepresentative, the quotations selective.
The low caliber of the quotations is troubling. That a group of college-age women from various parts of the country are incapable of uttering a sentence without "and I'm like" is a cause for grave concern.
Sincerely,
Ravi Narasimhan
Redondo Beach, California
Visiting the CotS via google and a search for information on Tennessee Williams
We are never truly sure of our beliefs.
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