by A. South

Created on: December 31, 2008

It's not just fodder for movies; the image of college kids getting drunk and hooking up isn't just a stereotype, it's an epidemic.

The college years are storied as years to sow your wild oats, experiment and be independent, worry-free and have fun.

Even more telling, studies say that college students are having more sex that ever. 70 to 80 percent of college students admit to "hooking up" regularly.

This isn't mere media exaggeration or old me shaking their heads and saying "back in my day" In fact, it's the college students who are actually coming forth with the truth of what happens on campus. Sex blogs and online zines written by undergrads are popping up all over the world wide web. Harvard runs sexandtheivy.com while outletmag.net is a product of Columbia University. It doesn't stop there. Two new books that wax poetically (or not) about on-campus hook-ups. "Boink: College Sex by the People Having It" was written by the editors of Boston College's Boink Magazine. On the more educational side of things, Kathleen Bogle, an assistant professor at La Salle university wrote "Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus."

The rise of hooking up on college campus isn't a simple theory; it's a fact. But with the rise of hooking up, something else has taken a dive: dating.

Historically, dating is the prelude to relationships and everything they entail. Hooking up, though, leapfrogs the necessity of dating. Hook ups usually happen at parties, is accompanied by alcohol, and are usually not followed by any sort of relationships. It's no strings attached physicality; the opposite of dating.

Dating is a little more complicated than hooking up. With dating, you have to (nervously) ask someone out, plan a night of activities, pay for them, and walk her to the door. To hook up, all you have to do is flirt a little, smoothly transition to making out, then say good night. So why would someone ever date?

The problem, though, is that relationships don't form from hook ups, and that's especially troubling if expectations differ if one person actually does expect an relationship, and the other person doesn't. This is particularly dangerous when people hook up regularly. Hook ups seem harmless, but it's impossible to be physical without some sort of emotional involvement.

Hook ups aren't solely responsible for the decline of dating on college campuses. It's also due to the fact that people are simply waiting longer to get married. A few decades ago, an unmarried woman was an old maid by age 23, so college was their only hope for dating and marriage. That's not so any longer, so there's less pressure to date in college.

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