Princeton University should help its students learn about “healthy relationships” and reject “hookup culture,” according to a recent opinion piece in the student newspaper.
While the New Jersey Ivy League university prepares students for finding careers, it “is falling short [in] preparing its students to form healthy relationships,” according to Julianna Lee.
“There is a normalization of hookup culture at the University that is detrimental to many students’ long-term goals of healthy, sustainable relationships,” she wrote in The Daily Princetonian. “The University must provide better resources in educating its student body about the potential social and emotional harms of hookup culture during freshman orientation and follow up in [sexual harassment and assault] training material for upperclassmen and eating clubs.”
“At the same time, it’s up to us to work towards forming healthy habits,” she wrote.
Lee is the president of the campus Anscombe Society, which supports traditional sexual ethics.
She wrote:
Regardless of gender, one may go into a hookup wanting casual sex before realizing that the experience has left them wanting something more long-term. At this point, it may be too late. It seems that though hookups may seem like a risk-free, no-strings-attached option — allowing students to pursue their studies without dealing with a long-term relationship — there are mental and emotional side-effects of hooking up that speak to a deeper truth about what we really want. Sex without the deeper emotional connection that the act seemed to have promised feels empty.
She wants Princeton to “use orientation to make incoming first-years more aware of the dangers of hooking up so that students feel less of a pressure to engage in it, or at least receive adequate information about its harms.”
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