The College Fix

Vanderbilt women may argue over which has better frozen yogurt, Pinkberry or Sweet CeCe’s, but most can agree on one thing: Vanderbilt men are the worst. This may seem a little harsh, but for the most part they are noncommittal, arrogant, awkward, and most aren’t even that good looking. Countless women have asked me: Why don’t they ask us out on dates? Why are they hesitant to start relationships? Why do they get away with this?

They get away with this because the 1950s concept of dating is dead. Or at least, that’s what Kathleen Bogle told the crowd Wednesday night during her talk on “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus.” The assistant professor of sociology at La Salle University studies the hook up phenomenon, and so far she’s found that hooking up has replaced dating as the beginning of sexual and romantic relationships on the college campus. It used to be that sex would come after dating, but now sex often comes first and dating sometimes follows.

Bogle showed the audience a black-and-white picture of an adorable couple sipping at a chocolate shake from two separate straws. “This is a picture of what you’re not doing,” she said. Instead, the typical picture of guy-girl college relationships involves alcohol-induced, one-night sexual encounters. This isn’t as common as the media plays it out to be, Bogle said, but it still exists.

She told a story about a boy who’d been hooking up with a girl for a few months. He didn’t have her number and never communicated with her during the week, but each weekend they would see each other when they were out and go back to his room together. Sound familiar? Another guy she spoke to would hook up with girls until they went “psycho” and tried to define the relationship. Ever heard this before?

There were countless examples like this, which showed women in the audience that Vanderbilt men aren’t the only heartless ones out there … it’s men everywhere.

But women, have you ever thought that maybe “Vanderbilt guys suck” because we allow them to? All of a guy’s current wants are satisfied by willing one night stands they meet at parties and bars each weekend, so how can we expect them to go to great lengths to woo us with a couple of dates and a bouquet of roses? Women play into this culture, so we can’t expect anything better from our men.

Well girls, we can continue to hook up and get hurt, or we can do something about this. In his “Life is Worth Living” series, Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote: “To a great extent, the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. … The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” If we truly want better men and real romance, we need to live by higher standards. In doing so we will command respect, call this society to something deeper than casual, one night encounters, and we might even find that chivalrous knight that we’re looking for.

Frannie Boyle is a columnist for the Vanderbilt Hustler. She is a member of the Student Free Press Association.

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