Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd Tuesday night, author Laura Stepp addressed the hook-up-heavy culture of contemporary college campuses and its effects on students both mentally and emotionally.
In a speech at Richard White Lecture Hall, she said students tend to lean more toward spontaneous sexual encounters with members of the opposite sex than traditional romantic relationships and dating, a trend she studied while writing her book, "Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both."
"It may be that hookups are your generation's tentative step into redefining what it means to love well," she said, adding that students should make sure they talk about what they want with the other person before doing anything.
Stepp said it was more important to create a dialogue on campus to address the issue than to simply criticize students for their choices. She added that students should question their social habits, asking whether a change would be beneficial.
"My definition of hooking up is a sexual encounter that's usually unplanned and involves everything from kissing to intercourse, and it has come to describe relationships for many young people in this country," she said.
Many members of the largely-female audience, which almost filled the hall, voiced agreement with Stepp's statements during the lecture.
When one student said hook-ups function for many as a way to increase their self-esteem and asked fellow audience members to raise their hands if they thought Duke should have a dating culture, nearly everyone complied, breaking into a round of applause.
"It's kind of like preaching to the converted here," said freshman Natalie Crimp. "I don't know if you would get that same sort of reaction if it was an unbiased group."
Stepp emphasized the importance of students being able to form concrete and meaningful relationships with their peers-romantic and otherwise.
"We don't talk very much about love," she said. "We talk a lot about sex, and we've got to get back to [love]. That's at the heart of it, and college is the place where that can start."
Stepp's book described the romantic experiences and attitudes of a number of female students at campuses across the country, and her speech mainly focused on females rather than males. She did, however, stress the need for men to get in on the discussion as well.
"Girls will tell me they can't find any nice guys, and guys say there are no nice girls," Stepp said.
She added that gender equality does not require both sexes to be looking to get the same experience out of a relationship, and each gender needs to find its own way.
Hartley Bancroft, a sophomore, said Stepp accurately assessed the position of men and women in the hookup culture.
"She did handle the gender issue very well in both saying that guys are not the same as girls but still recognizing that there can be similarities," he said.
Not all students thought she covered the subject of gender satisfactorily, however.
"A lot of the stuff that she was talking about was still using certain gender norms, and that is one way to stop a discussion on these topics," said Prabhat Mishra, a senior.
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