Boy meets girl. Boy and girl engage in some sort of nebulous intimate activity. Boy and girl never speak again.
It is a familiar scenario, played out time and time again in the dormitory rooms and fraternity basements of Dartmouth College -- an institution that, despite its reputation for academic excellence, has long been accused of embodying "Animal House"-style debauchery.
Yet the practice of "hooking up" -- commonly defined as the act of engaging in any sort of sexual interplay ranging from kissing to actual intercourse with a person whom one is not dating -- is not a phenomenon limited to Dartmouth, according to a study published recently by the Independent Women's Forum.
The study reports that of the 1,062 college women surveyed, 91 percent said that hook ups occur either "very often" or "fairly often" at their schools.
That statistic yields little in the way of surprise, according to Director of Health Resources Gabrielle Lucke.
"College is a time of huge sexual experimentation," she said.
Such experimentation, Lucke clarified, does not necessarily involve actual sexual intercourse.
"I know a lot of people who consider themselves sexually active who are not having genital intercourse," she said. Many students, Lucke explained, draw a line between sexual intercourse and other types of intimate activities.
According to the IWF study, such a distinction is commonly made by female undergraduates across the country: roughly one third of survey respondents reported having engaged in at least one hook up without ever having had sexual intercourse.
Why the discrepancy?
Sarah Blowe '03 offered one theory: "I think that most people, not all, but most, won't have sex with someone unless they care about them."
"I don't think that sex is something that should be taken lightly, and I think that most people share this opinion," she added.
Adam Kipp '03 agreed.
"My feeling is that many people here are willing to do a lot of things but that virginity here seems to be a sacred thing," he explained.
Sexual intercourse or the lack thereof, notwithstanding, the IWF study reveals that "hook up cultures" seem to be prevalent on college campuses throughout the nation.
"College campuses are a hotbed for sexual activity," Lucke said. "Some of it's good, some of it's bad and some of it's ugly."
Many students who spoke to The Dartmouth aired on the side of "ugly."
"It's disgusting," Saedra Bracy '03 said.
Bracy felt that those who participate in the hook up culture have little respect for themselves and others.
In fact, self-respect is often an issue when it comes to sexual intimacy between students, according to Lucke. Women, in particular, may engage in hook ups with the goal of "feeling loved," she explained.
"I wonder sometimes how much self-esteem is tied into choices that we make," she said.
Lucke was quick to point out that frequent sexual activity on the part of female college students is not always a by-product of decreased self-esteem and that many women engage in hook ups simply to fulfill their physical needs.
According to the IWF study, survey respondents expressed a great deal of ambiguity in regard to their own hook up experiences. A number of women reported feeling sexy and desirable following a hook up. Yet many also said that hook ups left them feeling awkward, hurt, confused and wondering whether the initial encounter would lead to anything more.
"It's sort of a messy situation," Tom Dugdale '03 said.
Dugdale believes that the hook up culture at Dartmouth leads not just to increased angst amongst female undergraduates but a general degradation in gender relations on campus.
"I think that one of the tough things about it [the hook up culture] is on the one hand you have a lot of women crying out for better gender relations and on the other hand you have a lot of women going out and partaking in this hook up culture," he said.
"I don't know what sense you can make of it," he later added.
Dugdale said that he personally does not partake in the hook up culture.
He is not alone. Most students who spoke to The Dartmouth said that they do not hook up frequently, if at all.
"Personally, I'm not into the hook up scene," Annie Chung '03 said. "It's sort of meaningless."
The Dartmouth did speak to one student who admitted to participating in the hook up culture. The student, who wished to remain nameless, explained that, at Dartmouth hook ups are often a matter of convenience.
The College's relatively short terms -- Dartmouth's ten week quarters are typically four to five weeks shorter than those at schools with conventional semester systems -- make it difficult to forge long-lasting relationships, she said.
She also explained that at Dartmouth, dating, in general, is a challenging feat because of the limited number of social options in the area. Students often find their social activities revolving around alcohol consumption -- a factor conducive to hooking up.
"People drink a lot and hook ups are a function of that," she said.
Once again, however, this observation is not limited to Dartmouth.
The correlation between the consumption of alcoholic beverages and the incidence of hook ups is a substantial one, according to the IWF study.
"A notable feature of hook ups is that they almost always occur when both participants are drinking or drunk," the study said. Many survey respondents, it reported, said that alcohol often loosens students' inhibitions, leading to more promiscuous behavior.
"One time I was in my room doing work and these two people were hooking up outside my door ... like they were banging on the wall. And you could tell that they were both really drunk," one Colby College senior told IWF.
Such stories are not uncommon at Dartmouth and perhaps, exemplify the type of circumstance that students like Chung hope to avoid.
Still Chung, while firm in her personal preferences, seemed to adopt the same attitude shared by 87 percent of survey respondents in the study -- that persons should not be judged by their sexual conduct.
"If you're okay with going out, having a good time and staying emotionally unattached to people, that's fine," she said.
"But if you do want to break a way from the culture," Chung conceded, "it takes a little bit of effort."
