Did you hook up with anyone last weekend? How was it? Hot? Awful? A mistake? A grenade? Yours or theirs? Was it in a basement? In your bed? At the BEMA? So what did you do? A goodnight kiss or the horizontal mambo? Something in between?
Honestly, who even knows? We've all hooked up, but only because it means different things to everyone. Urban Dictionary is no help in demystifying the phenomenon it defines hooking up as both making out with someone and having sex with them, two things that obviously aren't mutually exclusive but can be a world apart.
"There's not a Dartmouth definition of hooking up," Michelle Shankar '12 said. "It means really different things to different people."
Students said that while they each have a specific definition of hooking up in mind when they use the term, they do not feel that there is a general consensus on what hooking up means at Dartmouth. Some said that the ambiguity of the term allows them to skim over the gory details of last night's rendezvous.
"In a lot of cases it's pretty personal information," Devon Camp '14 said. "It's easier to say than going into detail, because it's just a passing comment."
On the other hand, keeping it vague also leaves more room for speculation and uncertainty.
"I purposely use the ambiguity of the term to not fully express what I was doing or not doing," Phoebe Racine '14 said. "As a woman, I almost like to say that because people can think I did less than I possibly did, but as a male they might say it for the opposite reasons."
In situations where there is a fundamental discrepancy between what is actually going on and how participants perceive each other's intentions, students can find themselves crossing their own boundaries.
"Occasionally the expectations really bother me because I try my hardest to make it clear what I want," Racine said. "People will ultimately try to get what they want and if part of that means purposely reading your signals wrong, that is super frustrating."
One '14 female who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the subject said that she had to end a friendship with someone who would not respect her repeated refusals to hook up with him.
"Once, I let a friend walk me back to my room after we'd been hanging out and he expected me to let him come in and hook up," she said. "But really I was just trying to get home safely."
The '14 female said she no longer talks to him because she knows "there's only one way he sees it going" and he's "made unwelcome advances multiple times." She added, however, that her friend is an exception to the behavior of most male students and that the majority of men have respected her boundaries.
No matter what you think hooking up means, it's unambiguously true that at Dartmouth, where for some people an invitation to a sorority formal is effectively foreplay, there are hook-up expectations attached to social situations.
When it comes to formals, most students interviewed agreed that there are two kinds of dates your buddies and your hook-up buddies.
"It depends on your relationship pre-formal," Erin Abraham '14 said. "If you're established friends there's not an expectation of a hook-up, but if you haven't known each other for very long there might be."
But finding a formal date isn't a universal experience. Pong, on the other hand, is one of the few Dartmouth traditions that will remain when we're all dead and gone and that we'll all too readily flock back to as awkward alums hogging tables on big weekends. Like the ambiguity of formal invitations, pong has been called everything from a date to "just a game."
Does me + you + Keystone = hookup?
"No," a '14 male said emphatically. "That's one of those things where everyone says it but it's not true. Pong is a game it doesn't count as flirting."
That said, not everyone agrees about pong partners' intentions. Racine said that if a guy invites a girl to play pong, he is "definitely hoping" for a hookup if he "specifically asks you or plays multiple games." However, all guys interviewed for The Mirror said that they never expect a hookup when asking a girl to play pong.
Expectations certainly change over time. Girls seemed to agree that basement dynamics and male-female interactions in general are vastly different for upperclassmen than for freshmen.
"As a freshman, you go into a basement and, because you don't know any upperclass guys, you stand in a corner and wait to get hit on," Abraham said. "Especially if it's a brother or an upperclass boy, there's such a power discrepancy."
Abraham continued, emphasizing the power dynamic between brothers and female guests of fraternities.
"It's almost like if he's doing you the favor of talking to you you owe him a hookup," she said. "Once you're an upperclassman and you know the pledges and the brothers, they're real people to you and not just glorified upperclass guys."
Men on campus, however, don't all agree. We've all heard the argument that having basically only male-controlled social spaces on campus creates an imbalance of power, but there are other factors at play.
"I don't think it's fair to say that girls don't have expectations, because they clearly do," Camp said. "A guy getting mad at a girl for not hooking up with him would be seen as aggressive. With girls doing that, people would categorize it as desperate because of the way things work here."
He added that it is more "socially acceptable" on campus for men to be upset after sexual rejection than for women, "because there isn't the same factor of desperation."
Shankar, who has been in a relationship for two years, says she experienced a less "visible Dartmouth" and has found a niche that is right for her by building the confidence to stand behind her decisions, sexual or otherwise.
"What is visible becomes what people think is the culture and what seems typical," Shankar said. "It's difficult for those who don't have a strong sense of self yet everyone thinks that the other person feels a certain way when they really don't, and there's a disconnect between what they want and what's expected of them."
But for all the talk of sexed-up Dartmouth students and our crazy hook-up culture, I haven't found it all that hostile to navigate. None of my pong partners have ever been upset if we didn't hook up, but my inability to save has definitely frustrated all of them. In my experience, even those creepers who come up behind you during dance parties back off if you ask them nicely. Communication, it seems, is the key.
"Sometimes the expectations really bother me because I try my hardest to make it clear what I want," Racine said. "I try to say it out loud and make it obvious. It's something important to address."
