My former French professor imparted this message to the class: college is the time to be selfish. Travel, drink, have plenty of sex. She was exceptionally cool, I thought. But, looking back, her advice couldn’t have been more misguided for young men and women.

“Situationship,” “friends with benefits,” “you up babe”—these are the trendy phrases echoing across college campuses.

Statistics reveal a significant portion of college students engage in casual sexual encounters, affecting marriage and reproduction ages and posing physiological risks, particularly to women. Long-term commitments are jeopardized in the process.

Much ink has been spilled about the proliferation of dating apps like Tinder, Bumble—and perhaps even Plenty of Fish—further fueling this phenomenon. But I think colleges themselves also shoulder blame, as they perpetuate hookup culture and liberal sexual ethics—sometimes at taxpayer expense.

In May 2022, $32,000 out of a $300,000 grant funded “The Sex Podcast Season 1” at the University of Central Florida. The host and guests delve into discussions on reproductive rights—killing your child—and discussions on gay sex. In one episode titled “LGBTQI+ Alphabet Soup,” the host and guests inform listeners that gender and sex are different—they’re not.

“Lucky Slut Ticket” was what one young woman received for being the first customer of Slutty Vegan, a “slut” themed restaurant founded by Pinky Cole at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2018. Food options include “One Night Stand,” “Hollywood Hooker,” “Sloppy Toppy,” and “Chik’n Head.” In response, Shelby Barrow, Editor-in-Chief of The Liberty Jacket, the school’s student paper, astutely observed, “Many would argue that names like ‘One Night Stand’ and ‘Hollywood Hooker’ imply a sexual connotation, particularly in a derogatory manner towards women.” Barrow is right.

Observers of hookup culture argue that the pervasiveness of it is not a new phenomenon, but rather colleges have promoted hookup culture since the 1920s, with fraternities leading the way.

Lisa Wade of Tulane University argues that fraternities played a crucial role in shaping the social dynamics of college life, with one notable consequence being the reinforcement of hookup culture.

After a couple hundred years of conflict with higher education administrators, fraternity men start[ed] setting the social tone. Their way of experiencing college life—irreverent, raucous, and fun-oriented—was suddenly the way to experience college. Attending college was linked to the idea of being young and carefree.

Building on Wade’s analysis, media narratives also played a significant role in shaping college culture. For instance, in the late 1970s, the movie “Animal House” set a precedent for college enjoyment, prompting beer and liquor companies to heavily promote drinking as a central aspect of campus life throughout the 1980s. However, the landscape shifted, Wade argues, when the legal drinking age was raised to 21 in 1984, leading fraternity houses to become hubs for underage drinking, allowing fraternities to regain their dominance in campus social life.

My own experience in a fraternity underscores Wade’s argument.

During my brief tenure—only one semester before I decided to part ways—I witnessed firsthand the party atmosphere: older members provided the alcohol, inhibitions were cast aside through excessive drinking, and the fraternity house became a focal point for sexual activity.

However, while I believe media depictions of college life and fraternities have fueled poor sexual ethics on college campuses, I think lack of consequences might be the biggest factor.

This realization was underscored for me during a panel discussion titled “Skills over Status: The Shift Toward Skills-Based Hiring” in Washington, D.C., last April, which featured Maryland Governor Wes Moore. When questioned about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, he passionately expressed his commitment to preserving abortion rights in Maryland. Days before his panel appearance, he announced a state partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System, providing access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

But Maryland is not an outlier: George Washington University, George Mason University, and Harvard are also among the list of schools subsidizing abortion pills—even offering them in vending machines around campus.

All of this proves a poignant reality: the quest for genuine love amidst the halls of academia is increasingly elusive.

From the subtle endorsement of casual encounters over meaningful connections by some professors, to the normalization of overt sexualization through the presence of establishments like Slutty Vegan on campus, and even the convenience of obtaining contraception akin to purchasing a soft drink from a vending machine, universities have fractured the once sacred sexual ethos. Instead of fostering environments conducive to nurturing lasting bonds and healthy minds, they inadvertently promote behaviors that sow seeds of relational discord and mental disarray.

In light of Valentine’s Day, if colleges aspire to foster genuine connections and emotional well-being among their student body, they must reassess their priorities, eschewing the presence of venues that perpetuate a culture of sexual objectification and rejecting the normalization of easy-access abortion pill vending machines.

Perhaps then universities can reclaim their role as stewards of moral and relational integrity—which they lost long ago—and guide students towards paths of connection and emotional fulfillment.

Photo by MYKOLAIV, UKRAINE — Canva Stock — Edited by Jared Gould