Thu 31 Jan 2008
Undergraduates Everywhere Ignoring David Kane’s Advice
Posted by Ronit under Advice to Undergraduates
Posted at 3:39 pmThe WSJ reports that, in spite of EphBlog’s tireless efforts, love is, in fact, dead:
Remember the movie “Love Story” and its star-crossed student lovers? Such torrid campus romances may be becoming a thing of the past. College life has become so competitive, and students so focused on careers, that many aren’t looking for spouses anymore.
Replacing college as the top marital hunting ground is the office. Only 14% of people who are married or in a relationship say they met their partners in school or college, says a 2006 Harris Interactive study of 2,985 adults; 18% met at work. That’s a reversal from 15 years ago, when 23% of married couples reported meeting in school or college and only 15% cited work, according to a 1992 study of 3,432 adults by the University of Chicago.
Gone are the days when sororities and dorms marked engagements with candle-passing ceremonies while men serenaded beneath the windows.
Seriously, when did people ever do that?
If you’re a parent, as I am, you may be wondering what all this means. Such sordid campus-life portrayals as Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons” aside, the news about students’ social lives isn’t all bad. To be sure, the “hookup culture” — the campus trend toward casual sexual behavior, usually linked with alcohol and no expectations of a continuing relationship — is rife. Some 76% of college students have engaged in hookups, which usually stop short of intercourse, according to a study of 4,000 students by Stanford University sociology professor Paula England.
And this is different from the ’60s, ’70s, or ’80s how? If anything, students are a great deal more prudish now than they were 30 years ago, and they’re much more concerned about staying safe than the generation that brought us the sexual revolution. Plus ça change…
January 31st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Is this post a subtle or not-so-subtle solicitation of advice or other comment on inter-gender relations? You’re not about to entice your correspondent of all people to venture into that swamp!
January 31st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Well, that was one amazingly stupid article! Internet polls tell us little of interest.
But progress is possible! What a great idea for a senior thesis, in economics, sociology, political science or elsewhere in Div II. Where do Ephs meet their mates? How many members of, say, the class of 1988 are married? How many are married to people they met in high school, college (yeah!), graduate school, the workplace and so on? How many divorces have their been? How many children? And how/why has all of this changed over time? And on and on.
The more that your senior thesis focuses on Williams, the more people will read it and care about what you write.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I know, I could feel my brain slowly losing IQ points while I read this drivel, and felt I had to share.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
In my opinion- Williams has never been a very sexually acive, or emotionally active school. There is nothing wrong with that. It is just not the kind of place where a lot of people are hooking up and falling in love. It is very conservative. Most small elite liberal arts schools are,especially rural ones.. because reputations are often distorted very quickly in an elite atmosphere where there is no room for error-everyone knows each other.
There are a lot of larger institutions where people have multiple partners… often times in Urban settings… take Boston for example. It would be impossible to get a “bad” reputation in Cambridge… harder at Amherst than at Williams. This makes the students more conservative sexually,and emotionally. My two cents on “love” at Williams.
My guess is that they are still doing it a lot at the the bigger urban schools.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:12 am
Multiple Partners?
You must have this school confused with some other institutiion.
Emotionally we are active, just not sexually.
I think drinking takes its precedence over that.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 am
As a general proposition, adolescents and young adults much more than others are looking for excitement and will take it where they can find it and, failing being able to find it, where they can most easily create it.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:14 am
David B- My point is that people normally do not find the right partner the first time they hook up with someone in a college setting. It often takes multiple experiences, break ups, dates, in order to find the person who one is emotionally, intellectually, and sexually compatible with. At places like Williams, figuring this out is distorted by the fact that it is a small sexually conservative school.
Out of curiosity David B- How hard is it to get a “bad” reputation at Williams?
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 am
Oh…my…gosh, that is the best, Diana.
Thanks so much for sharing it.
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:34 pm
it is INCREDIBLY easy to get a bad reputation at williams.
I speak from experience.
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Whoa, whoa, whoa. How did the names and picture get removed from my comment? Since when is saying that Comb proposed to Simone by singing her a love song failing to protect the innocent? I’m a blog administrator too, you know. Just because [the writer of this post] thinks it’s uncool to propose to one’s girlfriend in that way does not mean you can go ahead and remove details and claim that you are “protecting the innocent”! Clearly FROSH mom enjoyed the story. And the 22 people who clicked on the link to the picture agreed. Abuse of power, I say!
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 pm
As a rule of thumb, “blog administrators” should not remove anything. If you are an administrator, you should tell us your name when you remove stuff. This holds triply true when you remove something that another administrator posted. (Obviously, the standards for removing/editing comments from anonymous posters are much less stringent.) Also, if you did this at the request of those students, then say that.
Diana, feel free to add back whatever you like, preferably in a new comment on this thread.