The College Fix

In the age of the no-strings-attached hookup, colleges are stepping in to help students navigate their way through an increasingly unfamiliar activity – traditional dating.

Boston College’s Kerry Cronin may be the foremost practitioner seeking to recover this lost art, using the best incentives at her disposal – class credit. But she’s not the only one.

Cronin, who runs the Jesuit school’s Lonergan Institute, a philosophy research center, teaches a philosophy class for freshman and sophomores pertaining to personal ethical and moral choices. The syllabus lays out extra credit for any student who goes out on a date, subject to certain rules, The Boston Globe says.

It’s the student’s responsibility to pay for the date and to make the request face-to-face, not via email or texting. The date can’t involve alcohol, kissing or sex.

Cronin says she was surprised eight years ago when a student asked, during a lecture about campus hookup culture, “How would you ask someone on a date?”

The professor describes dating as a “lost social script” that, more than sex, revolves around courage and vulnerability, according to the Globe.

“It’s easy to hook up with someone you’ve just met in a dark room after having a few drinks,” said freshman Frank DiMartino, who took the class. “But asking someone out on a date in broad daylight, and when you actually have to know their name, can be really scary.”

Other schools are taking on dating outside the classroom.

Duke University’s Counseling & Psychological Services office ran a series titled “How to Be in Love” that helps students navigate falling in love, recognize “toxic romance” and analyze their break-ups. The counseling center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ran a weekly workshop series this spring that included “being single and ready to mingle” and “uncovering the dating scene” among other subjects.

While most young adults still want a “romantic relationship characterized by mutual love and commitment,” most practice “serial monogamy,” in which they have consecutive, exclusive relationships involving emotional intimacy and sex, Richard McAnulty, associate professor in psychology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, told the Globe.

Between 60 and 80 percent of North American college students have had some sort of hookup experience, according to a study noted by the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology in February 2013.

College dating is also drawing the attention of big thinkers.

The focus on resume-building and career preparation is draining students’ time for dating, Erika Christakis, a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center, said on a panel discussion on college dating at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, according to The Atlantic.

A former co-master at a Harvard student residence hall, Christakis said students repeatedly told her they didn’t have time for relationships.

Psychologist Lori Gottlieb blames the dating confusion on parents and teachers for coddling today’s students long before they arrived at college, making them uninterested in dealing with others’ “opinions and realities,” The Atlantic said.

Though the emphasis on campus today leans toward independence and not settling down too soon, Gottlieb said she sees young-adult psychotherapy clients who are lonely despite their career success, which she said could have been helped if they were better equipped for relationships in college.

Responding to The Atlantic’s article, college student Jayson Flores wrote in USA Today College that today’s graduates “must prove that they’re better than the tons of other applicants competing with them” for jobs, so dating takes a backseat.

“Unfortunately, it’s not possible to pay off college loans with love,” Flores said.

While acknowledging the role of apps like Grindr and Tinder in promoting hookup culture, Flores said older generations should share their wisdom of relationships with young people rather than “judge and analyze a group” they don’t belong to.

College Fix contributor Samantha Watkins is a student at Point Loma Nazarene University.

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