(Photo: New York Times)

While several Yalies in today’s “Sex at Yale” article revealed frustration with Yale’s “hookup culture,” things could be worse: according to an article published by the New York Times yesterday, the custom of throwaway makeouts and casual sex is even more prevalent at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where nearly 60 percent of the undergraduate student body is female. With odds in their favor, the article asserted, men were more inclined to choose a profusion of hookups over a steady romantic relationship.

From “The New Math on Campus,” by Alex Williams:

Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.”

The article went on to examine the notion that women at majority-female universities are pressured to engage in sexual activity before they would otherwise choose.

The phenomenon has also been an area of academic inquiry, formally and informally. “On college campuses where there are far more women than men, men have all the power to control the intensity of sexual and romantic relationships,” Kathleen A. Bogle, a sociologist at La Salle University in Philadelphia, wrote in an e-mail message. Her book, “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus,” was published in 2008.

“Women do not want to get left out in the cold, so they are competing for men on men’s terms,” she wrote. “This results in more casual hook-up encounters that do not end up leading to more serious romantic relationships. Since college women say they generally want ‘something more’ than just a casual hook-up, women end up losing out.”

Click here to read the full article.

YALE DAILY NEWS