Kerry Cronin discusses "hooking up" on college campuses

By: Hannah Brencher

Posted: 11/11/09

Kerry Cronin recalls going out to ice cream seven years ago with seven seniors from Boston College. A professor at the College, Cronin connected in conversation with the students over their anxieties about the real world. She eased herself into asking the question of what they thought about leaving relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends behind.

"They looked at me like I had said something in another language," said Cronin.

Of the seven students, only one of the students had ever "dated" someone.

If students are not dating then what are they doing? That is the question that Cronin became dedicated to answering since that very discussion. Her results led her to a complex, yet at the same time, very simple answer: Hooking up.

Cronin dissected the act of "hooking up" for an audience of students, faculty and administrators of Assumption College on Monday, November 2, 2009 in the Hagan Campus Center Hall. Organized by the Faith and Culture Committee, the adjunct professor of Boston College raised issues of dating, relationships and sexuality among college students. Cronin has given this talk all over the country, but found it more comfortable to be at a Catholic university because "we all have similar worldviews to address this question."

To uncover the phenomenon on college campuses that is "hooking up," Cronin went to the best experts on the subject: college students.

"I was going around to students in the quad, asking them, 'are you hooking up?'" said Cronin. Surprisingly, students were ready and willing to talk about it.

Cronin has come to define hooking up as "any physical interaction without a perceived intention of any relationship." The key is perception. Although there may be hopes and dreams of something coming out of the hook-up, one must look like they have no intentions at all.

Cronin amused the crowd with index cards that carried her findings on the topic of hooking up as if it were the best kept secret. She divided college students into four separate categories: the sliver of students that are actually dating in a functional manner; the "pseudo-married couples," those couples that look like they hate fun and act like they are a married couple; the group of people that engage in the act of "hooking up" and those who choose to "opt out" of hooking up for a variety of reasons.

Although some of the forms of hooking up, such as the "hook-ups with hope," where one thinks that the hook-up might be the start to a meaningful relationship, seemed wild when actually verbalized, students in the crowd laughed and nodded in agreement with the truth to Cronin's observations.

"She was dead-on with everything that she said," said freshman Marie Ebacher. "I just kept thinking about all my friends and how these are the exact things that happen on a weekend."

Going far past just defining hook-ups, Cronin gave the audience a great deal of knowledge when she introduced her 10 rules to hooking up. "Everybody knows the rules. Even if you are opting out, you know the rules," said Cronin.

Rules included the "be chill" factor, where one should not act awkward while hooking-up, but rather be chill and look like they have no expectations, just a "go with the flow" attitude. A separate set of rules in itself were the rules of text messaging and hooking-up.

"If you hooked up on a Saturday, than you should be texting on a Tuesday night," said Cronin. "The 'where are you' text is an indicator that you might want to hook up again."

As comical as the rules may seem, in retrospect, Cronin reveals a social script that has come to dominate college culture. Cronin remarked that across the board students communicated to her that they were unhappy with the way things were, unhappy with hooking-up to fit in, but they had no idea how to change it.

"What students want is to feel connected and they want to belong but this social script makes for disconnect."

Cronin's open discussion on the disconnect that comes with hooking-up was the fuel for dialogue amongst the audience.

"I think it is kind of 50/50 at Assumption," said senior Christina Graziano. "There are a lot of people that I have met during my four years at Assumption that end up with other Assumption people."

At the end of her lecture, Cronin presented each person in the audience with an assignment, the same assignment that she gives to her capstone seminar course of juniors and seniors at Boston College.

Ask someone out on an actual traditional date. Ask the person, in person, no texting or emailing. Plan the date within three days, because within those three days the other person will be talking to their 502 friends and acquaintances and be looking for ways to back out of the date. Make this, what Cronin calls, a "level 1" date. This date is typically 60-90 minutes, not a romantic dinner setting and not intimate in anyway. Most importantly, thank the person for the date, even if there is no chance for a second date. Cronin fails students in the course who do not follow through with the assignment.

Cronin commented that many of her students come back to her saying it was easier than they thought it would be. Even if they don't plan to date again, it is still creating a conversation on this crucial topic. "We should be talking about this," said Cronin, stating that the dating culture began to die back in the 1980s. "The hook up culture is giving us a lot of damaged young people."

Given all that is working against college students in this sexualized culture, Professor B.J. Dobski posed to Cronin the question of: What would the next step be?

"Students need to see that going into a relationship is really putting your heart out there and knowing that it is going to get stepped on a bit," said Cronin.

The real point of the dating assignment is not to have students finding the love of their life on the first date. The point is to get students thinking about it, to get students to have conversations about it, to get students challenging this cultivation of "hooking up" that encompasses college campuses across the country.

"I still think this is holding back a tsunami with a paper towel," said Cronin. "But if we are not going to talk about it, man, the culture sure is."