Heirs to the Sexual Revolution Feminists and frat boys, asexuals, groupies, and that quiet kid who sits in the front row. A weeklong survey of what it means to be young and in lust (or asexual or aromantic) in 2015.

Darcy and Leor are in their first year at Bard College. Since Leor identifies as genderqueer, Darcy wonders if she is correct to call herself straight.

COLLEGE SEX 2015: An Introduction An Introduction

It would seem to be a pretty confusing time to be a college student, at least as far as sex is concerned. The sexual revolution has been won, and many campuses resemble great drunken bacchanals in which men and women can choose to participate in no-strings-attached, or at least few-strings-attached, experimentations in lust — sex without stigma or shame. And yet, at the same time, news about the high incidence of rape has reached a fever pitch — leaving students, not to mention their parents, worried about their safety. College sex as both playland and minefield.

Hand-wringing over what has become known as hookup culture is nothing new, of course — the panicky-sounding term has been around for decades now. But a hookup is not always the blithe and meaningless sex with strangers that the term conjures. Even among college students, it’s defined differently from person to person and situation to situation. It could mean anything from kissing to intercourse, with a crush, with a friend, or, yes, sometimes with a relative stranger. The script, according to this ritual, is: First you fuck, then (perhaps) you date. Or, more likely, you just continue to hook up, creating a long-term relationship — minus feelings, theoretically — out of a series of one-night stands.

The apparent rise of rape on campus is more recent and more disconcerting. A new generation of activists has raised awareness of what appears to be a crisis: Studies show that as many as 25 percent of college women report having been raped, and college administrations have been repeatedly criticized for their anemic responses to alleged assaults. And the proposed solutions to the problem have created their own controversy. Some worry that the notion of “affirmative consent” — every step toward sex being explicitly agreed to with a “yes” — is overkill and unrealistic; others argue that it serves to protect both men and women in an environment where an unpredictable swirl of alcohol, hormones, newfound freedom, and relative inexperience can result in the best experience of a young life — or the very worst.

And yet, for all there is to worry about — and we old folks love nothing more than worrying about the sex lives of young people — campuses are still filled with college kids excited about one another and the thrill of a night that’s just beginning. To them, college sex isn’t a headline but something real. In an attempt to get past the existing media narratives, and the moralizing that comes with them, New York asked college students what they think about the campus-sex climate. Or, rather, how they experience it. All the photographs you will find below were shot by students. Their peers in the pictures were then interviewed about their experiences; all were open and eager to share about their lives (itself a generational phenomenon). We polled more than 700 of them and spoke extensively to dozens more about their sexual histories. The following pages are, as much as possible, a record through their eyes of what it means to be young and in college and sexually aware in 2015.

Some of what we learned was unexpected: It appears to be the case that, faced with either hookups or nothing, many students are simply opting out of college sex. Nearly 40 percent of the respondents to our poll were virgins. For some, it’s simply too disheartening to imagine your first sexual milestones achieved with someone whom you don’t know well (the problem with “backwards dating,” as one person calls it). Perhaps, too, there are fears at play: Both men and women said “rejection” was their greatest sexual fear; but for women, that is followed closely by “coercion.” But the general feeling among virgins and nonvirgins alike was that they were having less sex than their friends. Everyone, in other words, thinks they are the exception to a general state of wild abandon. It’s as if sexual freedom has become a burden as well as a gift.

There is a new kind of freedom, too: a seemingly infinite array of genders and sexualities. There’s plenty of that old classic, straight-girl collegiate lesbian experimentation, but there are also trans students and pansexual students and bi students and gay students — not to mention the asexuals and aromantics — all happily trying out identities on one another. Gender is now not just mutable, even the concept is optional, and identity comprises a set of categories that can be sliced as finely as you want: Be a demi-girl who identifies with the female binary; be a graysexual panromantic transman. Whatever best describes you.

In short, we encountered an almost bewildering variety of sexual experiences. At one Big Ten college, a basketball player bragged of his busy five-women-per-week hookup schedule — which, it turns out, makes him wistful for something more intimate. At Dartmouth, we heard from sorority girls who were beginning to wonder if hookups were worth it. At Tulane, we spoke to a couple who started hooking up after they matched on Tinder (though dating apps haven’t really caught on with most of the undergrad population — just 20 percent used them in our poll) and are having the sexual time of their lives. At NYU, we met an asexual happily in a relationship with another asexual. At Bard, a senior told us about how he’d had little interest in sex at all until he found “the meaning in it.”

So, yes, hookups are prevalent, but to a surprising degree, students are clear-eyed about what’s good and what’s bad about them. This seems to be another difference between the current generation and the preceding one: A decade ago, for a progressive college student to break ranks and say anything negative about hookups — that they could be used to reinforce gender imbalances, that it’s hard to shut down emotions, that sometimes they just felt shitty — meant she (or he) was aligning with the out-of-touch tsk-tsking adults. Now it’s fine for a forward-thinking college student to admit she finds the ritual “problematic,” to use a current-favorite campus term. Still — whether because of hormones, the impossibility of moving backward, the difficulty of making sense of your own feelings (let alone another person’s) at that age, the fear of being left behind — even those students who had rejected hookup culture for themselves wouldn’t go so far as to say that the entire system was flawed. Some people, after all, might feel empowered by it — the ultimate virtue in today’s feminism. It’s worth noting, too, that campus feminism itself appears to be in flux about the hookup — still focused on consent, to be sure, but also recognizing how that focus has blinded us to the basic issue of quality in sex, both physical and emotional. We’ve gone from safe sex to free sex to consenting sex — will good sex become the next movement?

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What emerges from these stories and photographs and interviews is complicated: The issue of rape and sexual assault on campus is very real, and is also something that students we polled and interviewed — male and female — seem quite aware of. Yet despite the pall cast by this, college students also share a sense of optimism about the many ways for young people to explore their own identities and sexuality, to figure out who they are and whom they want to love. In fact, 73 percent said they’d been in love at least once already. If college functions as a kind of laboratory for the future sexual psyche of a generation, there is plenty of evidence that things might not turn out too badly for this one.

Keep checking back throughout the week for more on-the-ground dispatches, including the complex linguistics of the campus queer movement; lonely and not-so-lonely virgins; Sally Quinn on what it used to be like at Smith; and Rebecca Traister on what campus feminists should be focusing on instead of just consent.

Profiles in College Sex For this issue’s “Sex on Campus” package, New York Magazine’s photography department assigned a total of ten students from around the country — everywhere from Bard to Tulane to the University of Texas — to document the sex and relationship landscape on their campuses. We then spoke to them extensively about their love lives. Here, in there own words, are: a cam girl, a couple who still roomed together after the breakup, a sensitive frat guy, Grace and her girlfriend Grace, two friends experimenting with bondage, and more. to read the interviews × BARD COLLEGE Darcy and Leor don’t want to label their relationship. Photograph by LULA HYERS Bard class of 2019 DARCY: We met the first week of orientation, which was like two months ago. We went from friends to really good friends to very good friends but also with a physical relationship. LEOR: I “liked” her, in a romantic way, I guess. We think in a similar way. And we tell a lot of jokes. DARCY: I used to consider myself straight, but since Leor is nonbinary, I’ve been thinking about that more. Like, using the correct pronouns is obviously very important. And little things, like you don’t want to say “You look so handsome today” because it implies male gender. LEOR: I mostly slept with people who identified as women because, I don’t know, I think high school’s a really hard time to be queer. People associate being nonbinary with, if you have male “parts,” that you would be attracted to more masculine people. But I think I’m attracted to all people. We don’t have sex. It’s more like kissing and cuddling and hanging out. DARCY: We consider ourselves to be exclusive, but we haven’t put any label to the relationship yet, we haven’t defined it. They [Leor] are a very monogamous person, so I feel comfortable with that. It is definitely nice to have somebody that I feel safe with. « Back to Article × TULANE UNIVERSITY Caroline likes to cuddle. Photograph by MARISA CHAFETZ Tulane class of 2017 I didn’t know those guys in the picture at all. I still don’t know their names. I walked up to them at a party and was like, “Hey guys, I’m getting in the bed.” I needed to lie down because my back hurt. Then we all talked about how much we love cuddling. They maybe thought something would happen, but I was like, no. I think hooking up works for a lot of people. But I know I would not do well with that. I think it’s up to the person to know how they’re going to react emotionally. I’m very sensitive. It wouldn’t be worth the hurt, honestly. Also, I don’t drink. They call me the sober sister in my sorority, because I can drive us all to get food late at night. I don’t want to drink, but I’m shouting for my friends to take shots, you know? « Back to Article × SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN Nina is over the scene. Photograph by Andrew Lyman SCAD class of 2016 When I first got here, it was just like this never-ending parade of jocks trying to get laid and just everyone trying to do college. “No boundaries! Hook up with everyone!” Boys think it’s enough to, you know, roll up to the bar, hand you a drink, and be like, “Hey, you look pretty.” I went through this phase where I got really annoyed, because I felt like I could literally say, “Yeah, I’m a pregnant Martian from Japan, and I have ten nipples,” and they would just be like, “Wow, yeah. Want to come back to my place?” Once I hooked up with this boy. It was on a whim. I was kind of drunk. We went back to his dorm room, because his roommate was gone. We fucked, and then I didn’t really think anything of it. I wasn’t the type to be like, “Now we’re dating!” I didn’t give a fuck. But later I saw him hanging out with all his friends, and I waved to him, and he just stared at me and turned to his friends and went, “Who is that?” And they were like, “I don’t know. Who is that? Why’d she wave at you?” And I was just like, “Okay. I get it, that’s chill.” What I’ve found is that no one really wants a relationship as much as they just want a person. And pretty much since I kissed Hunter, we’ve only been with each other and haven’t been with anyone else. « Back to Article × BARD COLLEGE Charlie lost his virginity to his girlfriend Kristen last summer. Photograph by BRENDAN HUNT Bard class of 2016 I’ve kissed four people at Bard, but I was a virgin through most of college. I had sex for the first time with my girlfriend last summer. I’ve known her since I was like 14. We’re both part of this medieval-reenactment community. I was raised by two Bard students who are from a much wilder era of Bard. I knew what sex was as soon as I was old enough to understand the words involved. I was never lied to. My mom’s a lesbian, but she fell in love with my dad and married him and then realized it wasn’t working out. I identified as asexual for a long time. Then I decided I didn’t like having a label of any sort. I just kind of loved judiciously. I don’t rule out the fact that I can meet a man that I could fall in love with. But for all intents and purposes, I’m straight. The people I’m attracted to all the time are women. There was a fear earlier that I was just repressed, that I was some sort of man-child missing a screw. I worried that there was something fundamentally wrong with me or that I was lying to myself. I would have been okay if I was wired differently, but what if I am a very sexual person who just refused to let himself be sexual? And why? When sex really presented itself as useful to me, I was like, Holy crap, this is a step I can take to get closer to somebody I care about … That’s when I felt like it was time. Kristen and I been flirting for the first two days of this two-week-long medieval-reenactment event. We were in medieval clothes the entire day, wearing armor and fighting. The nighttime is kind of one huge party with free alcohol. One evening I was just like, All right, fuck it, let’s see what happens. So I kissed her. One thing led to another. We had sex on the last night of the event, naked under the stars on a battlefield. It was pretty cool. « Back to Article × NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Tyler and Sea are best friends exploring bondage. Photograph by ELLIOTT BROWN JR. NYU class of 2016 TYLER: I saw a documentary called Fetishes on Hulu with Sea, which opened our eyes to the world of BDSM. Then I met a girl at a rave last spring who makes a living as a dom. Since meeting her, I’ve been experimenting with my limits. I like to try new things in general, so I never really have a bad time. That said, I haven’t participated in a real session. When I’m with Sea, it’s more of a role-play. SEA: Freshman year, I was a dominatrix for Halloween, inspired by Agent Provocateur campaigns. I wore black lingerie, heels, a fiery-red wig, and carried a riding crop. You have to start somewhere. For my last birthday, Tyler gave me The Mistress Manual: The Good Girl’s Guide to Female Dominance as well as a dog leash. I gave him a dog collar and gag mouth opener. TYLER: We like to pretend we’re a couple to spice things up. One of the fantasies we play out is the professor-student relationship. Or I play the businessman and she plays my trophy wife who spends too much money. We also like to go to leather stores and sex shops to learn about all the tools and bondage gear. We’ve taken a rope-tying class. When I am bound properly, I feel at peace. SEA: We document on Instagram. I like being dominant with him, because in most of my actual sexual relationships I don’t have that role. It’s just hot. « Back to Article × BARD COLLEGE Cia and Jackson share a dorm room. They broke up after moving in. Photograph by LULA HYERS Bard class of 2019 JACKSON: We were together for most of senior year of high school. And then we decided to take a gap year together. We traveled in Europe for eight months. CIA: We were living in a caravan, in tight spaces — so it wasn’t such a drastic decision to live together in college. JACKSON: Some people were really surprised, partially because they didn’t understand how we managed to room together. Basically, we applied for transgender housing. They try to make it appropriate for transgender people, so we both put down that we would be fine living with someone of the opposite sex, and then we both suggested that we would like to be roommates. CIA: Then we broke up when we got here. JACKSON: But I enjoy living with Cia. I am pretty used to it. And it was definitely nice to know someone when I first got here. CIA: When you are introduced to a new space, obviously there are more girls around, a lot more guys around. It was just this sense of competition. And I think we both got a little freaked out by it. I know I did. JACKSON: To be honest, I am the kind of person who would always come home to be honest. She’s more independent. CIA: Jackson had more committed relationships before we started dating. I had more of, like, you know, loose sexual encounters. Jackson was the first person that I was totally committed to. In a weird way, living together made it easier to break up, because we were still around each other all the time. It’s nice to be able to live with somebody you really know, even if there is tension. I prefer it to living with a stranger. We weren’t intimate during that time for the most part. But we were talking and able to hang out. And now I think we are together again — we’re not with anybody else. I would not be and I think he would not be. JACKSON: I guess you could basically just call it dating, but we don’t really go on dates. « Back to Article × TULANE UNIVERSITY Both sides of a hookup: Christine and Fred. Christine, top, and Fred, bottom left.

Photograph by MARISA CHAFETZ Tulane class of 2017 CHRISTINE: Fred is friends with a friend of mine. We never really met before but I remember at parties always thinking, Oh, he’s so cute. Then we matched on Tinder. FRED: It was the first Tinder date I’d ever been on. I’m not one of those dudes who do Tinder. I do not have that ability. I am a double major in economics and neuroscience. I’m a little awkward, and I am a terrible texter. CHRISTINE: Then we went to this big party and hooked up. I stayed over at Fred’s, and then in the morning we had sex again. FRED: We have thin walls, so everyone knows if someone had sex. CHRISTINE: The next morning, I was feeling really good and empowered because it was really, really great. And I came to Marisa’s house, and I plopped down on her couch in my clothes from last night, smoking, kinda hung-over, telling her everything that happened, and she was telling me everything that happened with her night — just enjoying each other’s stories. FRED: I think Christine shot me a text that morning, like, “That’ll definitely happen again, right?” CHRISTINE: And we have just been purely, only sexually, hooking up since then. Just late-night booty-call-type things. It’s very convenient. And it’s really fun and easy. We have such a good arrangement. Like he’s a good guy, you know. I literally did not hook up with this one guy because I went back to his room and the only book that he had was Catcher in the Rye and he started telling me, “Yeah, I just really relate to Holden.” I was like, “You just told me so much about what this experience would have been like, and I am not interested.” Fred, we always hang out and talk after, but I just feel no obligation, no attachment to him at all emotionally. It’s one of the most wonderful things that I have gotten to do in college that I never really got to do at home, because my family is Catholic and extremely conservative. I did have sex in high school, and I didn’t hate it, but I would feel bad about it after. And I’m bisexual. I figured that out in high school, and there was just all this guilt. FRED: I guess in the world of not-exactly dating, I don’t consider Christine my girlfriend. I don’t think she considers me her boyfriend either. I think it’s fine to be sleeping around; totally cool, especially for women. Slut-shaming is like the worst thing ever, especially because it results in both men and women having less sex, which is terrible. CHRISTINE: I’ve been hooking up with Fred and this girl Sara. I’ve just been rotating a few people, which is so nice. I keep thinking that this environment right now, I’ve never felt more like I can just do whatever I want and make decisions for myself. And it’s awesome. « Back to Article × TULANE UNIVERSITY Marisa has been hooking up with Jack for a year. They just became exclusive a few weeks ago. Photographs by MARISA CHAFETZ Tulane class of 2017 It’s almost been a year since the first time Jack and I hooked up, last Halloween. I think, based on what he said, though we’ve never really had a frank conversation about it, he wasn’t hooking up with other people that entire time. We weren’t really going on dates. We weren’t meeting each other’s friends; we were just literally having sex. Over the summer, we were talking a lot, but we still weren’t exclusive. I was mostly seeing him. But it was also like‚ wasn’t committed to just being with him. I was being really flaky, and in return he was being super-insecure and all over the place. He, like, liked me. I don’t really like when guys really like me in the beginning. Then, just a few weeks ago, we had a conversation where I said, “At this point obviously neither of us are hooking up with other people; we spend every single day together.” I assumed that he knew I had been hooking up with other people before. But the other day, I was talking about this guy that I had hooked up with one or two times. He was like‚ “Oh, when was that?” It was a couple months after we met, and he then got all mad and sad. It was really shocking to me that he was surprised, because I thought that he was doing the same thing the whole time. Sex means a lot to me, but if he told me he cheated on me, or that he wanted to be with someone else, it would be a conversation I would be willing to have. It’s just not cut and dried for me. I’ve had sex that I’ve really enjoyed and that was really fun and awesome and what I wanted and it didn’t quote-unquote mean anything, it was just about sex. I honestly feel like it was just kind of trial and error: “Oh, no, I don’t like this. I do like this.” I also think that being in a relationship where I feel like I love the person I’m with has definitely opened up a different sex thing. I know it sounds like, Oh, I’ve been sleeping with other guys this whole time, but I do really like him. « Back to Article × TULANE UNIVERSITY Henry likes to make out with his girlfriends. Photograph by MARISA CHAFETZ Tulane class of 2017 Tulane is a hyperheterosexual campus. Last year, I was definitely struggling. Just feeling like I’m missing out on that aspect of college, where I’m, like, having the best sex of my life or whatever. But I’m here practically for free, so I made do. My girlfriends are the way for me. And as far as dating on campus, are there gay men? No. I have my own relationship with the gay community, just because I’ve never had to go to the community to find solace at all. So I never felt satisfied by engaging in any of the few opportunities that were presented — which I engaged in, because I thought that would make me feel better. Never did. Just hung-over and bad decisions, horrible. My girlfriends are all really hot. I have girlfriends who I am in love with, like that I love and want to marry, but who I cannot satisfy in the ways they need to be satisfied. Many of them have boyfriends, and I hate it, and it’s like the worst. But for the most part, when I’m out and I’m drinking and I’m dancing, because dancing is, like, my thing, I guess — I don’t know, it brings something out of me — I make out with all of my girlfriends. It is, like, an appreciation of their beauty. But it doesn’t go beyond that ever. And it’s really just like a quick release of whatever is pent up. I probably would’ve left Tulane last year had it not been for my girls. « Back to Article × TULANE UNIVERSITY Selby loves being single. Photograph by MARISA CHAFETZ Tulane class of 2017 I don’t know if I’d call myself promiscuous, but I’m not a relationship type of person. For me, it’s a lot more about the chase. I’m surrounded by frat guys — and whatever, they’re fun to look at. But wow, I’m ready for my mid-20s. A couple of weekends ago, I’m lying in bed with this guy, and I’m so bored. It’s 7 a.m. He’s so cute, so I don’t want to wake him up or anything. So I text my friends who are in the house. And three of my housemates respond and they’re like, “Yep. So bored. Boys in bed. What do I do? Let’s hang out.” So we all went into the front room, four of us, so hung-over, drinking Gatorade, talking about our night. And these guys are still in our beds. And I’m like, “I’m hungry. Let’s go get breakfast sandwiches.” So we leave them in our house — most of them are one-night stands, so we obviously don’t even ask them if they want anything. I was thinking of leaving one of them a sticky-note on his head, but I was like, Nah. They’ll figure it out. We finish our breakfast sandwiches, we go back inside, and we fall asleep and then we wake up with our boys again. It was probably one of my best mornings. You eat your breakfast sandwich, you have morning sex, and then like, “Adios.” « Back to Article × NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Rebecca, a virgin, strips online. Photograph by ELLIOTT BROWN JR. NYU class of 2016 Stripping online, or camming, was something that I started the summer before my freshman year in college. Some of my friends back home were doing it, and I was interested. At first it was financially motivated, but I found it was kind of pleasurable for me. It made me feel good, I guess. People message you and ask you to do things or customize something for them. You can say yes or no. I’m not going to make as much money as someone who would do anything. A friend of mine made about $300 in a week, and I made a hundred. Sometimes I think about being a virgin, other times it’s more in the back of my head. I feel shitty when my friends are talking about all their experiences and I don’t have any to talk about. It’s hard because I feel that I am highly experienced — but obviously without the physical part. When it does get down to me actually possibly having this kind of encounter with someone, I get really scared. Sometimes I am a little self-conscious about my body and worry that people don’t like bigger women. So I never know if it’s me, or if it’s about guys, or what. My body just kind of shuts down, and I feel like I want to pull back. « Back to Article × BARD COLLEGE Ethan broke up with his girlfriend to fully experience college. Ethan, right, at a party.

Photograph by BRENDAN HUNT Bard class of 2016 I cheated on my ex-girlfriend. It was just a drunken thing. I made out with another girl at a party. I was too scared to tell her about it. I just brought up the question “Where is this going?” I was like, “I’m only 20. I have to figure out myself before I can commit myself to someone.” I wanted to experience college in a full, holistic way. There were a few months with a lot of drinking and a lot of parties. And I was very active. Not sexually active — I would just make out with a lot of girls. I only slept with a few — just like two or three. « Back to Article × NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Carlin and Anthony both like older men. Carlin, right.

Photograph by ELLIOTT BROWN JR. NYU class of 2016 ANTHONY: When I got to NYU, I put on this confident persona that I was experienced when it came to sex. The first guy that I ever did anal with was a bit older than me — he was, like, 24. I let him because I thought we would actually work out. I told him I’d done it before and I remember him saying, “Thank God you’re not a virgin because I don’t think I could deal with that,” and that made me feel like shit. CARLIN: I like older guys, too. It’s more about the intellectual stimulation. When it’s purely physical it becomes very mundane. A lot of college students are … their viewpoints are very myopic or egocentric. It’s hard to find sophistication. « Back to Article × INDIANA UNIVERSITY Caroline blacks out, then makes out. Caroline, center.

Photograph by LIBBY DANFORTH IU class of 2016 This party was titled “Bday Blackout,” and I definitely accomplished that. I started with some red wine straight out of the bottle. My go-to bottle is Apothic red. It tastes so good that before I know it, the bottle is empty and I’m taking shots. Generally, I consider myself a straight woman, but it is normal on a drunk night to be kissing my friends. « Back to Article × UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI When Grace, who is gay, met Grace, she was straight. Photograph by ALEXEY FURMAN MU class of 2016 (M.A.) My girlfriend is also named Grace. My freshman year, I saw her in passing, and I was like, Wow, that girl is beautiful. I hope she’s gay. So I asked a friend about her and found out she was involved in this organization called Greek Allies, which tries to incorporate the LGBTQ community with the frat and sorority community on campus. She wasn’t gay, though. In May, I almost hit Grace with my car. Later I messaged her on Twitter: “I’m so sorry I almost hit you with my automobile. Can I make this up to you?” We started hanging out every day, and when school was over and she had to go back home for the summer, we were FaceTiming a lot. She was complaining about dating guys from her high school. And I was like, “You know, you should get out of your comfort zone,” meaning like: “Date other guys.” She was like, “Well, I’ve thought about it, and we can try it if you want.” She thought that’s what I was inferring. It was a plot twist. « Back to Article × BARD COLLEGE Addison and Sarah really like each other. Just don’t tell them they’re in a relationship. Photograph by LULA HYERS Bard class of 2019 ADDISON: My relationship with Sarah … it’s casual. I’d say it’s more like a pretty close friendship than an actual relationship. We hooked up one night after a drag ball on campus. I was still in the remnants of my drag makeup. SARAH: He was wearing my glasses that made him look exactly like a lesbian with lipstick and eyeliner. ADDISON: The way we specifically set it up was we’d be exclusive, but we wouldn’t act like people who are exclusive. Like, if I were going to hook up with someone else, I’d run it by Sarah. SARAH: At first I was kind of worried about it holding me back, but because of the type of person I am, and the type of person Addison is, it’s not keeping me from doing anything. I’m still in the loosey-goosey first-semester college mentality. ADDISON: We both got out of relationships with people before entering college, and I think that’s a large part of not wanting to be in a relationship. If it were explicitly a relationship, I feel like there would be this level of pressure. But at the same time, it’s not really a situation where I think either of us really wants to see other people. I just happened to get lucky and connect with someone on a fairly intimate level very quickly. « Back to Article × NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Elliott gave up Grindr for real life. Photograph by ELLIOTT BROWN JR. NYU class of 2016 The first sexual experience I had with a man was in the Ramble in Central Park my freshman year. I was doing a photo project on cruising. So I started going there, and I had my share of encounters with men that weren’t necessarily for artistic purposes. When I found out Grindr was a thing, I was like, Oh, so this is just a virtualized platform for what men were doing like 40 years ago. I definitely can recall times when I was using it more fiendishly. I had begun to use it when I felt rejected, by anything. I didn’t feel good about it. I took a year off from NYU, and during that time I made gay friends who I could actually confide in and, specifically, black gay friends. I am seeing someone now. The first boy I’ve ever dated. We met in person. I decided that I wanted to meet more people in person as opposed to meeting people online. I just didn’t feel like I was giving it my all in real life. « Back to Article × UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS Sam, a fraternity brother, still sometimes goes on … dates. Photograph by Chandler Allen UT Austin class of 2016 UT is a massive school — about 50,000 people. There’s so many good-looking girls, and everyone is just having so much fun. I am in a fraternity, but just because you’re at a frat party and you’re talking with a girl doesn’t mean that you’re going to bring her home. What I’ve noticed is some girls are completely fine with coming home with you, and then you just kind of start this routine of hooking up with them. And some girls are like, “No, I’d like to be taken on a proper date.” They’ll tell you. “Take me out before …” Like the girl that I dated sophomore year, she wouldn’t even kiss me until we went out three times. And I’m not saying you should hold out three dates before you kiss, but I definitely think building a relationship before you sleep together is the right thing to do. When you sleep with a girl for the first time, it’s usually not as good as someone that you’ve built a relationship with — does that make sense, kind of? I really enjoy making the other person enjoy it, you know. And I’ve noticed the relationships where I get the girl first have been stronger and lasted longer than girls that, you know, have just come over for a night. But, I mean, that’s understandable too. I think females want to have sex just as much as guys do. I was reading in the UT newspaper that the number of sexual assaults on campus had increased. It’s worrying, because both people are usually drunk. I would never want to be in a situation where the girl was so drunk and then she’s saying, like, “Oh, I didn’t agree.” I got some really great advice: “Never have sex with anyone who doesn’t want it as much as you do.” I have that written down. « Back to Article × Maryland Institute College of Art Akea found an enlightened man. Photograph by Akea Brown MICA class of 2018 I’ve never been into just hooking up with people. It’s very hard for me to understand how that works. And I don’t like the idea of something that’s temporary — that just is really uncomfortable with me. People are really surprised when I tell them how long Andrew and I have been together — two and a half years. My friends tell me all the time that he’s really rare and there aren’t many guys like him nowadays, because most guys are just interested in hooking up, and then after that, they don’t really care to get to know you that much. I’m an advocate for women’s rights and strong female role models, and it was important to me to be with someone who understood that and didn’t have a very traditional idea of what a woman should be. « Back to Article × BOSTON UNIVERSITY Carol thinks Americans are careless about condoms. Photograph by Ann Singer BU class of 2017 I was not raised in the U.S., so I am not really into the hookup culture. Back home in Venezuela, no one is on the pill; everyone is like, “If you are going to have sex, you have to use a condom.” And here, people just don’t. And I am like, “Guys, STDs are a thing.” But they just say, “I don’t remember to do it, or the guy doesn’t want to so I just let him.” Up to this point, I have never really been been interested in a monogamous relationship, but I have never had a guy either be like, “Oh, let’s be together.” I think American guys are more into white girls. « Back to Article

*This article appears in the October 19, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.