Sex and Barnumbia: Navigating hookup culture on campus
I asked students on both campuses to engage in a conversational interview with me and my recorder to understand more about sex life on our campuses.
Photography by Merielen Espino/The Barnard Bulletin
By Nura Ali
November 19, 2024
For many young adults, college is the time to truly get in touch with their sexuality. Right now there are students across multiple college campuses in America having new, good and bad, and milestone sexual experiences. Each one of these students, along with their campus as a collective, navigates these experiences differently, so I became interested in how Barnard and Columbia students navigated their sexuality on campus. Sex culture in college is one thing, but what about the sex culture at this college?
As I looked for volunteers, most students were open to talking with me about their hookups and sex lives, a sign that sex is not a stigmatized topic here. The interviewees occasionally disclosed their sexual orientation, but through my conversations with a diverse group of individuals, I was able to gather an overall consensus on the campus's sexual culture.
The first thing I was interested in exploring was if students thought there was a big hookup culture on campus. Answers varied depending on the student's class year. The pattern was that first-year students encountered more hookups, but committed relationships became more common as the years progressed. One senior I interviewed called the rise of relationships “the senior scramble," referring to a collective rush to settle down as seniors prepare to leave undergrad and enter a new chapter. I saw this to be true among the seniors I interviewed, as almost all were in serious relationships.
However, this is not what I was looking for (no offense seniors). Talking to sophomores and juniors was the most enticing. Interviews turned into conversations about love lives, drama, and their personal experiences. A group of junior Barnard girls had a lot to say about the community on campus: “Everyone knows everyone,” “It's like there is no privacy,” and “People basically just rotate people to date in their friend group.”
Considering Barnard is a small liberal arts college, it is understandable why students feel confined by the amount of people they’re able to interact with. Yet, Columbia students also expressed this feeling of enclosement. A Columbia male junior I talked with said, “It’s hard and you have to be careful here because if you have a bad or even good experience with one person, everyone else will know.”
Talk and gossip is a normal habit that people indulge in from kindergarten to high school and into future workspaces. However, one Barnard sophomore said it creates “performance anxiety.” People care about how others perceive them, and something like their sex lives can influence their identities. The fear of others knowing about someone's sexual life, along with the tight-knit community, makes it harder for students to connect with others and form sexual relationships. That is not to say that all is lost for hookups on campus, but it can be difficult not only to find but also to follow through with them.
When asked to describe campus hookup culture in one word, students provided all sorts of descriptive words: “fragile,” “messy,” “desert,” “optional,” “incestual,” and “distant.” But the word most fitting was “cornucopia.”
Like the fruit in a cornucopia, the students at Barnumbia are in such close proximity to each other that this closeness actually produces a feeling of detachment, making it harder to reach out to people. It is a funny paradox, but if students were to take a second glance at the other students, they could find a good match. As a Columbia junior said, “We’re surrounded by really emotional and thoughtful people.” My advice, after talking with students at Barnumbia, is to not be afraid to seek these interactions, yet also be patient.