Dinner and a movie? No thanks

Her friend Zoe Panama, a sophomore who is also from LA, nods knowingly. She had her first college date last month. He asked her to dinner and a movie. "I said, `I've never done that before.' The whole time we were together, I kept saying, `This is so weird.' " Despite that, she had a good time. But she adds: "I don't like that cheesy, cliche thing of `dating.' I like being more spontaneous, more casual."

It used to be that college students fell in love on campus. Couples dated, lived together, or got engaged. But nowadays the children of those parents have ditched the date. The act of picking up a telephone and asking someone out seems as obsolete as the panty raid. Because of a variety of factors, including changing cultural mores and demographics, the dinner-and-a-movie date is all but dead. Today, as one college senior puts it, campus social life centers around "skimpy outfits and strong drinks."

Two years ago, the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative group, conducted a nationwide survey of 1,000 college women. Only half of the seniors reported being asked out on six or more dates during their entire college career, yet 63 percent said they wanted to meet their future husbands in college. And 91 percent reported "a rampant hookup culture" on campus. "Hooking up," according to college students, can range from kissing to intercourse.

"Hooking up has just become the norm," says Kristen Richardson, campus program manager of the IWF. "For women especially, these uncommitted, purely physical relationships can wreak havoc later on and distort their idea of relationships."

In her opinion, the arrangement benefits the guys. "They have it made right now. They don't have to open doors, take a woman to dinner, buy flowers, or even call the next day." Her group has taken out ads in many campus newspapers urging students to "Take Back the Date." With the headline "Free Cupid!" the ad depicts the downcast cherub in chains. "Take someone out to dinner or buy someone flowers," it cajoles.

Ask a couple of Harvard women if they date, and one has an answer reminiscent of Bill Clinton: "It depends on what you mean by dating." Another adds: "Last night, a guy asked me to go to dinner and a movie. I was shocked."

Today, college students hang out in groups, sometimes becoming "friends with benefits." The benefits? Sex without commitment. Students have sex first, and then they may decide to go out. Today, asking someone to have dinner seems to be a bigger deal than asking someone to have sex.

"It's kind of like in reverse order," says Becca Mildrew, a Harvard sophomore from California. "It's sad, but hooking up is pretty universal."

Mildrew has been at Harvard for a year and a half and had her first real date there last month. "It was refreshing," says Mildrew. "I haven't done that in forever." She adds: "It's hard to have a serious relationship here. That sort of courtship thing doesn't exist anymore."

Some students say that both men and women are loath to commit to one another, with guys fearful of being stuck with "a wife" and women fearful of losing their identity and independence. It is this sort of thinking that exasperates those who work with young people.

"There's a lot of confusion about how people find each other from a post-feminist kind of place," says Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and director at the Harvard Eating Disorders Center. "Women want to be self-possessed and independent. . . . That doesn't mean it's a weakness or unhealthy dependence to want a good, romantic relationship."

Steiner-Adair hears constant complaints from women students about the dating scene -- or lack thereof. "These kids know about the sexual side of things, but they don't know about the emotional side," she says. "Hooking up is not healthy, whether you're male or female. It requires such emotional distance."

Double standard lingers

Despite the "sexual liberation" of women, the time-honored double standard remains. Even though hooking up is prevalent, young women say they are sometimes called "sluts," while young men are "players." Such so-called liberation, Steiner-Adair says, offers nothing positive to the young woman involved. "Is it progress that both genders can now behave equally awful?" she says.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of the national teen call-in show "Loveline," speaks to college students across the country on the subject of dating. He worries aloud to his audience about binge drinking followed by casual sex. Both young men and women tell him they use alcohol for "liquid courage" -- and, for the woman, to later excuse her behavior.

"I ask the women what they'd want if they could create a fantasy world that suited their needs. They immediately say, `I wish a guy would just sit down and talk to me.' The guys are like, `What, talk?' Men at that age are under the influence of an extremely powerful biology. It doesn't mean they're bad guys. They just need to understand what girls need." Hooking up, says Pinsky, is "awful for the girls, though it's politically incorrect to say that."

Many students say the group dynamic, with young men and women hanging out as friends and casual partners, is preferable to the "housekeeping" of serious couples. With today's young men and women sharing dorms, apartments, cafeteria tables, eating clubs, and study groups, they have plenty of friendly contact. So, they reason, a formal date isn't as necessary as it was when their parents were in college. Back then, women often waited for the phone to ring. If it didn't, they'd be stuck in the dorm on a Saturday night. That situation has disappeared. What remains is a gap between "hooking up" and "housekeeping."

"There needs to be a process of evaluation," says Pinsky. "Call it dating, call it courtship. [A friend] with benefits is someone you walk over to at the end of the night. It's not a relationship. Both sexes get hurt. Someone develops feelings for the other one, usually the woman."

Fear and loafing

But some college men say it's the women who don't want to date.

"To ask a girl out, . . . most would look at you strangely and think you're too formal," says Mike Sands, a Harvard sophomore from Austin, Texas. "Friends with [benefits] wouldn't work for me. I'm looking to connect emotionally. I think people really want that, but because the empty physical relationship is available, it's so much easier to do that."

Sands's friend Andrew Kreicher of New Canaan, Conn., says it's not fair to blame men for the woeful dating scene on campus. The idea of dating, he says, has become so loaded that "it's more challenging and terrifying for a guy than just asking a girl to dance at a party. So one way of avoiding that is hooking up at a party." He does allow: "Guys are also lazy."

At Boston College, sophomore Michael Grant of Beverly has had three real dates. He and five of his friends have a "date night" each semester, when they take women out to dinner and then a club. "It's a $120 investment, which is why it only happens once a semester," he says. "Here, you just hang out with peers in groups."

The all-important pull of the group is huge on campus these days. It is the group, rather than the couple, that rules. "There are tons of friends, guys and girls, who live in houses together, so that takes away the need for dating," says Natalie Blazer, a Boston College junior from Fairfax, Va.

Sometimes, it can all feel a bit like middle school, says classmate Grace Simmons, "when your friends are trying to set you up." Simmons, a junior from Skaneateles, N.Y., says she knows people who are dating: "But it doesn't last long, because they feel isolated from their friends and the social scene."

"It's dangerous to jump to `girlfriend' or `boyfriend,' " says Christina Parisi, 20, of Holmdel, N.J. "You don't want to be pegged with that title or the image that you are taken. You want to be free to explore other options as long as you can."

At Boston University, sophomore Stacey Meisel of Los Angeles talks about "the group date," in which groups go out and party. She's not a fan of friends-with-benefits relationships, but she concedes that "girls can be just as detached" about it as boys. One of Meisel's friends recently broke up with a boy because she felt she was missing out on a good time.

What women -- and men -- in college want isn't always clear. "To combine physical and emotional needs is dangerous," says Parisi. "You can get hurt. You have your friends for emotional support."

"And then people have friends with benefits for the physical," interjects Blazer. "I know that sounds really crass, but no one wants to put themselves out there emotionally." Blazer says she has found a guy she really likes. "We'll see what happens. But I'm assuming he doesn't want to be tied down."

Unlike their parents, these young women do not expect to meet anyone serious until after college, and they say they won't consider marriage until their 30s. They acknowledge that their male classmates might be intimidated by them. "Women are ambitious, career-driven, and independent," says Simmons, who is chief of academic affairs for the student government at BC. Muses Parisi: "Maybe women don't need men like our mothers' generation did."

"I feel guys are really confused," says Lauren Daniel, 20, of Warwick, R.I. "They're caught between two generations."

Obviously there are college students who have more traditional relationships. Thea Daniels, a Harvard junior from Oklahoma City, met her boyfriend the first day of class. "There is still romance on campus," she says. But she knows many for whom "hookups are their first introduction to each other."

At Boston College, junior Brian Garrett and senior Matt Hanlon have settled down with girlfriends. "The thing that happened for me," says Garrett of Potomac, Md., "was that I was finding random people and not committing. It was just kind of tiring."

Unlike their fathers, today's college men often find themselves outnumbered by women. At BC, 52 percent of the student body is female. At BU, it's 60 percent. Women mention the heated competition with one another for men's attention.

"Girls' standards are definitely lower here, due to the lack of the male species," says Blair Parsont, a BU sophomore from New York who says she has gone out on an occasional date. Still, she hopes to have a serious relationship while in college.

So does Meisel, her classmate. "It would be nice to have a boyfriend," she says, "just so I know what it's like."