Professor Nancy Bauer has spoken to hundreds of college and high school students over the past two years in search of an answer to why young people are engaging in casual sex in the ways that they are.
"When I first started talking to students, my automatic concern was 'Oh my god, there's something really bad about Tufts,'" she said. "But as I talked to students - a number of whom studied abroad - they said the same thing is going on at Oxford."
A recent study published in The Journal of Sex Research, which found that casual sex among college students resulted in more depression for women than for men, was conducted at the University of Tennessee, described by the study's authors as part of the "Southern Bible Belt." Tufts' location in the greater Boston area doesn't qualify it for Bible Belt status - instead, Tufts is firmly situated in what was called the most liberal state in the country during the 2004 presidential elections.
Bauer teaches a few classes at Harvard as well as Tufts and has spoken to students there about the same issue. "At Harvard, it's more friends with benefits. At Tufts, it's more about going to a party and having sex with a random stranger," she said.
"I get the feeling that it's not unique. The groundwork is laid these days in middle school and high school," she said, although she was quick to point out that her research is not empirical - it is based solely on personal conversations with students.
Senior Leon Mandler believes that it is the nature of college campuses that invites people to behave in such a way before later regreting it because of their reputations. "Any time you're in an enclosed environment where there's no anonymity - like college, high school, even camp - it encourages a reputation for better or worse," he said.
- by Arianne Baker
