Parties on the Hill usually involve a wide variety of Tufts students and a mix of underage drinking, loud conversation and the ever-present Beirut. But behind closed doors, students often find themselves enjoying a different kind of party: casual sex with a partner they don't know.
According to a study published in August in The Journal of Sex Research titled "No strings attached: the nature of casual sex in college students," college students are having more casual sex than ever before, and it's affecting men and women differently.
Casual sex refers to intercourse with someone whom the reporter does not consider a romantic partner.
The researchers found that more than half of men and more than a third of women report involvement in a casual sex relationship. According to the report, earlier research has found that as many as 70 percent of college students have casual sex at some point.
The study found that this behavior has opposite effects on the happiness of men and women: the more casual sex encounters women had, the more depressive symptoms they exhibited. For men, however, more sex meant more happiness. Those men with most casual sex encounters had the fewest depressive symptoms.
According to associate philosophy professor Nancy Bauer, one explanation may be the difference in giving and receiving during casual sex. In 2005, Bauer hosted an informal discussion for students about sex at Tufts in reaction to a Daily article about male student players.
"I was really, really surprised at what I heard [at the discussion]," she said. "I was really surprised at how different the sex culture is on campus now than it was a few decades ago. I was also struck by how ignorant my generation is about what's going on on college campuses now," she said.
What shocked Bauer most was the trend of women giving oral sex to several men at parties.
"I understand that everyone's drunk, but I don't understand why women would claim to like doing this to young men. I couldn't understand what the young women were getting out of it," she said. "I can understand that some women enjoy doing it, but not with several men at a party."
Bauer's own speculation after speaking to hundreds of college students and academics is that women see providing oral sex as something that should be fun. "It seems to me that young women are told repeatedly that it's fun and pleasurable and great to give blowjobs," she said.
"I compare this to women in the fifties being told that wearing a dress with a cinched waist while vacuuming the house and wearing heels while cleaning the toilet were really fun things to do. It took Betty Friedan to say that this was tedious and not pleasurable, and to say, 'You know what? This isn't fun' ... It was almost as if it hadn't occurred to them that this isn't the only way to conduct their lives," Bauer said.
Social pressures for both men and women may steer their emotional responses to casual sex as well. Sociology professor Susan Ostrander said that society encourages loose sexual behavior in men.
"Part of the common stereotype of being 'real men' is wanting sex as often as possible however they can get it," Ostrander said. "That does not mean that men actually feel this way, but it certainly does feed the pressure which men put on other men to have casual sex."
The case for women is different, Ostrander explained: "Women, on the other hand, have been given the job of guardians of morality," she said.
"That means that women are held solely responsible for deciding when and if and how to 'have sex' instead of that responsibility being shared in heterosexual relationships," which means the consequences of casual sex may fall more heavily on women's shoulders, she added.
"How 'casual' can you really be if you know you are 'responsible' for what happens and what doesn't?" Ostrander asked.
One female student thinks that the change of pace for sexual relationships is evident at Tufts: "I feel like the whole dating scene doesn't exist anymore," sophomore Annalisa Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez also pointed out that not all women are upset about the current situation.
"I think there's more of a risk of the girl getting attached if she sleeps with a guy, but a lot of times women are just looking for a hookup too," she said.
Two male students cited the "double standard" between men and women's sexual behavior and reputations as a reason for women to regret their casual sex relationships more than men.
"I'm not surprised [that women are more depressed than men after casual sex], because luckily for guys, our culture puts the guy who gets all the girls on a pedestal and puts the girl who sleeps with guys down," senior Leon M. said. "I think girls might get depressed because they don't want to be perceived as sluts."
Senior Ari B. agreed. "We're under pressure to fit a certain mold, and promiscuous women don't fit that mold, which is a shame. We like to think that everybody is equal, but we're not - we have double standards," he said.
Part of the depression pattern, though, may be that men hide their depression better.
"We know that women are far more likely than men to [admit] to being depressed generally, even though men have higher suicide rates, suggesting they get at least as depressed as women but are unable to admit to it and get help," Ostrander said.
Another possible explanation: sex among college students is better for men because they're more likely to reach orgasm.
"The chances are that a 20-year-old straight man is going to have an orgasm from having intercourse with a woman - well, men are at their peak, whereas women are ordinarily at the relative beginning of understanding themselves and their bodies and how they get pleasure. Lots of men are not good at that age at exploring those things with a woman ... so it is much harder for a woman to come during intercourse," Bauer said.
This lack of pleasure may lead to more disappointment after casual sex.
"My guess is that in casual sex encounters, men are often more satisfied than women. Sometimes I wonder if one of the reasons women care about emotional connections [as the casual sex study found] is because they need some kind of emotional connection to get pleasure," Bauer said.
"For men, it's just a matter of some friction, even without a connection, whereas for women the capacity for orgasm is often connected with figuring out what everything is about," Bauer said.
The dearth of knowledge about sexual pleasure may stem from incomplete sex education as adolescents.
"Young people in the U.S. seem to learn a lot of information, or misinformation, from peers," Ostrander said. "Sometimes parents and teachers do a good job with sex education, but most often they don't."
And last week's female orgasm talk may be an indicator of how uninformed male Jumbos are. When students only learn abstinence, schools struggle to educate about sex, "even though research has shown for a long time that the more young people know about sex, the longer they wait to have sex," Ostrander said, "and the longer they wait, the more satisfying their sexual experiences."
