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" It is 9 p.m. on a November Saturday at Harvard. I am sitting in my dorm, having just applied Sally Hansen leopard-print press-on nails and wearing a $24 chiffon dress from Forever 21 that my sister told me &amp;quot;looks really expensive.&amp;quot; I am waiting to hear from a nerdy but cute guy I&amp;#039;ll call Nate*, whom I know from class. He asked me out last night. Well, sort of. We were at a party when he approached me and said, &amp;quot;Hey, Charlotte. Maybe we&amp;#039;ll cross paths tomorrow night? I&amp;#039;ll text you.&amp;quot; I assumed the maybe and his general passivity were just ways to avoid feeling insecure about showing interest. After all, we are millennials and old-fashioned courtship no longer exists. At least not according to New York Times reporter Alex Williams, who argues in his article &amp;quot;The End of Courtship?&amp;quot; that millennials are &amp;quot;a generation confused about how to land a boyfriend or girlfriend.&amp;quot; Williams is not the only one thinking about millennials and our potentially hopeless futures for finding love. I read with interest the numerous other articles, books, and blog posts about the &amp;quot;me, me, me generation&amp;quot; (as Time&amp;#039;s Joel Stein calls us), our rejection of chivalry, and our hookup culture \u2014 which is supposedly the downfall of college dating. I&amp;#039;m lured in by these trend pieces and their sexy headlines and consistently let down by their conclusions about my generation&amp;#039;s moral depravity, narcissism, and distaste for true love. Not that it&amp;#039;s all BS. College dating isn&amp;#039;t all rainbows and sparkles. I didn&amp;#039;t walk away from my conversation with Nate expecting a bouquet of roses to follow. Instead, I armed myself with a blas\u00E9 smile and answered, &amp;quot;Just text me to let me know what&amp;#039;s up. At some point after dinner-ish time?&amp;quot; Sure, I wanted a plan for when we were supposed to hang out but felt I needed to meet Nate on his level of vagueness. He gave a feeble nod and winked. It&amp;#039;s a date-ish, I thought. Nate never wrote or called me that night, even after I texted him at 11 p.m. to ask &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s up&amp;quot; (no question mark \u2014 that would seem too desperate). Overdressed for the nonoccasion, I quelled my frustration with Trader Joe&amp;#039;s maple clusters and reruns of Mad Men. The next morning, I texted Nate again \u2014 this time to acknowledge our failed plan: &amp;quot;Bummer about last night. Maybe another time?&amp;quot; No answer. When I saw him in class, he glanced away whenever we made eye contact. The avoidance \u2014 and occasional tight-lipped smiles \u2014 continued through the fall semester. In March, I saw Nate at a party. He was drunk and apologized for hurting my feelings that night in the fall. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s fine!&amp;quot; I told him. &amp;quot;If anything, it&amp;#039;s just like, confusion, you know? As to why you got weird.&amp;quot; But Nate didn&amp;#039;t acknowledge his weirdness. Instead, he said that he thought I was &amp;quot;really attractive and bright&amp;quot; but he just hadn&amp;#039;t been interested in dating me. Wait, who said anything about dating?! I thought to myself, annoyed. I simply wanted to hang out. But I didn&amp;#039;t have the energy to tell Nate that I was sick of his (and many other guys&amp;#039;) assumption that women spend their days plotting to pin down a man and that ignoring me wasn&amp;#039;t the kindest way to tell me he didn&amp;#039;t want to lead me on. So to avoid seeming too emotional, crazy, or any of the related stereotypes commonly pegged on women, I followed Nate&amp;#039;s immature lead: I walked away to get a beer and dance with my friends. So long, Nate. This anecdote sums up a pattern I have experienced, observed, and heard about from almost all my college-age friends. The culture of campus dating is broken...or at least broken-ish. And I think it&amp;#039;s because we are a generation frightened of letting ourselves be emotionally vulnerable, addicted to communicating by text, and as a result, neglecting to treat each other with respect. So, how do we fix it? Hookup Culture is Not the Problem First, let me rule out the buzz phrase hookup culture as a cause of our broken social scene. Hookup culture isn&amp;#039;t new. Sex is sex. College kids do it, have always done it, and will always do it, whether they&amp;#039;re in relationships or not. Casual sex is not the evil root of all our problems. Unlike Caitlin Flanagan, author of Girl Land, I don&amp;#039;t yearn for the days of male chivalry. Then again, I&amp;#039;m disappointed by the other side of the hookup-culture debate, helmed by Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men: And the Rise of Women. Rosin argues that hookup culture marks the empowerment of career-minded college women. It does seem that, now more than ever, women are ruling the school. We account for 57 percent of college enrollment in the U.S. and earn 60 percent of bachelor&amp;#039;s degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and this gender gap will continue to increase through 2020, the center predicts. But I&amp;#039;m still not comfortable with Rosin&amp;#039;s assertion that &amp;quot;feminist progress...depends on the existence of hookup culture.&amp;quot; The career-focused and hyper-confident types of women upon whom Rosin focuses her argument reappeared in Kate Taylor&amp;#039;s July 2013 New York Times feature &amp;quot;She Can Play That Game Too.&amp;quot; In Taylor&amp;#039;s story, female students at Penn speak proudly about the &amp;quot;cost-benefit&amp;quot; analyses and &amp;quot;low-investment costs&amp;quot; of hooking up as compared to being in committed relationships. In theory, hookup culture empowers millennial women with the time and space to focus on our ambitious goals while still giving us the benefit of sexual experience, right? I&amp;#039;m not so sure. As Maddie, my 22-year-old friend from Harvard (who, FYI, graduated with highest honors and is now at Yale Law School), puts it: &amp;quot;The &amp;#039;I don&amp;#039;t have time for dating&amp;#039; argument is bullshit. As someone who has done both the dating and the casual-sex thing, hookups are much more draining of my emotional faculties...and actually, my time.&amp;quot; Sure, many women enjoy casual sex \u2014 and that&amp;#039;s a valuable thing to point out given how old-fashioned society&amp;#039;s attitudes on romance can still be. The fact that women now invest in their ambitions rather than spend college looking for a husband (the old MRS degree) is a good thing. But Rosin doesn&amp;#039;t acknowledge that there is still sexism lurking beneath her assertion that women are now able to &amp;quot;keep pace with the boys.&amp;quot; Is the fact that some college women are now approaching casual sex with a stereotypically masculine attitude a sign of progress? No. Whoever Cares Less Wins In his book Guyland, Michael Kimmel, PhD, explores the world of young men between adolescence and adulthood, including the college years. The first rule of what he calls Guyland&amp;#039;s culture of silence is that &amp;quot;you can express no fears, no doubts, no vulnerabilities.&amp;quot; Sure, feminism appears to be all the rage on campus, but many self-identified feminists \u2014 myself included \u2014 equate liberation with the freedom to act &amp;quot;masculine&amp;quot; (not being oversensitive or appearing thin-skinned). Lisa Wade, PhD, a professor of sociology at Occidental College who studies gender roles in college dating, explains that we&amp;#039;re now seeing a hookup culture in which young people exhibit a preference for behaviors coded masculine over ones that are coded feminine. Most of my peers would say &amp;quot;You go, girl&amp;quot; to a young woman who is career-focused, athletically competitive, or interested in casual sex. Yet no one ever says &amp;quot;You go, boy!&amp;quot; when a guy &amp;quot;feels liberated enough to learn to knit, decide to be a stay-at-home dad, or learn ballet,&amp;quot; Wade says. Men and women are both partaking in Guyland&amp;#039;s culture of silence on college campuses, which results in what Wade calls the whoever-cares-less-wins dynamic. We all know it: When the person you hooked up with the night before walks toward you in the dining hall, you try not to look excited... and maybe even look away. When it comes to dating, it always feels like the person who cares less ends up winning. When I asked my friend Alix, 22, also a recent Harvard grad, what the biggest struggle of college dating was for her, she didn&amp;#039;t hesitate before saying: &amp;quot;I am terrified of getting emotionally overinvested when I&amp;#039;m seeing a guy. I&amp;#039;m scared of being totally honest.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ve felt this way too. I could&amp;#039;ve told Nate that I thought we had a plan...or I was hurt when he ditched me...or I was annoyed when he decided to pull away after wrongly assuming I&amp;#039;d wanted to make him my boyfriend. But I didn&amp;#039;t. Instead, we ignored each other, knowing that whoever cares less wins. As my guy friend Parker, 22, explains, &amp;quot;I think people in college are embarrassed to want to be in a relationship, as though wanting commitment makes them some regressive &amp;#039;50s Stepford person. And when someone does want a relationship, they downplay it. This leads to awkward, sub-text-laden conversations, of which I&amp;#039;ve been on both sides.&amp;quot; The great irony is that no one seems to enjoy playing the whoever-cares-less-wins game. Between 2005 and 2011, New York University sociologist Paula England, PhD, conducted an online survey in which she compiled data from more than 20,000 students at 21 colleges and universities throughout the United States. Her data showed that 61 percent of men hoped a hookup would turn into something more and 68 percent of women hoped for more \u2014 almost the same! We&amp;#039;re all trying so hard not to care, and nobody&amp;#039;s benefiting. Who Has The Power When it comes to college dating today, guys seem to be in a position of power, calling the shots on sex and romance \u2014 partly because they&amp;#039;re especially good at playing the who-ever-cares-less game and partly because of the male-dominated places women go to meet straight guys on campus. At Harvard, these are the eight all-male social groups called final clubs. Each club owns a beautiful mansion in Harvard Square, and many of them have existed for a century or more. While five female final clubs also exist, they were founded in the 1990s or later, and most of them don&amp;#039;t have the impressive real estate or alumni funds the male clubs do. Final clubs give their exclusive list of male members a sweet pad where they can hang out, study, smoke cigars, eat prosciutto and melon after class, and pregame with top-shelf liquor. But more important, they are known on campus as places where people party on the weekend. Women (but not non- member men) \u2014 and especially freshman girls \u2014 can choose to line up outside each house and be deemed worthy of entrance if the members consider them hot enough. In the words of a fellow Harvard girl, &amp;quot;These dweeby Harvard dudes are picking from a group of awesome women. This creates a sense of competition, making it so that women often go further sexually than they&amp;#039;re comfortable with because, you know, &amp;#039;He could&amp;#039;ve had anyone.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; My friends on other campuses around the country, especially ones where women outnumber men, agree that guys seem to hold the dating power. And even the brightest, most ambitious college women are permitting them to dominate the sexual culture. Digital Dating Add to the mix that college-age kids depend heavily on the immediacy of texts, Gchats, and Instagram to talk with each other. This has produced a generation-wide handicap: a resistance to communicating with fully developed thoughts and emotions. Add to the mix that college-age kids depend heavily on the immediacy of texts, Gchats, and Instagram to talk with each other. If a guy sends me a text that says &amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a5585/college-dating-screwed-up/?link=rel&dom=tressugar&src=syn&mag=cos>