Human Playpens: This is probably the easiest venue to discuss in terms of risky activities in the context of a college campus.  Simply put, no one should have a boyfriend or girlfriend while they are living on a college campus.  This opinion holds especially true considering how the days of marrying one’s college sweetheart are dwindling.  This fact plus what the following excerpt has to offer should very likely bring about the thought, “So why bother anymore?”

In a book review of Donna Freitas’ Sex and the Soul, Harvey C. Mansfield reports, “However high-minded their courses may sound – ‘Mirror of Princes,’ say, or ‘The Political Philosophy of Aristotle’ – college students today enter a low hook-up culture when they leave the classroom.  In case you don't know, a hook-up is a brief sexual encounter between two partners who don't necessarily know each other before and who don't necessarily want to know each other after.  And it's free.  The sort of transient sex that once was available to men only for money can now be had, without paying, from college women – as long as the man is a fellow student and minimally artful about his approach.  If he is thwarted in one overture, he may try another with a reasonable prospect of success.”

Mr. Mansfield continues, “No doubt lurid anecdote and popular myth cause us to exaggerate the actual frequency of campus hook-ups: Most college students do not share in these delights.  But most students also believe that ‘everyone does it,’ even if the individual student, for some reason, cannot locate a partner.  Thus an active minority sets the tone and makes hooking up a ‘culture.’  When there are no sexual boundaries, either official or informal, the standard becomes the extreme, and all students feel the pressure to appear more promiscuous than they are.  The traditional double standard of sexual conduct – more restrictive for women than for men – has been replaced by the single standard of the predatory male.”

I will add: “It looks like it is official.  The male and female are blending together in the ‘sex partner count’ game more than ever now.”  So, while one can try their best at applying all of the classification systems and communication tools provided within Last Call, the odds are clearly against any attempts at having an honestly monogamous partnership while living on or just visiting a college campus.  So be it.