Photographed for The New York Times, as part of an in-depth report on current hookup and relationship culture for young women at UPenn. See the full story here.
Catherine, a Penn senior who withheld her last name for privacy purposes, stands in the entryway of the house she shares with a number of other UPenn students. Catherine said she found hookups in college to be a continual source of heartbreak. She began dating a guy she met while studying abroad in Ireland, but they broke things off when she returned to the States; the experience did, however, make her a bit more hopeful for dating upon her return.
Bargoers on the dance floor on the last day of the fall semester at Smokey Joe's, a college bar at Penn.
Students hold hands and run on the Lower Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
Students on the Lower Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
Students wearing horse heads and Penn shirts ona balcony overlooking the Lower Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
The student identified as "M." in the story poses for a portrait in her dorm room on the UPenn campus.
M., an athletic freshman with long legs and a button nose, arrived at college a virgin and planned to wait to have sex until she had her first boyfriend, something she expected to happen in college. But over the course of the fall, as she saw very few students forming relationships, she began to lose hope about finding a boyfriend and to see her virginity as a hindrance.
“I could be here for four years and not date anyone,” she said she realized. “Sometimes you are out, and there’s a guy you really are attracted to, and you kind of want to go back home with him, but you kind of have that underlying, ‘I can’t, because I can’t just lose my V-card to some random guy.’ ”
At a party in the spring semester, she was taking a break from dancing when she ran into a guy she had had a class with in the fall. They started talking, then danced until the party was over. M. went back to his room, where they talked some more and then started making out.
By this time, she said, “I wasn’t very drunk — I was close to sober,” which made her believe she could make a considered decision.
“I’m like, ‘O.K., I could do this now,’ ” she recalled thinking. “ ‘He’s superhot, I like him, he’s nice. But I’m not going to expect anything out of it, either.’ ”
The alternative, she said, was that “I could take the chance that one night I get really drunk and sleep with someone that I don’t want to sleep with, which probably is what would have ended up happening.”
So she had sex with him. In the morning, he walked her home.
“Honestly, all of my friends, they’re super envious, because I came back with the biggest smile on my face,” M. said. As she had expected, she and the guy remained friendly but nothing more. Yet she was still happy with her decision.
“All of my friends are jealous, because I had such a great first experience,” she added. Over spring break, she slept with someone else.
Students talk near a moonbounce on the Upper Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
A beach ball is passed during the last concert of the day on the Lower Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
Students on a moon bounce on the Upper Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
Students dance on the Lower Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
Bargoers share a moment in a booth at Smokey Joe's.
Bargoers dance — and make out — on the dance floor at Smoey Joe's.
Bargoers on the dance floor at Smokey Joe's.
The student identified as "M." in the story poses for a portrait in her dorm room on the UPenn campus.
The student identified as "Haley" in the story poses for a portrait in her dorm room on the UPenn campus.
In November of Haley’s freshman year, a couple of months after her first tentative “Difmos,” or dance-floor makeouts, she went to a party with a boy from her floor. She had too much to drink, and she remembered telling him that she wanted to go home.
Instead, she said, he took her to his room and had sex with her while she drifted in and out of consciousness. She woke up with her head spinning. The next day, not sure what to think about what had happened, she described the night to her friends as though it were a funny story: I was so drunk, I fell asleep while I was having sex! She played up the moment in the middle of the night when the guy’s roommate poked his head in the room and asked, “Yo, did you score?”
Only later did Haley begin to think of what had happened as rape — a disturbingly common part of many women’s college experience. In a 2007 survey funded by the Justice Department of 6,800 undergraduates at two big public universities, nearly 14 percent of women said they had been victims of at least one completed sexual assault at college; more than half of the victims said they were incapacitated from drugs or alcohol at the time.
Students climb on a statue on the Upper Quad at UPenn's Spring Fling.
Catherine stands in the entryway of the house she shares with a number of other UPenn students.