By Irene Muniz, News Correspondent

‘ The hookup generation is here, and it’s gaining popularity, some experts said, despite some abiguity of the term ‘hook-up.’
‘One of the things the research shows is that people use the term ‘hook-up’ in a purposely ambiguous way,’ said Pamela Lannutti, an associate professor of communications at Boston College. ‘For some people hooking up means sort of like meeting someone and for others it means having sex.’
Last November Lannutti held a lecture entitled ‘The Hook-up Generation: The Connection Between Hooking-up and How It Makes Us Feel About Our Bodies’ at Boston College.
Because hook-up is an ambiguous term, young adults have the liberty of choosing their own meaning, she said.
‘Part of using that term is you can say you hooked up with someone and no one needs to know exactly what that means, so it can be of your own choosing,’ Lannutti said.
Statistics show that sex, and indirectly the hook-up culture, have a connection to alcohol abuse as a means to faciliate a hook-up.
According to The Medical College of Georgia, college students who mix alcohol and sex reported having more partners whom they know only ‘slightly’ or ‘moderately,’ as opposed to hooking up with acquaintences they were more familiar with.
‘The hookup culture in a lot of ways is open to an alcohol culture. It’s kind of a nasty mix,’ Lannutti said.
According to Mary Troxell, a philosophy professor at Boston College, several students agreed with the study’s findings.
‘Students have told me that they drink both to give themselves permission to hook up and also drinking facilitates hooking up,’ she said.
Nice said students who have had a few drinks typically lose their reservations and will probably act on impulses. This helps fuel the possbility of anonymous encounters, sex or otherwise.
‘You may wake up the next morning feeling unachieved or slutty,’ he said.
Some students have concerns that with more promiscuous ideals, a major shift in relationship mechanics could be underway.
‘I think it undermines traditional dating because it basically makes hooking up so much easier than dating that students have a difficult time of taking the risk of asking each other on dates,’ Troxell said.
During her research Lannutti’ determined there was a correlation between hooking up and peer pressure.
‘A lot of people say that especially when you’re a freshman, there’s a lot of pressure for the hookup and being part of that scene and everything,’ Lannutti said.
Melissa Walker, a freshman psychology major, said she believes hooking up with a stranger only involves a kiss and that there is nothing wrong with it, as long as no sex is involved.
Katherine Tomback, a middler international affairs major, and Cosimo Violati, a middler economics and political science major, said their relationship began as a ‘kiss hookup.’ The two said they had been friends before the encounter, though they had harbored feelings for one another until the hook-up. They’ve been together for two years now they said.
‘A random hookup is a kiss,’ Tomback said. ‘As long as you’re always safe, it’s college, have fun.’
Violati agreed.
‘A hookup is a kiss ‘hellip; a French kiss, I guess,’ he said.
Spencer Nice, a middler biology major, said he believes making out does not qualify as hooking up. ‘A real hookup is sex,’ he said.
Troxell said she believes that for young adults, dropping out of the hookup or drinking culture means that you’re also dropping the social life that college is.
‘Some people have been doing this in high school anyway so they’re used to it,’ Lannutti said.
Troxell offered a differing view.
‘Not all students are satisfied with the hookup culture,’ Troxell said. ‘At least in Boston College, students are beginning to talk openly about the fact that they’re not happy with the hookup culture. What I’m hopeful is maybe that will affect some kind of change.’

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