The Sex Lives of Stanford Students

So I finally figured out how to post on this thing. The wonders of technology.

So all summer I've been working on research for the Feminist Studies Department. I worked under Paula England, who is teaches the My job was to basically read about people's sex lives. One really interesting fact I learned was that Stanford has a higher rate of virginity than other colleges: a 30% of Stanford seniors are virgins, compared to the national average of 20%. So despite the fact that we're pretty smart, we're not exactly having roaring sex lives. Good or bad, I'm not too sure.

I also found that Stanford students are involved in hookups and dating more than long term relationships. I also found that a lot of students complained about how small the student population was, which leads to rather awkward situations when it comes to sex. I read about how Person A hooked up with Person B one night, then Person A hooked up with Person C another night, and it turned out B and C were best friends, which led to the two of them fighting over A, which led to A getting angry and quitting the whole hookup scene all together...it was all a very messy, messy affair. I also read about similar accounts of how frustrating it is that everyone knows everyone else's business. I'm not sure if this is solely a Stanford thing or a small university thing, but I found it pretty interesting.

I suppose this is all related to this concept called "Stanford Dating" that I frequently came across while doing my research but never explicitly explained. I'm guessing it has something to do with the prioritizing of school ahead of more carnal desires, and hookups take less time than actual relationships. After some Google searching, I found this amusing 2002 Daily article on Stanford Dating.

http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2002/10/3/stanfordDatingHardOrLimp

So yes, the dating scene here is rather bleak. Hopefully your sex lives are much more successful.