Though it runs counter to the prevailing attitude of college students, we as Christians know good, healthy, relationship-building benefits of saving sex for marriage. Even at secular schools, there are students who recognize the need for a sexual ethic that encourages relationships to flourish, rather than allowing the hookup culture to dominate social life.

American college campuses are dangerous places. On our campuses, women are sexually assaulted in alarming numbers. Men are being hauled before campus sex tribunals, many of which lack any semblance of due process. United Educators, an insurance company owned by 1,160 member colleges and universities, reported that between 2006 and 2010, student-perpetrated sexual assault cases cost $36 million in losses to its member schools. Accusing students and accused students sue their schools in almost equal numbers.

To protect their students (and themselves from such lawsuits), college sexocrats are busy developing sexual-assault prevention programs. Among colleges in the Northeast, one popular resource for sex-education programs for first-year students is a play called Speak About It, produced by a liberal arts college in Maine. Speak About It advertises itself as a “compilation of true stories that captures what healthy sex can and should look like.” The play features a woman who invites classmate to her dorm room. They proceed to undress each other, asking each other permission before each move.

The dominant message confirms author Tom Wolfe’s characterization of college sex: “Today’s first base is kissing… Second base is oral sex. Third base is going all the way. Home plate is learning each other’s names.” Speak About It imparts an ethic of unbridled sexual freedom as long as students are careful to “be safe, get consent, and watch out for friends.”

While these are sensible reminders in the wake of the troubling numbers of sexual assaults and rapes, this advice is simply not enough to create a healthy environment or foster a healthy understanding of sex. Even though these talking points are most often presented at mandatory freshmen orientation, a majority of sexual assaults against freshman women occur during the first six weeks on campus, before students return home for Thanksgiving, a period known as the red zone.

The emphasis on consent to the exclusion of older virtues of chivalry and civility reinforces collegiate hook-up cultures, where sex carries with it no expectation of emotional attachment. The 2011 online College Social Survey found that seven in ten students hook up while in college. Twenty percent of women and a quarter of men hookup with ten or more people during their four years at school. The vast majority of students do so under the influence of alcohol.

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