College is a place infamous for breaking out of your comfort zone, with movies portraying it as a place to party every night, try a variety of illicit drugs, and go on a bunch of dates. As you’ve probably noticed during your time at Duke, however short it may be, none of these apply at this university. Due to its stressful nature, Duke students rarely have the time to go on dates, never mind be in a committed relationship. So what experience do Duke students have with “romance”?
“Hook-up culture is a big part of the ‘dating’ scene, if you could call it that,” a junior who wishes to remain anonymous says (let’s call them R). “In the LGBT aspect, I find that LGBT women are more likely to date seriously during their years in college than LGBT men, straight men, and straight women in general.” Grindr and Tinder are very common phone applications that students use to find these “hook-ups,” meaning that applications such as Bumble and OKCupid do not have a large college student population, so people looking for genuine relationships do not have plenty o’ fish.
Of the people I personally know that are in long-term relationships, all but one are long-distance relationships that started in high school. But what contributes to this avoidance of relationships with fellow students?
“From a male perspective, there’s a need for intimacy that males try to pursue and receive from solely sex and that’s why ‘hook-up culture’ is such a thing because they get that temporary intimacy and then continue to seek that because they believe it will solve a temporary problem,” R adds. S and O, a senior and junior, respectively, who identify as lesbians, explain that it’s harder to date at Duke as members of the LGBT community because it’s nearly impossible to know if a person you are interested in is also into women.
E, a junior RA on campus, states that, in her experience, “My residents tell me that they’re juggling their five and half credits plus an on-campus job and they just don’t have the time. That’s speaking as an RA of an independent house, not of a sorority or fraternity, a section that would lead to more social interaction that may lead to hook-ups, relationships, or dating. The residents I have who are dating tend to have either met their partner in freshman year or are an international student with a boyfriend or girlfriend back home.”
So, in general, it seems like there are a lot of barriers that can prevent long-term relationships from flourishing on Duke’s campus, but don’t let that stop you if you’re looking for that. Just make your intentions known, no matter what you’re looking for – a relationship or a hook-up.