Free Republic

Hooking Up For Credit by: Deborah Lambert, February 22, 2008 When Family Security Matters released its 2nd annual tally of “America’s Most Dangerous College Courses,” reporter Jason Rantz noted that little has changed on college campuses. He said the fact that professors incorporate rants about George Bush, the war on terrorism and social justice into their class sessions means that students are being seriously short-changed. Among the courses on the 2007-2008 list is “College Sexualities,” offered by Occidental College, which studies the “hook up” culture of college students. “Offering not an iota of academic value,” Rantz says that “the course...

Last month, a boy asked my 16-year-old daughter to his school's homecoming dance. She agreed to go, bought a new dress and made a hairdresser appointment. The boy never bought tickets to the dance. Neither did his friends. They decided that attending homecoming wouldn't be cool, and instead planned to just dress up that night, go out for dinner and then hang out with their dates at someone's house. My daughter was disappointed, as were her girlfriends. They would have loved to have been taken to the dance, to show off their dresses, to see and be seen. At 6...

PEEKSKILL, N.Y. (AP) - He doesn't want to be an ogre about it, but the father of a fifth-grader thinks teachers are wasting time when they show movies in class - and if the film is a bootleg, he says, ''That's a really terrible lesson.'' Tim Trewhella, 46, said his 10-year-old daughter reported that her class watched the animated movie ''Shrek the Third'' on Tuesday and recognized it as the fairy-tale hit still showing in theaters. ''A friend hooked me up with it,'' teacher Lovell Quiroz said, according to the girl. Peekskill schools Superintendent Judith Johnson issued a statement saying...

During a class discussion on adolescence, a high school teacher recently asked her students whether they go on dates. We don't "date," the 12th graders reported. We "hook up." If you're in your 40s, "hooking up" might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to people in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a casual sexual encounter _ anything from kissing onwards _ with no strings attached. Now a new book on this not-so-new subject is drawing fire in some quarters for its conclusion: That hookups can be damaging to young women, denying their emotional needs, putting...

Meet the liberated college woman. You may pity her. "Unprotected" is a hard slap at the sexual free-for-all that prevails on American campuses and throughout American life. The author, revealed since publication as Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist at the student health service at UCLA, was hesitant to put her name on this book. The orthodoxy within the academic world is a strict one, and those who transgress often pay with their jobs. Let's hope for her sake, but particularly for her patients' well being, that she is not punished for her heterodox views. What does Dr. Grossman believe that...

The food, makeup, underwear is at "Everyday low prices" but a Wal-Mart "date" could be for free. Wal-Mart's taking on the role of retail matchmaker to some of its customers. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Just when you thought you'd heard it all from the king of discount shopping, Wal-Mart is now pitching itself as the new dating hot spot -- with everyday low prices to boot.

MODERN mating without dating is changing sexual behaviour in America. From teenagers to adults, hooking up has become part of the vocabulary of sex.Encompassing a range of conduct — from heavy petting to oral sex and intercourse — it is becoming standard practice in schools, on campuses and among adults, with damaging consequences to self-esteem, according to new research. Participants often call their hook-ups “friends with benefits”. They are a bit more than casual acquaintances but a lot less than a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You “hook up” with them, nothing more. You are free to string them along or...