Wes: Gabe is on vacation this week, so I invited Sarah Lieberman to share her thoughts on a subject that has become increasingly impactful over the last few years: sexual culture among college freshman. Sarah is a former Double Take contestant (she lost to Kyra Haas by just a few points in 2014), Cornell University rising sophomore, and my coauthor on “Consent-Based Sex Education: Parenting Teens in an Internet Age.”

There is, of course, nothing new about wide-eyed freshman going off to live in dorms and being surprised at what they find there. But today’s teens, steeped from middle school in online sex education, still seem taken aback at the level of sexual freedom that permeates dorm life. Actually, “permeates” is putting it mildly, as Sarah notes below.

photo by: Nick Krug

Double Take columnists Gabe Magee and Dr. Wes Crenshaw

For many years, kids I saw as high school students went off to college and I didn’t hear much from them until they graduated or bombed out and returned home. Today, as mental health services are seen as essential, many students who saw a therapist before coming to Kansas University want to continue here and many who are leaving for other campuses want to do so via videoconferencing. So, my opportunity to experience freshman year close up and personal has grown, and with it my exposure to their unique culture.

That’s led me to a bit of a reversal on the value of dorm life. I used to extoll it as essential to the college experience, but today I question if 18-year-olds are at all prepared to live on their own. That’s true on many variables — finance, substance abuse, self-regulation, vocational identity, etc. — and it’s especially true when it comes to sexuality. While teens have proven highly skilled at contraception, I wonder if they can consume the rampant sexual climate of college without negative outcomes including at minimum, low-consent sexual encounters as well as encounters that were high-consent but later regretted.

As parents we might sigh, throw up our hands and say, “That’s growing up.” In fact, many of my freshman acquaintances claim they learned as much from their harrowing experiences as they did their fun ones. So, I’m not proposing parents and high schoolers give up on dorm life. I’m only suggesting that, in making a decision, they go in with eyes open as to what’s really going on with on campus life, particularly sexual expression. In other words, caveat emptor … let the buyer beware.

And if it’s not already obvious after 12 years of reading Double Take, a good, bottom-up, overhaul of our entire sex-education system is probably in order. Sarah and I hope to start that process in our forthcoming book.

Sarah Lieberman: “Stop the car!” I screeched on the way back to the dorms. One of my older friends had taken me out to breakfast on an average Ithaca Sunday morning: cold and snowy. Through the flurries, I recognized a familiar blond ponytail and sparkly party pants. We came stopped the car and I stuck my head just far enough out the window to yell, “Get in!” It was as routine as the bad weather. If you woke up early enough on a weekend, you would witness streams of chilly students making their way back to their beds, wearing the same shoes from the night before.

I could easily list a bunch of little things about campus sexuality that surprised me, like how some boys wanted us girls to kiss each other more than they wanted us to kiss them; or how often I stood outside of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, waiting for someone to finish having sex in the shower; or how the sex-education class my sorority provided was, thankfully, better than anything I had in high school. But as far as sweeping revelations, one stood out.

Hook up culture is synonymous with campus sexuality. Casual sex is an accepted practice that most students participate in. All genders and sexualities are equally enthusiastic. It’s not typically dirty or rare or a one-way street. That walk back on Sunday morning isn’t a walk of shame. It’s just a walk. Hookup culture isn’t stigmatized or even just tolerated. People like it. They embrace it. And why shouldn’t they? I knew for some time that my generation was headed in this direction, so the culture itself wasn’t the biggest shock for me. My (pleasant) surprise came from recognizing the equality within hookup culture. Men didn’t hold all the cards and make all the decisions. Both parties involved wanted the same thing.

And that same thing was, most typically, casual sex.

— Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, is author of “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD.” Learn about his writing and practice at dr-wes.com. Gabe Magee is a Bishop Seabury Academy senior. Send your confidential 200-word question to ask@dr-wes.com. Double Take opinions and advice are not a substitute for psychological services.