“Sex and the Soul: Juggling sexuality, spirituality, romance, and religion on America’s college campuses.” Sound intriguing? It’s a book written by Dr. Donna Freitas who spoke at the mansion on Thursday, Oct. 2, to lecture about college students struggling with the “hook up” scene.
Freitas is an assistant professor of religion at Boston University. She received her doctorate from Catholic University in 2002.
“I liked Dr. Freitas style,” Dr. Nancy Watterson, assistant professor
of social justice and American
studies, said. “She seemed approachable and friendly. I thought she spoke more to the students than some of the guest speakers we’ve had. I think she got her audience right, especially for what could be a touchy subject.”
Touchy subject? Sex!
“I grew up Catholic and we don’t talk about sex,” Freitas said at the beginning of her lecture. “I didn’t even tell my dad about this book.” She began by defining
“hooking up” as “kissing and all kinds of sex with no expectations.”
She learned this definition from a study she had done in a class at Boston University.
She offered a dating class where students and she conversed about sex, love, intimacy, hooking up, dating and other relationships found on a campus. She learned that her class wanted to stop the hook-up culture from taking over. Students want romance and relationships
to be more meaningful.
“If there is one thing I learned, there is strength in numbers. When some had courage to speak out, others gained courage,” Freitas
said about her class having a voice about the touchy subject.
The class had a project to make a newspaper all about the topics they discussed in class. This newspaper was called Dateline
SMC and it was distributed all over the campus to share with students, faculty, administration and beyond.
In preparation for her book, Freitas studied given polls, surveys,
interviews and had students from all types of schools write in journals about relationships, sex, spirituality and the other topics. Schools she studied included nonreligious
private, public, Catholic and evangelical colleges and universities.
Her studies showed that the majority of the students felt pressured
in the hook-up culture and really wished it didn’t exist. She said most of the students wanted spirituality in their sex lives rather
than just a fling and most want relationships but just follow the social culture.
“I think she’s really accurate in saying you hear one-on-one that students don’t want just the dating
culture but they’re seeking for some kind of spirituality and they don’t know how to talk about it,” Watterson said.
From a handout Freitas gave her audience, on average, 80 percent
of students identify themselves
as spiritual and/or religious but it is not something they care to discuss among peers, but in their journals, they spilled their hearts. She found that students did not feel like they were experiencing intimacy spiritually.
“Prayer is a relationship just like relationships with other people are,” the Rev. Michael Bielecki, Cabrini chaplain, said. “Most people haven’t gotten to the point yet where they know that prayer is a relationship just like love is a relationship. So what she was saying I think bears completely upon the lack of prayer life for people.”
Freitas explained that students seem to want to feel respected and want others to see they have dignity.
“That’s the type of intimacy they seem to want,” Freitas said.
“People in general are looking for a respectful connection with others. They’re not looking to be put upon by somebody because it’s a power play or a power issue,”
Bielecki said.
On the handout, Freitas also explains that almost no one had any idea how to reconcile their sex lives with their religious lives, interests and beliefs and students divorce their sex from religion on campus. She said that religious teachings on sex are outdated and meaningless and have no relevance
to students’ lives, and if a student wanted to try to live up to religious or spiritual ideals about sex, it would be social suicide.
“I think it’s unfortunate that lots of times there is this impression
that the church is just anti-sex, but we’re not or there wouldn’t be any babies born. So it’s not so much sex as it is about respect,” Bielecki said.
Freitas said, “Many students expressed during the interviews that even if they don’t like hooking
up, they pretend to because it’s such a big part of the social culture on campus.”
“My heart goes out to young people because I think there’s a lot of pressure that I was not subjected
to. You people have got a lot on your plate,” Bielecki said.
