A new course at Tulane University aims to spark conversation across campus, inviting students to explore how sex, relationships and identity intersect with college life.
Introduced last semester, Sex in College was designed by associate professor of sociology Lisa Wade.
“I really wanted to give back to students, give them tools to navigate this culture that they find themselves in but didn’t necessarily choose,” Wade said.
Wade, author of “American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus,” has studied hookup culture for the past 15 years.
“I study college students, and I really, really enjoy them,” Wade said. “Students at this age are earnest and excited to learn … They don’t get taken seriously often enough by grownups … That’s what inspired me to teach this class.”
Wade said the goal of the class is to provide students with the tools to navigate hookup culture as it looks today and to challenge students to evaluate its broader impact on students and society in general. The class also touches on the discrimination and fetishization of people of color that can come along with hookup culture.
“Students are surprised that you can study sexuality from a rigorous, scholarly point of view,” Wade said. “I would love for students to be able to think in a more sophisticated way about the environment they’re in and whether and how they want to change it collectively.”
At Tulane University, the subject resonates. According to the 2026 Niche rankings, Tulane ranks as the No. 3 party school in the nation — a reputation some students say mirrors the campus’ hookup culture.
“When you enter a space that is very dominated by hookup culture, you lose your sense of self a little bit,” sophomore Summer Huynh said. “[Sex in College] has taught me to hold the same standards I have during the day and apply them to the night.”
Wade incorporates her book into the course, grounded in statistics and the ever-changing idea of hookups.
“What stood out to me was statistics about who was hooking up and in what proportions,” sophomore Tula Loveland said. “We talked about where hookup cultures live, where whether it’s contained in Tulane, or the greater New Orleans community … and how that’s based on the demographics.”
According to Wade, hookup culture is constantly evolving in response to students’ changing notions and ideas about relationships, consent and what intimacy means in a college setting.
“Youth sexual cultures change,” Wade said. “They shift, they fade, and new ones come along — and usually these are responses to really big societal trends or crises. And so I’m not confident that hookup culture is going to be here forever.”